Enhancing Personal Creativity

I enjoyed reading Enhancing Personal Creativity by Mihaly Csikszentimihalya. I found it both interesting and informative. In the reading, the author talks about creativity and interest. She states that if you want to be creative you have to let your mind wander; ask more surprising questions and find your interests. I think this is a probable method to generate creativity. Although, I think today in this day and age it is also nearly impossible to go a day doing this. Today, people are too closed minded and too focused on what they need to do in their daily lives. I don’t think it is possible for one to just let their minds wander while there are other tasks on their minds, we as people were not trained that way. Humans, and especially Americans, have way too much on their plate to be creative. Take the average college student as an example. I’ve only been taking classes for about four weeks. Between attending the class and doing the hours of homework required night after night to study and do well, there is no time or room for creativity. Creativity flows within children because they have the ability to be curious and wonder about the unknown. Schools nowadays shape one’s mind to be one sided, they fill up our mind and our plate leaving us no time to be creative.

I once thought of myself to be a creative person. I loved art class and anything that had to do with making up things with my creativity and imagination. I did not realize until my senior year that my creativity and freedom had been slowly taken away. Each art class I had taken didn’t allow the student to be creative. A task was put in front of you and yes, you got to choose between a picture or two that you wanted to recreate with paint or clay or whatever was assigned but you never truly got the choice to do what you wanted. I remember in eleventh grade art class I had to paint a still life. The picture was printed out for me and I was told what medium to do it in. The following year (my senior year) I had loved art so much I decided to take AP studio art and boy was it a rough ride. It exhausted my brain and my physical capacity to create artwork. Right from the start we were told we had to pick our own concentration and go with it and my teacher was always less than amused with my pieces. I always had trouble departing from my references, creating a piece that was truly my own. I remember her sitting me down for a talk. She tried to illustrate to me that she understood what was happening. I had a different mindset than all the other art students and I just wanted the right answer, I didn’t want to explore and I needed too. She was right and she told me different ways to allow myself to be creative which included meditating and yoga. I ran into two problems, taking 4 AP courses I had no time to experiment with my brain to see what would happen  due to the fact I had loads and loads of work to do on top of cheerleading practices, games and competitions. My second problem was my creativity was taken from me. All my years of schooling led me to only work for the right answer, achieve what was expected of me. Now that the time came to be able to make my own artistic decisions, I didn’t have any. I just wanted the right answer.

Lets pretend we did have time to be creative and nothing blocked or influenced the amount of creativity one had. The chapter is saying that you need to have an open mind, surprise yourself every day and then find what the central theme of those surprises were. Once you find that central theme you’re supposed to just focus on that and build up walls around you that may lead to distraction. I think it would be great for one to do this. Although, I think that by only focusing on one point of interest after you find it and building up walls around you, you’re not allowing to be influenced by any factors around you. You in fact may be blocking creativity by trying to build it.

I think that this passage was very interesting to read. I very much think that this method could work if one had the time or the mindset. People are always born with creativity but something builds their brain to change and not be creative. I know I was shaped by school and education. I went from having a creative mind to just focusing on getting the right answer because that’s what was needed to succeed in school. My mind slowly transformed. I’m not saying by any means I won’t go back to the creative individual I once was but I do believe that while I am consumed with school and other factors around me, it would be very hard to be creative once again. 

The video I pasted below really influenced me. It talks about creativity and trying, if you never try you never know and you can never really explore your interests. If I had tried to think differently and try new things in my art class maybe I would have succeeded greatly instead of just passing by. "The more we think we are limited, the more limited we become". I think I am limited but if I just try to expand my horizons and try new things, a new realm of possibilities are likely to come.Creativity isn't about succeeding at what you are talented at, its about finding what you enjoy and discovering new opportunities and experiences to be influenced by.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=801YMsC_Cj8