32 Traits of Creative People
Number 2
BROKEN CRAYONS and the act of BREAKING CRAYONS represent
creativeness, creative thinking and the efforts of creative people to me.
How often do you BREAK CRAYONS? Lets take a look. The following is a
short exercise that will help you discover how easily you BREAK CRAYONS.
Are You a Crayon BREAKER?
Read over the following 32 human traits and check or mark the ones you
believe are you at work or school, if you are not working full-time. You
may choose as many or as few as you want. Some definitions are provided
for words that are often mis-understood or may be unfamiliar to you.
Once you have completed reading and marking your choices total up how
many you chose and write that number down. Then continue reading.
Some Definitions
can synthesize
you see patterns or the big picture quickly
divergent thinker
look at things in many different ways at the same time
flexible
willing to try things in many different ways
fluent
produce lots of ideas or possibilities when working on a challenge or
simply choosing a restaurant to go to.
open-ended
don't fix on a single idea, keep looking for many different ideas or ways to
do things.
self-actualizing
focus on developing yourself to the best you can be and to discover your
specific unique talents.
sense of destiny
believe that you have a special mission or purpose in life you plan or hope
to fulfill.
tolerant of ambiguity
accept multiple answers or causes to a single problem or challenge.
How many did you mark? 5, 10, 15, 20, all of them? Occasionally people
will mark all of them if they dont feel intimated by others in the group or
by me.
Each of these traits, if emphasized mildly to strongly, will help you be
more creative. Any of these, if emphasized extremely, could yield
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disastrous results. Number 28 is often one that people do not mark
because of the feeling of the word severely. But think about it. Arent
highly creative people extremely critical? When they are, what are they
most critical of?
Themselves or their work. Often they are their own worst critics (or
enemies).
Now lets look at how each of the traits can help you be more creative and
become a true and effective CRAYON BREAKER. Look specifically at which
ones you marked and then at the ones you didnt mark? Often we dont
mark certain ones or choose to exercise certain ones because of the
potential negative results the can produce for us with other people.
1. sensitive
Being sensitive helps creativeness in many ways:
a. it helps with awareness of problems, known & unknown
b. it helps people sense things easier
c. it helps to cause people to care and commit themselves to challenges or
causes.
2. not motivated by money
As important as money is in most societies or economies it is not a driving
force for a creative person. Generally they have an intuitive sense of the
amount of money they basically need and once that need is fulfilled then
money stops affecting or driving them.
3. sense of destiny
Intuitively creative people know that they have a purpose, a destiny or
they realize that they can choose or create one to drive them to reach
greater heights of skill, ability, or talent.
4. adaptable
Without the ability to adapt people could not become creative. But rather
than adapt to something they choose to adapt things to suit them, their
needs or the goals they are striving towards.
5. tolerant of ambiguity
Two or more things or ideas being right at the same time challenges the
thinking of a creative person. They love to be ambiguous to challenge
other people and ideas. Ambiguity helps them see things from many
different perspectives all at the same time.
6. observant
Creative people constantly are using their senses: consciously, sub-
consciously and unconsciously, even non-consciously.
7. perceive world differently
Thoreau talked about people drumming to a different drum beat. Creative
people thrive on multiple ways of perceiving: seeing, hearing, touching,
smelling, tasting, sensing things. These different perspectives open up
their minds to unlimited possibilities.
8. see possibilities
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Average people, people who dont believe they are creative, people who
are fearful or resistant to creativeness or creative thinking prefer to work
within limits with limited possibilities. Creative people love to see many,
even infinite possibilities in most situations or challenges.
9. question asker
Creative people, especially highly creatives, probably came out of their
mothers wombs asking questions. Its in their nature to question. Question
yes, not actually criticize. Their questioning nature often mistakenly
appears as criticism when it is simply questioning, exploring, examining,
playing with things as they are or might be.
10. can synthesize correctly often intuitively
This is the ability to see the whole picture, see patterns, grasp solutions
with only a few pieces, even with major pieces missing. Creative people
trust their intuition, even if it isnt right 100% of the time.
11. able to fantasize
Stop looking out the window Billy. Susie pay attention. Teachers, parents,
and even friends often tell creative people this. Highly creative people
love to wander through their own imaginary worlds. This is one of the
major themes of the very popular cartoon strip Calvin and Hobbes. Both
Calvin and Hobbes (Calvin's alter ego?) are perpetual CRAYON BREAKERS.
12. flexible
Creative People are very flexible when they are playing with ideas. They
love to look at things from multiple points of view and to produce piles of
answers, maybes, almosts, when other people are content with the or an
answer or solution.
13. fluent
It could be a door stop, a boat anchor, a weapon, a prop, a weight for
holding down papers, etc., etc., etc. This is what a creative person would
say about the possible uses of a brick.
14. imaginative
Creative people love to use their imagination to play to make seem real to
experiment.
15. intuitive
The more creative a person is the more they tap their intuition skills; the
abilities to see answers with minimum facts, to sense problems even when
they arent happening.
16. original
Being original is a driving force for creative people. They thrive on it.
17. ingenious
Doing the unusual. Solving unsolvable problems. Thinking what has never
been thought of before. These are all traits of a creative person that make
them be ingenious at times.
18. energetic
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Challenges, problems, new ideas once committed to by a creative person
truly excite them and provide them with seeming unlimited amounts of
energy; such as Sherlock Holmes once he grasps a sense of the mystery.
19. sense of humor
Laughter and creativity truly go together. Many experts believe that
creativity cant occur without a touch of humor believing that seriousness
tends to squelch creativeness or creative thinking.
20. self-actualizing
The psychologist Abraham Maslow created this term in the 1960s
representing the ultimate motivator of people the need or desire to be all
you can be, to be what you were meant to be.
21. self-disciplined
This is one trait that appears to be ambiguous in highly creative people.
They can appear disorganized, chaotic at times while at the same time
they are highly self-disciplined. At the same time the greatly resist the
discipline of other people who are not of like creative mind.
22. self-knowledgeable
During my life I have read biographies and biographic sketches or over
4,000 people, mostly considered to be the highest of the highly creatives
in their respective fields. One of the few things they had in common is that
they all kept some form of journal and were constantly striving to better
understand themselves.
23. specific interests
This is still another ambiguous trait of creative people. They appear on the
surface to be interested in everything, while at the same time they have
very specific interests that they commit their true energies and efforts to.
By being willing to be exposed to seemingly unlimited interests they
discover more about their particular specific interests.
24. divergent thinker
Creative people love to diverge from the norm, to look at things from
multiple positions, to challenge anything that exists. Because of this they
are seen at times to be off-key, deviant, atypical, irregular, or
uncharacteristic.
25. curious
Like the Cheshire Cat of Alice in Wonderland, creative people are
continuously curious, often child-like.
26. open-ended
In order to explore many possibilities creative people tend to stay open-
ended about answers or solutions until many have been produced.
27. independent
Creative people crave and require a high degree of independence, resist
dependence but often can thrive on beneficial inter-dependence.
28. severely critical
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Yes creative people challenge most everything, every idea, every rule.
They challenge, challenge, and challenge some more to the point that
most other people see their challenging as severe criticism
29. non-conforming
Conforming is the antithesis, the opposite of creativeness and in order to
be creative, creative people must be non-conforming and go against the
norm, swim up stream.
30. confident
This is another ambiguous trait in creative people. When they are at their
most creative they are extremely confident. When they are in a stage of
frustration when nothing seems to be working they often lack confidence.
After much positive experience they begin to trust themselves and know
that they will become depressed, frustrated nearly devastated but their
internal sub-conscious confidence keeps them moving or at least floating
until they experience or discover an aha! (a breakthrough idea or piece of
information)
31. risk taker
This trait is a general mis-understanding of many non-creative people or
people who fear the creativeness of creative people. Highly creative
people are not really risktakers because they do not see what they are
doing as a risk. They simply see it as a possible solution or path towards a
solution. They have other possible solutions, often many others in their
head or their notes to use if a particular idea or solution does work. As
Thomas Edison once said when asked how it felt to have failed nearly
7,000 times trying to discover the best filament for an incandescent light
bulb, those are not failures, they are solutions to problems I havent
started working on yet.
32. persistent
Charles Goodyear (discover & inventor of vulcanized rubber) and Chester
Carlson (inventor of electrostatic copying, the Xerox process: xerography)
are two of the best examples of this trait in creative people. Both of them
worked over 30 years trying to make a solution they discovered work.
Creative people do not give up on things that mean a lot to them.
The more of the 32 traits you choose the more creative you are or you
have the potential to be or become. And the more potentially you are a
CRAYON BREAKER.
How many of the traits did you first mark as fitting you? The more you
mark or use the greater you will be able to capitalize on your natural
creativeness. Some of them you may use at work, some at home, some at
school. Ask yourself why? Are there some barriers that prevent you from
using some of the traits anywhere you choose?
I have found that some times it is helpful to deliberately practice particular
traits to release my creativeness when I am feeling stale, dull, or blocked.
We all experience creative block at times. The causes may be situational,
physical, emotional, mental, relational or even undefinable.
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Recognize which of the 32 are natural to you. Accept the ones that may be
causing you difficulty at work. Then focus on strengthening the ones you
enjoy the most and especially the ones supported in your workplace.
Best wishes in the continual growth and use of your natural creative
potential.
©1990 ©2008 Robert Alan Black, Ph.D.
RAB, Inc. - Cre8ng People, Places & Possibilities
P. O. Box 5805 Athens, Georgia 30604-5805
[email protected] -- www.cre8ng.com
1-706-353-3387
