“And still it is not enough to have memories. One must be able to forget them when they are many, and one must have the great patience to wait until they come again. For it is not yet the memories themselves. Not until they have turned to blood within us, to glance, to gesture, nameless and no longer to be distinguished from ourselves-not until then can it happen that in a most rare hour the first word of a verse arises in their midst and goes forth from them.”
- Rainer Maria Rilke, The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge

“Patience is a somewhat devalued commodity. Particularly among those who ought to know better – writers themselves.” – Dennis Palumbo

Formerly a Hollywood screenwriter, Dennis Palumbo is now a licensed psychotherapist in private practice, specializing in creative issues.

He comments: “Rather than thinking of it as the quality that enables a writer to explore his or her material, growing more competent by small, even measures, patience has taken on the attributes of a necessary evil.” …

Photo: J. K. Rowling in 1997 at a table in Nicholson’s Cafe in Edinburgh. She conceived the idea for the ‘Harry Potter’ series while on a train trip in 1990, and finished typing the first manuscript in 1995. She often worked at pubs and cafes during her lunch breaks.

Continued: Developing Creativity: Writing With Patience

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“I liked him. He was kind of skinny and wiry and full of energy.” Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, about meeting Steve Jobs in 1969.

“Jobs doesn’t sit through much of anything; one of the ways he dominates is through sheer movement.” Joe Nocera

The bio ‘Steve Jobs’ has topped Amazon’s list of 10 best-selling books of 2011.

Listening to author Walter Isaacson in his interview with Charlie Rose, one of his comments that caught my attention was this [paraphrased]:

The deep emotionalism surprised me. He’d be talking and I looked up and there were tears… He was talking about the ad campaign ‘Here’s to the Crazy Ones’ and he got very emotional.

[See my post The Apple “Think Different” campaign - includes the TV commercial.]

Video: excerpt of Charlie Rose interview of Walter Isaacson (10/25/11). See the longer interview at CharlieRose.com.

Here is a quote from Isaacson’s new bio of Steve Jobs, by Joe Nocera, then a writer for Esquire, describing Jobs’ intensity at a NeXT computer staff meeting:

“It’s not quite right to say that he is sitting through this staff meeting because Jobs doesn’t sit through much of anything; one of the ways he dominates is through sheer movement.

“One moment he’s kneeling in his chair, the next minute he’s slouching in it; the next he has leaped out of his chair entirely and is scribbling on the blackboard directly behind him.

“He is full of mannerisms. He bites his nails. He stares with unnerving earnestness at whoever is speaking. His hands, which are slightly and inexplicably yellow, are in constant motion.”

These references sound like the unusually intense levels of emotional, physical and other capacities that Polish clinician and theorist Kazimierz Dabrowski detailed in his theory of personality development, and termed Overexcitability.

He particularly addressed high ability, gifted and talented people, and said, “Almost 97 percent of the highly creative suffer from different kinds of overexcitabilities, neuroses, and psychoneuroses. So, neurotics and psychoneurotics are a mine of social treasure.”

More stimulatable

Stephanie Tolan, a writer and advocate for extremely bright children, notes the original Polish terms overexcitabilities or excitabilities can be translated more literally as “superstimulatabilities.”

She summarizes, “It’s a stimulus-response difference from the norms. It means that in these five areas a person reacts more strongly than normal for a longer period than normal to a stimulus that may be very small. It involves not just psychological factors but central nervous system sensitivity.”

She describes the Psychomotor form of Overexcitability or Excitability: “This is often thought to mean that the person needs lots of movement and athletic activity, but it can also refer to the issue of having trouble smoothing out the mind’s activities for sleeping. Lots of physical energy and movement, fast talking, lots of gestures, sometimes nervous tics.”

From her page Dabrowski’s Over-excitabilities – A Layman’s Explanation.

Sharon Lind, a gifted education and parenting consultant, notes in her article Overexcitability and the gifted, “A small amount of definitive research and a great deal of naturalistic observation have led to the belief that intensity, sensitivity and overexcitability are primary characteristics of the highly gifted.”

“Often when overexcitability is discussed examples and concerns are mostly negative. Remember that being overexcitable also brings with it great joy, astonishment, beauty, compassion, and creativity. Perhaps the most important thing is to acknowledge and relish the uniqueness of an overexcitable child or adult.”

Also see a longer discussion of the topic by Casey on her Raising Smart Girls blog: Overexcitabilities and the gifted – Living With Intensity

See quotes by her about J.D. Salinger “searching relentlessly” for peace in my post What do you do with your intensity?

Being intense is not always positive.

Casey refers to one of the reference books on the subject: Living with Intensity: Understanding the Sensitivity, Excitability, and the Emotional Development of Gifted Children, Adolescents, and Adults.

The Amazon summary notes: “Gifted children and adults are often misunderstood. Their excitement is viewed as excessive, their high energy as hyperactivity, their persistence as nagging, their imagination as not paying attention, their passion as being disruptive, their strong emotions and sensitivity as immaturity, their creativity and self-directedness as oppositional.”

Also see much more on the Dabrowski page listed at the bottom.

The iconic 1984 Macintosh commercial conceived by Chiat/Day and directed by Ridley Scott was nationally aired on television only once – during the 3rd quarter of the 1984 Super Bowl football game.

Creative Obsession

The photo above (by Norman Seeff) is Jobs with the original 1984 Macintosh, which was not made to be opened by the owner, but Isaacson says Jobs thought the main circuit board looked ugly, that the chips were not arrayed nicely, so it had to be re-manufactured. One of his staff noted that no one would see it; Steve said “But we will know.”

Attention to even “invisible details” is often part of the obsessive perfectionism – or, from another vantage point, passion for excellence – that drives many major filmmakers, too.

One example is James Cameron (the Terminator series, Aliens, Titanic and many others), whose attention to detail for his movie Avatar included employing a university linguistics professor to create a functioning language for the tribe of blue aliens on Pandora.

But one of the dark sides of obsession for Cameron and others can be engaging in negatively perfectionistic behavior, or being a destructive workaholic.

Both were also reportedly aspects of Jobs’ life and achievement.

Of course, as with most behavior, there is no absolute border between productive and pathological.

Therapist and creativity coach Eric Maisel, PhD notes in his article In Praise of Positive Obsessions that clinicians may define “obsession” as an intrusive thought, recurrent, unwanted, and inappropriate.

Maisel writes, “Defined this way, it is obviously always unwelcome. But suppose a person is caught up thinking day and night about her current painting or about the direction she wants to take her art?”

From my post Creative Obsession

Passion

In her post Do You “Believe Beyond Reason?” (on her blog – see her site), creativity coach Jenna Avery notes that “passion” is an over-used and often bland idea, and it should be something much more.”

She writes, ‘Let’s start asking, “What do you BELIEVE BEYOND REASON?” What do you believe in so deeply, so permanently, so passionately that you can hardly keep yourself in your skin because you are exploding with joy when you consider it?’

Isn’t that what we want to feel as creators?

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Book: Steve Jobs, by Walter Isaacson.

Audiobook:  Steve Jobs: The Exclusive Biography, Narrated by Dylan Baker, Walter Isaacson.

My sites on ‘central nervous system sensitivity’: Highly Sensitive // Highly Sensitive / Facebook

Related pages, posts

Dabrowski / advanced development

Dabrowski Excitabilities – Michael Jackson

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Listen folks. Talking about goals won’t get you there any more than going to church will get you to heaven.

If you do not passionately believe in where you are going, don’t give goal-setting a bad name by using the word goal to describe listless me-too-ism.

A goal has to be a real destination at which you not only aspire to arrive but for which you make every preparation and expend every effort.

Stop settling for approximations to goals and stop accepting weenie progress.

To really make progress toward your goals you have to stop setting goals because everybody else is.

Continued: What’s wrong with goal-setting?

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Most of us try, with varying degrees of success. Here is an excerpt from a new article in The Atlantic about what is going on.

If Multitasking Is Impossible, Why Are Some People So Good at It?

By Derek Thompson, senior editor at The Atlantic

“Multitasking means screwing up several things at once,” somebody once said, wrongly. In fact, we don’t do many things at once, ever. We do many things in quick succession. And some of us are very good at it

Everybody multitasks. We have conversations while driving. We answer email while browsing the Web. It’s hard to imagine living any other way. What would be the alternative, removing the seats from your car to ensure you only drive alone? Block every website not named Gmail? A world of constant single-tasking is too absurd to contemplate.

But science suggests that multitasking as we know it is a myth. ”Humans don’t really multitask,” said Eyal Ophir, the primary researcher with the Stanford Multitasking study. “We task-switch. We just switch very quickly between tasks, and it feels like we’re multitasking.”

***

In 1946, the world was introduced to history’s first general-purpose electronic computer: ENIAC, nicknamed the “Giant Brain.” At the time, the word multi-tasking did not exist. It first appeared in a magazine called Datamation in 1966, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, in the following sentence: “Multi-tasking is defined as the use of a single CPU for the simultaneous processing of two or more jobs.”

Over the next 65 years, computers have become multitasking wizards, with the ability to download movies while playing music while running complex programs and executing a million other functions we take for granted, yet in 1946 would have seemed like magic. Meanwhile, the people operating these wondrous machines have not gotten any better at multitasking over the last 60 years. If anything, we have gotten worse.

In The Shallows, a book about memory and the Internet, Nicholas Carr said the Web was changing the way we think, read and remember. Humans are hunters and hoarders of information. We seek, we find, we remember. If the Internet is helping us seek and find data, it is hurting our ability to absorb and retain it. Before the Internet, the theory goes, our attentions expanded vertically. With the Internet, our focus extends horizontally, and shallowly.

Why do we think we’re so good at something that doesn’t exist? We compensate for our inability to multitask with a remarkable ability to single-task in rapid succession. Our brains aren’t a volley of a thousand arrows descending on an opposing army. Our brains are Robin Hood. One man with one bow firing on all comers, one at a time.   [Continued]

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Here are some of my archive posts on the topic:

Multitasking – or optimal performance

Divided attention spans and creativity

“You wait until the last minute to buy Christmas presents. You put off seeing the dentist, or getting that thing checked out by the doctor, or filing your taxes….

“Perhaps the stakes are higher than choosing to play Angry Birds instead of doing sit-ups. You might have a deadline for a grant proposal, or a dissertation, or a book. You’ll get around to it. You’ll start tomorrow.”

From post “Procrastination” – on http://youarenotsosmart.com/.

That site and the video are for the book: You Are Not So Smart: Why You Have Too Many Friends on Facebook, Why Your Memory Is Mostly Fiction, and 46 Other Ways You’re Deluding Yourself, by David McRaney. http://amzn.to/pafKAv

Related book: Your Own Worst Enemy: Breaking the Habit of Adult Underachievement – by Kenneth W. Christian, PhD.
http://amzn.to/qQyPqo

Related post: Adult Underachievement: Kenneth Christian, Ph.D. on living up to the “gifted” label – or not
http://highability.org/72/kenneth-christian-phd-on-living-up-to-the-gifted-label-or-not/

Procrastination may often be self-limiting – but is it possibly, sometimes, a matter of careful consideration? It can be one of those easy to apply labels we use to criticize or self-criticize for not “seizing the moment” as quickly as many “high achievers” do.

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From a tribute to Steve Jobs:

‘Those who knew Jobs often spoke of his passion for his creations.

“It sounds ridiculous to talk about love when you are making a gadget,” said Larry Brilliant, the former director of Google’s philanthropic arm, Google.org, and a longtime friend of Jobs.

“But Steve loved his work, he loved the products he produced, and it was palpable,” Brilliant said.

“He communicated that love through bits of steel and plastic.”‘

From article: “To his millions of fans, he was simply Steve” By David Sarno and Jessica Guynn, Los Angeles Times October 6, 2011.

Biography: Steve Jobs, by Walter Isaacson. – The publisher describes the book as revealing that Jobs was “Driven by demons and could drive those around him to fury and despair. But his personality and products were interrelated, just as Apple’s hardware and software tended to be, as if part of an integrated system. [The book] is instructive and cautionary, filled with lessons about innovation, character, leadership, and values.”

~~

“Think Different” is an advertising slogan created for Apple Computer in 1997 by advertising agency TBWA\Chiat\Day. It was used in television commercials, print ads and a number of TV promos for Apple products. The slogan was discontinued in 2002.

Original Version: The original “Long version” appeared on posters made by Apple.

The Crazy Ones

Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes.

The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them.

About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They invent. They imagine. They heal. They explore. They create. They inspire. They push the human race forward.

Maybe they have to be crazy.

How else can you stare at an empty canvas and see a work of art? Or sit in silence and hear a song that’s never been written? Or gaze at a red planet and see a laboratory on wheels?

While some see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.

[Source: Wikipedia/Think Different page.]

> See hundreds of posts about developing multiple talents on the main site (where you are now) and the related sites: click on TalentDevelop Sites in the menu bar above.

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In his famed Commencement Address, Steve Jobs also emphasized the value of thinking differently:

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“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice.

“And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”

— Steve Jobs, Stanford University Commencement, 2005 transcript:  ‘You’ve got to find what you love,’ Jobs says.
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In his post “That’s DR. Winnie to you: A New Child Star Stereotype” (on his Psychology Today blog), creativity researcher James C. Kaufman, Ph.D. writes about a number of people well-known as child stars, now grown, who have explored talents outside of acting.

He writes: “One of the research topics in creativity that has always fascinated me has been creative polymathy – the ability to be creative in more than one domain…”

“There are, of course, the child stars who are still actors (such as Christian Bale, Jason Bateman, Neil Patrick Harris, and Anna Paquin) or end up behind the cameras (such as Fred Savage, Peter Billingsley, and Ke Huy Quan) but what I find interesting are the other ones…

“Danica McKellar (‘Winnie’ on The Wonder Years) earned her Ph.D. from UCLA in mathematics, currently writes books promoting math, and has an Erdos number of 4 (it’s like the Kevin Bacon game for mathematicians.”

The photo of her is from my posts
Danica McKellar on being girly and tech savvy
Danica McKellar on the power and beauty of math

Kaufman notes other examples: “Missy Gold (‘Katie’ on Benson) received her Ph.D. and is now a clinical psychologist in Portland, Maine (under a different name). [See his post for more.]

In her article Picking their next role: Joe College or hot young star?, Amy Kaufman (Los Angeles Times, June 12, 2011) mentions Emma Watson, Blake Lively, Brad Pitt, Jodie Foster, Natalie Portman, James Franco, Shia LaBeouf and others who make decisions about developing their talents outside of acting.

Another example being actor Mayim Bialik, who earned her Ph.D. from UCLA in Neuroscience.

On “The Big Bang Theory” tv series, she plays Amy Farrah Fowler, a neurobiologist and “not-girlfriend” of physicist Sheldon Cooper.

Bialik commented that “having an understanding of both mental illness and neurosis has been tremendously helpful to me in my acting career.”

From my post: Actors and creative polymathy: Mayim Bialik, James Franco and others.

How does polymathy work?

In his post How Renaissance People Think – The thinking style of polymaths – Dr. Scott Barry Kaufman asks, “Do you think like a polymath? Here’s a quick test: Are you more of a rational or experiential/intuitive thinker?

“If you cringed as you read the question and thought to yourself ‘I love constantly shifting between both modes of thought’, then you’re on the polymath path.”

He says psychologist Seymour Epstein told him that “people who are high in both thinking style are Renaissance people. They have the brains of scientists and the sensibilities of poets. In other words they have the positive features of both thinking styles and do not have their negative features because they are kept under control by the other thinking style.”

Related:

My podcast interview: James C. Kaufman, PhD on creativity research

The Too Many Aptitudes Problem, by Hank Pfeffer

Scanner Personality / Renaissance Soul articles

Creative Polymathy is one of the themes of my book
Developing Multiple Talents – The personal side of creative expression
Facebook
Website

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developing multiple talents, self-exploration, developing creativity, creative potential, creative personality type

How many times have you attended a personal growth workshop, or listened to a self-help audio course, or viewed a set of DVDs designed to change your life?  Given the type of people who usually read my blog, probably most of you.

And how many times did you get a high when you completed the program … that dissipated shortly, leaving you almost where you were before you started?

Based on what many of you have told me, an awful lot of you.

Why don’t these courses that usually offer such valuable information produce lasting change?

Based on everything we know about change, they should.

But what if our assumption about what produces change is wrong?

> Continued: Why Self-Help Often Doesn’t Work … And What Does

Below are excerpts from summaries of the second seven topics of the course, running for 14 Mondays starting October 3.

For each topic, I have added some related comments and references such as articles.

But first, read Eric Maisel on Your Life in the Arts – Part 1 (with a video interview with Dr. Maisel) if you haven’t already.

Week 8.   The Empathy Key
Some necessary traits of the creative personality include self-direction, self-trust, healthy narcissism, and other qualities that can incline a person toward self-centeredness and a lack of empathy. Learn why empathy is also a quality to be cultivated—for the sake of your art, your humanity, and marketplace success.

A related article: Are Those Your Feelings? By Jenna Avery, CLC, Life Coach for Sensitive Souls. She writes, ‘Several empathic and sensitive readers have shared that they struggle with knowing when they’re experiencing their own feelings versus feelings they have “picked up” from someone else.’

Photo: Scarlett Johansson has commented, “I think I was born with a great awareness of my surroundings and an awareness of other people…Sometimes that awareness is good, and sometimes I wish I wasn’t so sensitive.”

From my post Actors and the High Sensitivity Personality.

Week 9.   The Identity Key
It is much harder to fashion a life in the arts if you do not strongly identify as an artist. At the same time a vast array of sub-identities are available to you—you may see yourself as a beautifier, activist, bohemian, problem-solver, shaman, and so on.

A creative person is not simply someone who makes something that will be put on display in an art gallery. And identity is not a fixed “trait” that endures unchanged through our life.

As Guillaume Wolf asks in his article Creative Identity and the Ugly Duckling, “Is our identity the result of past events? Or is it something that’s being recreated everyday through our actions? In other words: are you the result of the past – or are you creating yourself in the present? These are profound questions.”

Week 10. The Addiction Key
Creative people squarely fall into the category of people at high risk for addiction, whether it’s a classic addiction to alcohol or drugs or one of the new distraction addictions involving email and the Internet. Learn why you are at greater risk than the next person—and what you can do to minimize those risks…

Photo: Beethoven reportedly drank wine about as often as he wrote music, and was an alcoholic or at least a problem-drinker.

Many gifted and creative people throughout history have used or abused substances, or engaged in self-limiting behavior. Here are a couple of many articles on the topic:

Gifted, Talented, Addicted

The Distraction Addictions by Eric Maisel, PhD.

Week 11. The Obsession Key
Get a clear picture of the difference between unproductive obsessions to be avoided and productive obsessions that fuel the creative process. Obsession is one of the least understood and yet most important aspects of both the creative process and success in the arts.

This is a very helpful re-framing of one of those terms – obsession – that is usually used by mental health professionals as a label for pathological behavior. It may be a mental health problem for some people, but the healthier varieties of obsession can also fuel creative expression.

“The refusal to rest content, the willingness to risk excess on behalf of one’s obsessions, is what distinguishes artists from entertainers, and what makes some artists adventurers on behalf of us all.” John Updike, about J. D. Salinger.

That is a quote from my article Creative Obsession.

Week 12. The Relationship Key
As independently and autonomously as artists might want to live, they must nevertheless pay attention to relationships. Intimacy is a key to emotional health and a career in the arts requires cultivating working relationships with industry professionals…

Although it can be a very individual endeavor, and nurtured in solitude, creative expression can also depend on relationships and be enhanced through personal interactions.

Anne Paris, a clinical psychologist who has helped many artists, emphasizes the importance of connections with others for the creative process. She says, “We all need relationships with others to be at our best. When we are surrounded with support, we are more productive, happy, and energetic. Positive relationships help to move us forward and help us to grow.”

From my article The Value Of Relationships For Being Creative.

Week 13. The Societal Key
Artists are an integral part of their society—as witnesses, cultural observers, entrepreneurs, and sometimes as heroes and celebrities. Their relationship to their society is almost always complex. Learn how to implement strategies that can help you relate to society on your terms.

Relating is also on a more intimate, personal level, and creative people are often unusually sensitive to their own inner lives, and to the moods and behaviors of other people.

This is one of the main topics of my Highly Sensitive site, and here is one related post: Being Sensitive and Creative.

Week 14. Your Artist Plan
Learn how to create daily, three-month and long-term plans that keep you focused on your tasks as an artist. Without solid plans in place you can lose months and years that might have been devoted to building a satisfying life in the arts. Know what you’re going to do when the challenges we’ve been discussing arise—planning is the key!

Here are a couple of articles on being a creative entrepreneur:

Jennifer Lee on Being a Right-Brainer in Business

Creativity and Commerce

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Testimonials:

“Without Eric Maisel’s guidance I would never have successfully negotiated the publishing process. With his help, I completed a substantial proposal, landed a good agent, and just signed my first book contract!” ?
— Nancy Pine, author and educator

“It’s been an unexpected joy to find someone as creatively supportive and encouraging as Eric. I didn’t know what to expect out of our sessions and each one is fresh and interesting. Eric’s inspirational!”
— Christine Collister, international recording artist

“Eric’s insights have helped me with every aspect of my painting career, from the evolution of my market vision to strategies for self-promotion. I also found his help invaluable in feeding my creator’s soul!”
— Jonathan Herbert, painter and photographer

Learn more and purchase the course at Your Best Life in the Arts.

Books by Eric Maisel, PhD:

A Life in the Arts: Practical Guidance and Inspiration for Creative and Performing Artists

Creativity for Life: Practical Advice on the Artist’s Personality, and Career from America’s Foremost Creativity Coach

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In her chapter “The Personalities of Creative Writers” of the book The Psychology of Creative Writing, Jane Piirto notes “Ambition and its doppelganger, envy, are not unknown among writers…

“Writers need ambition, as do other creative producers, but that ambition often produces horrible feelings of inadequacy and anxiety.

“This may be because of the intimate subject matter of the creative writer – the self or the self, coded. The high rate of rejection that creative writers experience when they try to publish their work may also contribute to the intense feelings of envy paired with intense ambition.”

Piirto includes comments by poet Molly Peacock [photo] about ambition:

“From when I was a little girl I wanted to be an artist, and I said to myself, ‘Somehow I’m getting out of Buffalo, New York.’ I had a drive to get out of that house and that town. That takes ambition, and my ambition is located in that very early desire to succeed.

Continued:    The Creative Personality: Ambition and Envy

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