Divergent Thinking Is a Skill You Can Rebuild. Creativity Part 1

We explore creativity as a human default and trace how schooling, judgment, and ego can mute it. From Ken Robinson’s research to a choice-driven course, we show how autonomy and curiosity reignite expression and purpose.

• creativity as self-expression and daily practice
• divergent thinking research and school’s limits
• intrinsic motivation over external rewards
• course design with choice in topic, method, output
• overcoming paralysis and the inner critic
• many ways to learn beyond textbooks
• reclaiming agency, voice and personal meaning
• practical loops for starting small and sharing

Transcript

Setting The Theme: Creativity

SPEAKER_02 0:10

We are on the line.

SPEAKER_00 0:14

Overcast.

SPEAKER_02 0:16

Overcast rivers open. Ish. Yeah, it's open. Today we are feeling a little fuzzy brained. But we got a great topic this morning from our audience. We got the topic of creativity. Creativity as self-expression. How using our natural creative spirit can enrich our lives. And I love that topic because we're actually doing creative writing this week. So that lends itself very nicely in the school. And yeah. And so I think it's a good topic. I think I think creativity sort of runs the world. When I saw the topic posted, I told less. And I think I'm just trying to tap into my guides here and bring through information regarding the subject. But it took a little minute. I thought I thought of all these ideas and I thought, oh, you know, maybe we could talk about this or this. But then they just sort of all muddled together and I felt sort of out of control in my mind. So just tapping into my guides and just taking a few moments before the podcast started was a little helpful. We'll see how it goes. But yeah, try to let less reminds me, thankfully, to tap in when I feel a little muddled or brain fogged.

SPEAKER_00 2:02

Well, that would be a great spin to put on the topic today.

SPEAKER_02 2:05

Yeah, that's true.

SPEAKER_00 2:06

The idea of inspiration. Inspiration. You know, I think that there's an old study that was done by educators. It was a longitudinal study. And what's his name? I'm gonna come up with his name in a second, but anyway. He's uh uh an English, I guess, commentator, educator. He was instrumental in a lot of rethinking modern education in the UK. And isn't that funny that I can't remember his last name? He's he's like a hero to me, really.

SPEAKER_02 2:45

Is Kenneth, it's like he's been also Sir Kenneth something.

Tapping Guides And Inspiration

Ken Robinson And Divergent Thinking

Motivation Beyond Money

Designing A Choice-Driven Course

SPEAKER_00 2:53

Anyway, yeah. The point is that there was a longitudinal study about creativity and divergent thinking as sort of a characteristic of people. And they did this study starting with very, very young children, like kindergarten age children, four and five-year-olds. And they asked them, you know, a sort of a standard question, you know, come up with as many uses for a paper clip as possible. And and they they figured that, you know, somebody could come up with five or six answers would be okay. But they found that these little kids could come up with literally hundreds of answers. They could cross a threshold of 200, uh, 200 answers pretty quickly and pretty effectively and pretty consistently. And these were just basically divergent creative thinking exercises. And so they took the children then a few years later, five, six years later, and they tested them again. And then they took them another five, six years later, and they tested them again. So at this point, they're teenagers, they're at the closing of their high school education. And what they found was steadily through the course of their lives, that when they were very, very young, well over 90% of these children would have been considered creative geniuses, that they were excessively creative, incredibly creative, and that it's it's like an almost a universal characteristic of a little child. And that by the time they were teenagers, this skill had almost completely deteriorated, right? And he used that as a premise when he said, and the primary thing that happened to all of them was they were educated. And so, you know, he used that as his point of departure for saying that the education system does not promote creativity, it inhibits creativity, it gets in the way of something that is natural to everyone, and is one of the most powerful skills, divergent thinking, one of the most powerful skills in life. And yes, it's Dr. Ken Robinson, Sir Ken Robinson. He was both anyway. I think you get your highest title, don't you, sir? Anyway, yeah, he's he's all over the internet. He's passed now, he's been gone a while, but he's he's just an inspirational speaker when it comes to education. And and he was very much part of my life years ago. So, you know, I'll finish that. So, when what I did when I started to learn about this, I started to learn about you know creativity, and I started to learn about motivation. A guy named Dan Pink did a lot of studies on motivation. And these guys are out there on the web, YouTube, whatever. You can learn a lot about that. But the the nut of what I took away was that we all have natural creative abilities. We've just had them poo-pooed and closed down for a long time. And that our motivations, our highest levels of motivations, are not rewards of money. Our highest reward, our highest motivation comes from self-fulfillment and taking on a difficult task. That in fact, human beings like that. Human beings are highly motivated when they are given a difficult task and they're given the opportunity to bring to bear what they consider to be their skills. They're very, very motivated. You know, and and things like, you know, Dan Pink used one of his examples was Wikipedia, right? Here's this thing, nobody gets paid, and yet there are thousands and thousands of experts going out of their way to create encyclopedic digests of very, very complicated topics for no other reason than to explain them to other people. And there was no personal reward there. You don't even get to put your name down on the bottom of it, right? It's it's about the opportunity to share knowledge. And that was just one example, you know, of demonstrated human motivation coming not from financial rewards. Anyway, so I used those two ideas, and I said, I went to my dean and I said, I want to create a course that's like nothing else. And I explained to the dean what I wanted to do, and the dean said, Well, I think you're kind of nuts. You're taking on an awful lot of work, and I'm not really sure how you're going to keep this thing under control, but go for it. So I felt really, you know, I felt like my own creativity had been supported in that moment. And so I needed to honor that. So I created a course where the students got to choose what they studied, they got to choose how they consumed the information, and they got to choose how they would report that information back. And 75% of their grade was going to be determined by them. And so what I said to them was look, we were studying at the time the concept of corporate social responsibility, the idea of doing good and doing business at the same time. And, you know, there were many, many corporate examples out there of companies that were very committed to these ideas. And the students got to see that this was a real thing. But so the first thing they got to do is say, well, what industry am I interested in? Or what field interests me the most? And where am I where am I most curious? And the the first thing I found was for more than half the students, this concept was paralyzing. They were scared, they didn't understand, they didn't know how to do this, they didn't think they cared about anything, they didn't think they had the ability to think about anything. And that was at that point when I saw that and I had to start having meetings with every student in a course with 500 kids in it. It was like, okay, this is what I signed up for, right? And this was this was going to be important. And so I I took my my dean's encouragement and I went for it. And I met with probably, I bet you I met typically when I taught this course, two-thirds of the students. I had to meet with them to help them move through that I don't know what to do part. Then they would find something that interested them. And then it was, well, it's you got to learn something. The purpose of this is learning. So learning how business in this world, in this area that interests you, how can it be done? And there were sort of three main ideas: sustainability, how do we do it without having a negative impact on the earth? Ethically and responsibly, how do we honor the people within it and honor the customers and honor right all the stakeholders? And the third was, you know, good old-fashioned business, you know, like how do we how do we honor really the people and how do we honor the idea of profit, right? How do we honor the idea of making enough money that this thing can continue into the future so it can feed itself, right? And so they were they were really compelled to go out of their way to think in these terms. So then it was, well, how do I learn? Well, you know, I I hate textbooks. I can't imagine anybody likes textbooks. There's lots of textbooks. The truth is, probably 10% of my students enjoyed reading. And so they would go out and find books, but the rest had to find ways. And they would go to conferences to learn, or they would uh watch video to learn, or they would arrange meetings with leaders in industry. This was amazing to watching them have the guts to pick up the phone and say, hi, I hear you run this company. I'd like to come and interview you, right? And and watching them get inspired to go out and learn whatever way suited them best. And then it was how do you how do you present this information? You're going out there, you're learning. My job as your professor was to assess this information, assess your learning, give you a stupid grade at the end of it, right? Because that's seems to be the currency of education is grades. And so they would do, I would give them permission, I would tell them, you know, anything you want, as long as I can observe it, right? As long as I can see a result in the end that I can put a number on to satisfy the powers that be. Well, we had students that would, I had a student who did a creative dance based on learning all about Martha Stewart's insider trading case. I had students that did paintings. I still have some of them out in my garage because they're just so inspired and so beautiful. I would get paintings, I would get stories, they would do podcasts, they would do videos, they would make games, right? I was going through boxes last week to get throw stuff away. And this kid had made a deck of cards that had questions about sustainability in it, and they had come up, created games with the deck of cards. The the breadth of expression was shocking, right? And when I would share with my colleagues what was coming in, and they would see it in my office. I had one student she took, she took her her she wanted to understand the problem of plastic in sustainability. And so she re she she recreated um a picture of a seal in one of these uh big clumps of garbage that sit out in the ocean. She created it all from unrecyclable plastics. Right? Like the effort these kids put in, the instant they were given the freedom to learn about what they wanted to learn about, that's their curiosity, to do it whatever way suited them, not in some methodology that they didn't fit in, and then express it in as creative a way as possible. And they had to present their final findings to the class. And it was just like I'm getting worked up here right now. It was like the most powerful presentations coming from their heart over and over and over. Like the kind of stuff you never see in a classroom. Anyway, that was how Ken Robinson inspired me. Wow, I'm getting really worked up about this. There lives inside everybody a curious little child that wants to know. You know, there's there's a stage every child goes through where they learn to talk and they go, What's that? What's that? What's that? Right? And we've all seen it in little children. What's that? And that's the thing to be cultivated, not suppressed, right? That's the kind of world we live in. It's it's it's it's just so full. There's so much and it's just sitting there waiting for it, right? And then what we do is we take little ones and we tell them, as Ken Robinson would say, there's one answer, it's the correct answer, and it's at the back of the book, and don't look. Yeah, and that's the way he would say it. And we train kids to be constantly trying to satisfy the back of the book, right? Get the right answer, and that doesn't advance the world, that doesn't take us further, that doesn't create new ideas, that doesn't uh create inspired people. I think that there's a natural inspiration that lies in all of us that our world tries to program out of us, and in many respects, one of the greatest things you can do with your life is to fight back on that, right? Fight back on the I'm supposed to fit in versus the I'm supposed to create. So I think that, you know, as we talked about this morning, you know, you're you're searching for inspiration and it's there waiting for you. You've just trained it out of yourself.

Breaking Student Paralysis

SPEAKER_02 15:51

Yeah, I can't even tell you how many people say, well, I'm not I'm not creative. I'm not creative, I'm not creative. It's I used to hold painting classes where it it's going to mimic what we're doing today in the creative uh writing class, but it's going to be writing instead of painting. And we we take time to release judgment, self-judgment, release uh fears about what we're about to embark on creative wise. And it's funny, most of the workshop is getting rid of that stuff, right? Those blocks. And then we take about 15 minutes and write and write and let let it flow, let your pen flow or your fingers flow on your keyboard and just connect. But you know, when I when I did those painting classes, it it took a little moment to have people really release that inner critic. Well, I can't paint, I can't paint, I'm not creative. They would get there, they would get there, but there was a little blip, of course, of oh, I can only paint, I can only like do stick stick people. That's okay. You know, it's about allowing the flow to happen, right? But I think to your point, when we're a little kid and we start learning, and you know, we're not in a room of toys along the walls any longer, and colors and shapes, and you know, we're we're put in a room with desks pointed in the same direction and don't move. It that creativity is beaten out of us, basically. And I think we're put in the box when it comes to learning. You have to learn this way, and this is the only way you can learn. You're either listening to me talk and take notes, or I'm writing on the chalkboard and you take the notes, or you read the book and you highlight everything. And and I think that's how people are supposed to learn. It's no wonder that myself included, many people struggled with that way of learning. I didn't, unfortunately, learn my own way of learning until my last year, basically my my second last year or my last year of of college university. I realized that I was instead of an information learner, like if I if I read what I have written on my paper, I can't remember it. But if I make little drawings, and I I did this for a qualitative statistics course, because I just thought, I don't know how in the world I'm going to do this to get through the exam. And some little thought came to me to make a big piece of paper, because I had big pieces of paper. I was in design school, and I for everything I was supposed to ri remember on the exam, I did like a little picture of its representation. Like a I don't know how to explain it exactly, but you know, I would do like a big word, and for every letter of the word, there was someone doing something, like a little stick figure doing something. And I can look at that giant piece of paper for 10 minutes and remember everything, and then go into the exam and it it float. So I think everyone learns differently, but we are, like Les said, like when we're little, it's just taken away from us. And and we're we're told that the only thing that matters is math and and language or science, and you know, you have to do it this way or or else. I think it's important to remember that we are creative beings, and really the world wouldn't be where it is today without creativity, but I think we just hand over our creativity, right? We will live in a world that is created by others and what they want for the world if we do not tap into our creativity. Any questions on that? Or just sitting here and in thought. Do you feel as if you guys are are do you feel like the creativity was sort of taken away from you or beaten out of you as you went through school? Yeah, it's really important to encourage that in a life. Yes. Yeah. So I I think, you know, where do we start?

Learning Your Own Way

Judgment: Creativity’s Biggest Enemy

SPEAKER_00 20:51

Well, you start with, in my opinion, you start with the idea of judgment, right? You understand what judgment is, you understand how judgment gets in the way, and you find ways within yourself to avoid judgment. You know, that's the enemy. You know, I as I've said before, you know, I took a whole program on creative problem solving and creativity, and I tried to incorporate this was all just what was inspired by my trying to be a better professor, my trying to educate in a more potent way. And as I learned about education, because I wasn't naturally, I was a lawyer. Uh so I wasn't naturally predisposed to, you know, I didn't have an education in education. So I had to learn about it. I had to learn how people learn. School was never a problem for me. I was the, I was the problem. I was the kid that spent most of his time in the hall because things seemed too simple and easy, and and I was always making trouble. So for me, learning about learning, learning about growth. Learning about education as growth was really, really inspiring for me, and probably some of the beginnings of really understanding the diversity of the human mind and at the same time the similarities of human beings. Yeah. The the number one enemy to creativity is judgment. And it's like that little voice. We've talked about this recently. We've talked about that little voice in your head that is critical, that gets in the way of you feeling free, being able to choose what you want to choose. And so what happens is we start in a world where our parents and our teachers think criticism is an important part of growing up. And then we take that on for ourselves. We become the voice that says, ah, I can't do that, or I'm not good enough, or who am I to do that? And what do I know? Yeah, and let me say this, because I've been in education, I've got a pretty expensive education. I've got to hang out with lots of really, really smart people. And one of the things that I learned was that most of these people in their pursuit of their education were just trying to satisfy a sad and reluctant ego. The pursuit of knowledge and degrees is not a bad thing, it's a beautiful thing. But unfortunately, it becomes creation of ego, a way that somebody feels better about themselves, a way that somebody feels good about themselves. Look at me, look what I've accomplished. And it is an accomplishment, and I'm not trying to belittle it. But what's important is to understand that those people with those educations, those people in those positions of power. I mean, I went to school with some of the, you know, most powerful politicians of my day. You know, they're just people. You know, I used to joke about a guy who had a really high position in government, really prominent guy. And I used to joke about how, you know, he used to get just drunk at the pops, like stupid drunk, and dance like a fiend. And in many ways, I liked that about him way more than I liked him being a politician. The point is that I'm trying to make is these are people. These are just people. And he everyone is just people. And when you get to be around these people that have power, when you get to be around these people who have, you know, reputations and some kind of status, and and you look at them and you realize they're just people. They're just people. They're struggling their way through, they're hiding from their own insecurities, they're working hard to try to prove to themselves and others that they're worthwhile. They're going through all the same struggles because they're just people. And we have this tendency to look at them and defer to them and say, oh, no, no, you're you're powerful or you're educated or you're in a position to know. And they're just people. And anybody can learn anything if it's taught to them the right way, if they're curious enough about it, if they want to find out, they will find out. Right? Like there's this natural tendency for us to really be self-critical. It's a voice we took on when we were very young, a voice of someone who loved us and wanted to see us succeed, a voice of someone who wanted to see us do better, do better, do better. Often when we were doing really well, they go out of their way to find criticism to get us to do better because they wanted to see us rise to excellence when really that was just causing us to question ourselves and be unaccepting of ourselves. And we took on that voice and we tell ourselves, I'm not creative, and I don't know how to do that, and I don't have anything that I want, and I don't have anything that I'm inspired by. I'm just trying to get through the day. And and this is where we end up from these external voices that become internal voices. But the facts are that every human being is very creative, and we go through the process of growing up that sort of beats that out of us, but it's still there. The facts are that those people that you defer to and think are smarter and better, they're not. They just tried something, had some success, and that fed them along the road. But your view, your thoughts, your creativity, your insights are valuable. And and to dismiss yours because you think somebody's are better is not really helpful. I don't think that any of us can look at where the world's going today and say, oh, geez, this is great. Most of us are looking at the world and saying, what the heck? It seems that our systems and our our powers that be are turning in on themselves. They're attacking themselves. They're attacking the world, they're attacking the people that they're supposed to serve. You know, these we it doesn't take a lot of insight to see how the world isn't working. And most of us wake up every day seeing how the world isn't working. And what's stopping it from working is the introduction of curiosity and creativity. What's stopping it from working is telling others that they can't know, they don't know, they don't know how to do that, they're no good at that, they're no good at this, and keep them from coming forward with their ideas. And I think that there needs more than anything else, a shift internally for all of us to say, I can learn anything. I can create whatever I want to create for me. It's not my job to fix everybody else's life. It is my job to make the most of mine. And I think that there's a huge opportunity there. So, what does that mean? As hypnotists, what we do is we help people try to unwind that. We help people to go back to those moments that cause them to think of themselves as inadequate and unworthy and not capable and not growable. Is that a word? Not enabled to become more than what they are right now. And that becoming more needs to be defined by them. It needs to be defined by their curiosity. And so, in my experience as a hypnotist, when you turn on somebody's curiosity and you empower them to think that they're just as good as anybody else, they're just as important as anybody else. And their life is an important part of the universe. When, you know, this reframe that I use all the time, you know, I am an essential part of the universe. The universe is incomplete without me. When people embrace that, they pursue their lives. And it doesn't matter. The the level and extent of impact is not what matters. The being true to yourself is what matters. It's not about am I going to become important or powerful or am I going to change the world? It's about, am I being who I was meant to be? Am I pursuing what naturally comes from me because of my curiosity? That's what you're here to do. You know, there's an old saying, old, old saying, I learned it when I was a teenager. I was taught it by a monk of all people. He said, Less, when you die, God's not going to say, Why weren't you Moses? He's going to say, Less, why weren't you less? You know, we're all going to be faced with that question. You know, did I, did I pursue who I am? Did I make the most of what I am, whatever that is? Did I honor what's inside me in terms of my curiosity and my creativity? And anything in the world that's getting in the way of that needs to be resisted, right? Instead of resisting your creativity and resisting your curiosity, which is what we're trained to do, instead of resisting that, resist those things that tell you that you can't or that you're not good enough or that you're not capable, resist those things. In the end, you really only answer to yourself. And that's the place where there might be, and you don't want to have regret. There you go. I just gave myself a pep talk.

SPEAKER_02 31:04

I know my mind, my mind dove right in right there, just thinking about how, yeah, in the end, you you really are going to be looking back and just hoping that you were yourself, you know? I think that's really important. And so I think the sooner you can start asking yourself, who am I? What do I want? What do I want? We always come back to that question now. Yeah.

Power, Ego, And Ordinary People

SPEAKER_00 31:32

It's time to rise to the challenge of being yourself and knowing that you're allowed to want whatever it is you want. You're allowed to seek whatever it is you want to seek. You're allowed to create whatever it is you want to create, and that there is inside you, as there was when you were three, and you were saying, What's that? What's that? What's that? There is a voice inside you that wants to guide you. And maybe that's what we'll talk about tomorrow is how to listen to the voice of inspiration.

SPEAKER_02 32:04

Yeah. So, everyone, thank you. Thank you for hanging out today. Thank you for inspiring us exactly. And I hope that helped. Anyway, have a good day, and we will see you later. You're welcome.