9 Keys to Creativity
— excerpted from 9 Keys to Creativity: Positive Psychology (©2023), by Anne Hilty
We could all use more creativity. Doctors tell us, our art teachers tell us, our bosses tell us, happiness experts tell us: Be more creative. Engage in creative acts. Use your imagination. Practice your problem-solving. Come up with innovative ideas. Think. Feel. Create.
But I’m not creative, you may be thinking just now. I’m no artist! I have trouble coming up with new ideas. My cultural background is very analytical. That’s not me.
First: creativity and talent are two different things. Second: all humans are creative, in a myriad of ways. Third: creativity, while affected by one’s culture, is not culture specific.
But before we go on with this concept of creativity, and how to get more of it, we must take a look at positive psychology.
The positive psychology field was established in 1998, the concept co-created (see what we did there?) by Martin Seligman, then president of the American Psychological Association, and Mihaly Csíkszentmihályi. (Don’t worry. No one has ever been able to pronounce or spell it.) These two brilliant scholars were already doing research and deep thinking in areas related to this emerging field, Seligman in the area of happiness and Csíkszentmihályi on this very topic of creativity. Other scholars were doing similar research, and thus the field of positive psychology was born.
In short, this school of psychology looks at all that’s right with the brain, and mental health and wellbeing — and how to enhance that. It emerged in response to psychology’s increasing focus on mental illness and disability, while much of the time, our brains are simply astonishing organs capable of an array of functions, many of which we still don’t fully understand: the final frontier of science. It doesn’t in any way deny that things can go very wrong with our brains, from mood disorder to psychosis to profound developmental disability and more, but seeks to enhance our knowledge about those areas of healthy functioning.
One of the key frameworks in this field is known as PERMA: positive emotions, engagement, relationships, meaning, and accomplishment. This structure provides a way of looking at 5 primary areas of human existence related to the brain and its function, in which we’re getting things right.
We’ll circle back to that. All of these areas bear some relationship to creativity — notably, that of engagement, to which Csíkszentmihályi’s lifetime of scholarly work was dedicated, and which he termed, ‘flow’ or the flow state.
Another significant concept of positive psychology, for understanding ourselves and how we function in the mental-emotional realm, is that of virtues and character strengths. As this school of thought focuses on healthy psychological functioning, it presumes that we all have numerous strengths to varying degrees and which we can strive to enhance, alongside virtues that relate to our sense of self as a ‘decent’ person and provide us with a sense of meaning. This approach will also be critical to our understanding of creativity, and how we can enhance it, from the positive psychology perspective.
In this model, there are 6 virtues which serve as categories, and 24 character strengths which fall within them. The first, most relevant to our topic of creativity, is the virtue of Wisdom; the strengths associated with this include creativity itself, along with curiosity, judgment, a love of learning, and perspective, each of which we’ll look at more deeply as we go along. For now, we note: creativity is a type or aspect of wisdom and knowledge, a way of understanding the world and ourselves.
Other virtues include Courage, with strengths of bravery, persistence, integrity, and vitality; Humanity, which encompasses love, kindness, and social intelligence; Justice, in which we find collaboration, fairness, and leadership; Temperance, which gives us forgiveness, humility, prudence, and self-regulation; and, Transcendence, within which we see appreciation of beauty and excellence, gratitude, hope, humor, and spirituality or life meaning.
Positive psychology, then, focuses on a strengths-based approach in which assumption is made that we all possess these character strengths to one degree or another, that they can be assessed, and that we can enhance them — or re-balance those we may be overusing. The key is balance, of each strength and of the relationships among them (Niemiec, 2019).
Of note is that virtues aren’t values; to clarify, they’ve been termed “values in action” or how one’s ethical code is lived (Stichter and Saunders, 2019). They’re universally accepted and cross-cultural, though how they’re weighted from one culture to the next may vary. In a study including 75 nations with a minimum of 150 respondents in each, the most supported strengths were honesty, fairness, kindness, judgment, and curiosity, the latter two of which we’ll see in relation to creativity (McGrath, 2015).
It’s the premise of this book that, as creativity in this model falls within the virtue of wisdom, the other elements of that same virtue are its ‘cousins’; the relationship between creativity and curiosity is obvious, while connections will be made between creativity and each of the others as we explore our 9 keys. Diez et al. (2022), in an analysis of big data of more than 1.2 million survey respondents, obtained from the VIA Institute, demonstrated that there are strong relationships among these specific character strengths within the wisdom virtue.
But perhaps we should ask the question, what is creativity?
Naturally, the term has many — perhaps a creative number of — definitions. We tend first to think of art, yet creativity is perhaps more accurately defined as originality and ingenuity — thinking about, seeing, and approaching the world in new ways. Psychological flexibility is also an element of creativity, as we must encourage our brains to be highly flexible — a quality we can learn and enhance — in order to ‘think outside of the box’ or in ways that differ from, or expand beyond, accepted norms. In this way, deep thinking is also related to creativity. Adaptability, too; in the pursuit of creativity, some attempts will fail, or won’t result as we’d imagined, and we make adaptations, and try again.
But I don’t see myself as an intellectual! You may protest. The kind of deep thinking necessary for creativity, however, doesn’t have to be Mensa-quality or ground-breaking; rather, in order to engage in creativity, we must simply be willing to think. That is, we must consider ways to do things differently than that first standard or norm that automatically pops into our heads precisely because it’s the way the thing has always been done.
But isn’t thinking the opposite of creativity? You may well ask. Doesn’t too much thinking, or analyzing, get in creativity’s way? Yes. And, no. The brain is a highly complex structure. And while some areas light up on a PET scan when certain activities or thoughts are engaged, and like a computer motherboard we can see that certain areas of the brain are related to mathematics or languages while others focus on emotions, for example, in the end, there is a good deal of crossover in the brain’s function. So much so, that is, that when there’s damage in one part of the brain, we can often see that other areas will begin to take over those tasks. And the best news of all: contrary to decades of belief about the aging brain and a lack of new neural pathways accompanied by cell death, we now know that this isn’t the whole truth; our brain continues to lay down new neural pathways, albeit at perhaps a slower processing speed in some instances, throughout the course of our lives. We may someday be too old to jump — but we are never too old to think, and to learn new things.
And — yes. We’ve all had the experience of overthinking a problem when its solution was simple and right in front of us. We can surely go into analytical overdrive at the expense of our creativity. But when in balance, the processes of thinking, feeling, and creating are highly complementary to one another.
Is creativity a form of wisdom? Really? You may find yourself wondering, about now.
Seeing the world in new and creative ways has always been the core of wisdom. What separates us from being creative and living as an automaton is precisely this ability to imagine, to see possibility and solution and innovation and, yes: art.
Are we humans the only species to engage in creativity? Surely not. We now know that other species, and not only those within the order of primates to which homo sapiens belong, are capable of innovation, creativity, and surely problem-solving. Other species use tools to get their food, such as certain birds; species often get very creative and adaptable when food is the motivator. Creativity can come in many forms; the male bower bird, for example, creates the most beautiful ‘honeymoon suite’ that he can, in order to attract a mate. And perhaps all species are continually engaged in problem-solving as a matter of their survival.
There are myths about creativity, too — the madness myth, for one. That oft-quoted “thin line between genius and insanity,” as famously described by Oscar Levant, was in fact postulated by Aristotle in ancient times. We can equate ‘genius’ to creativity, in that both expand the brain’s capacity, and both invite one to think and experience life differently than others. We have the archetype of the ‘mad scientist’, and any number of conflicted creatives such as Virginia Woolf, Vincent van Gogh, Frida Kahlo, Ernest Hemingway, or Sylvia Plath. Positive mood is also closely linked to creativity, as we’ll soon see, along with the healthy and well-functioning brain, with an uncountable number of creatives who don’t fall into that darker, troubled category.
Other myths commonly associated with the quality and act of creativity include mystery, magic, and frivolity. Creativity may be associated with fun, and hobby, or entertainment; talent also often seems mysterious to its observers, a giftedness without explanation. This lends itself to the myth that being creative is somehow magical, or supernatural, when in reality: we are all creative.
Finally, why should we care? Beyond pure enjoyment, which we can obtain in any number of ways, why strive to be more creative, to enhance the creativity that we know we possess, as we would improve a skill? Why bother?
In a word: happiness. Also: wellbeing. Even as we consider those creatives with depression or other mental concerns, the science lines up otherwise, and there’s an incredible amount of research, much of the most recent to be found in this book, that indicates being creative is good for us. Simply put, it makes our lives better, and ourselves more highly functioning and capable individuals, with the science to back that up.
We know this. Whether we create art, or cook creatively (one of my great pleasures), or write (ditto), or develop new and game-changing theories, or for that matter, develop games, not to mention that everyday creative act of problem-solving, we know that (a) we are in fact creative, and (b) it’s good for us.
What’s more: flow. Engagement. The first key of this book, soon to commence. When we’re creative, we’re ‘in the zone’, singularly focused and losing all track of time or other distractions; we’re in a zen state, as Japanese Buddhists have shared with the world. Our endorphins flow, we do indeed have a tiny sense of magic, we feel alive, and our experience of the world is all the better for it.
That final category in the PERMA framework, accomplishment, is also a reason to engage in creativity, and to enhance it in ourselves. Daring to be creative also means a willingness to fail, for when we try new things, failure may well be the outcome. But when we’re able to create something new, or beautiful, or meaningful — if only to ourselves — the sense of accomplishment is sufficient reward.
Circling back to whether you, dear reader, are or are not creative, we must touch upon the concept of creative self-efficacy.
Self-efficacy can be simply termed, one’s belief in one’s own ability. It isn’t specific, but a view of general capability. And while that’s another book in itself, it relates directly to the ‘accomplishment’ category mentioned above. As we accomplish tasks and gain ability — even small abilities — our self-efficacy grows. This is the developmental work of early childhood, as we must learn so many things in our first bout with independence, and a process which continues throughout our lives. Naturally, we aren’t skilled at or naturally capable of all things equally; however, we can develop and encourage our overarching belief in ourselves as generally capable.
This too applies to creativity. We must use creativity every day in order to accomplish tasks in an alternate way when the standard isn’t possible, in solving problems, in our choice of clothing, in making a meal for ourselves, and in many other ways. It’s not all about art. And so, we must develop our creative self-efficacy alongside our generalized belief in our own capability. I’m not only a capable person; I’m capable of creativity, by virtue of being human.
Our 9 keys to creativity, then, are these: curiosity, flow, judgment, open-mindedness, love of learning, perspective, mindfulness, appreciation of beauty and excellence, and imagination. (We’ll have a few bonuses at the end, too.)
“Creativity is a central source of meaning in our lives,” according to Csíkszentmihályi.
And so: let’s get creative!
References:
Diez G, Roca P, Nieto I, McGrath RE and Vázquez C (2022). The network structure of the VIA-120 inventory of strengths: an analysis of 1,255,248 respondents. Journal of Positive Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1080/17439760.2022.2109205
McGrath RE (2015). Character strengths in 75 nations: An update. The Journal of Positive Psychology 10:1, 41–52. https://doi.org/10.1080/17439760.2014.888580
Niemiec RM (2019). Finding the golden mean: the overuse, underuse, and optimal use of character strengths. Counselling Psychology Quarterly 32:3–4, 453–471. https://doi.org/10.1080/09515070.2019.1617674
Stichter M and Saunders L (2019). Positive psychology and virtue: Values in action. Journal of Positive Psychology 14:1, 1–5. https://doi.org/10.1080/17439760.2018.1528381
