HOW TO BECOME CREATIVE AND GENIUS PERSON

Who is Genius?

There is no precise definition of "Genius" if we start to define, it will become a debatable topic, so in short we can say:

“Genius is the person who has an extraordinary creative and the intellectual abilities, having strong believe to the success and innovative thoughts  .”

 Socrates tells of Thales

“Talent hits a target no one else can hit; Genius hits a target no one else can see.”

 What is Creativity?

“Creativity is a talent of a person to think out of the box and with imaginations invent something new.”

                            “The best way to predict your future is to create it!”
                                                (Abraham Lincoln)

Creativity is not the ability to create out of nothing only GOD (ALLAH) can do that because it’s his characteristic. All the religions of the world have said: God is the Creator. Each person has significant creative abilities. Just look at how creative children are. In adults, creativity has too often been suppressed through education system, but it is still there and can be reawakened. Often all that's needed to be creative is to make a commitment to creativity and to take the time for it.

Creativity is also an attitude willingness to play with ideas and possibilities, a flexibility of outlook, the habit of enjoying the good, while looking for ways to improve it .The creative person realizes that there are other possibilities to come out of this situation.

Creative is also a process people work hard and constantly to improve ideas and solutions, by making steady alterations and refinements to their works. Contrary to the mythology surrounding creativity, very, very few works of creative excellence are produced with a single knock of brilliance or in a frenzy of rapid activity.

                                     “A man paints with his brains and not with his hand.”
                                               (Michelangelo Buonagroti 1475 - 1564)

What Is Creativity? From the pen clipping of OSHO:

I believed I was uncreative. What else can be creativity besides dancing and painting and how to find out what my creativity is?

"CREATIVITY has nothing to do with any activity in particular – with painting, poetry, dancing, and singing. It has nothing to do with anything in particular.
"Anything can be creative – you bring that quality to the activity. Activity itself is neither creative nor uncreative. You can paint in an uncreative way. You can sing in an uncreative way. You can clean the floor in a creative way. You can cook in a creative way.
"So the first thing to be remembered: don't confine creativity to anything in particular. A man is creative – and if he is creative, whatsoever he does, even if he walks, you can see in his walking there is creativity.

"Once you understand it – that it is you, the person, who is creative or uncreative – then this problem disappears.
"Not everybody can be a painter – and there is no need also. If everybody is a painter the world will be very ugly; it will be difficult to live. And not everybody can be a dancer, and there is no need. But everybody can be creative.
"Creativity means loving whatsoever you do – enjoying, celebrating it, as a gift of existence! Maybe nobody comes to know about it. Who is going to praise Paras for cleaning this floor? History will not take any account of it; newspapers will not publish her name and pictures – but that is irrelevant. She enjoyed it. The value is intrinsic.
"So if you are looking for fame and then you think you are creative – if you become famous like Picasso, then you are creative – then you will miss. Then you are, in fact, not creative at all: you are a politician, ambitious. If fame happens, well. If it doesn't happen, well. It should not be the consideration. The consideration should be that you are enjoying whatsoever you are doing. It is your love-affair.
"If your act is your love-affair, then it becomes creative. Small things become great by the touch of love and delight.
"We destroy creativity. Nobody is born uncreative, but we make ninety-nine percent of people uncreative.
"Our whole attitude about life is money-oriented. And money is one of the most uncreative things one can become interested in. Our whole approach is power-oriented and power is destructive, not creative. A man who is after money will become destructive, because money has to be robbed, exploited; it has to be taken away from many people, only then can you have it. Power simply means you have to make many people impotent, you have to destroy them – only then will you be powerful, can you be powerful. Remember: these are destructive acts.
"Be creative. Don't be worried about what you are doing. One has to do many things, but do everything creatively, with devotion. Then your work becomes worship. Then whatsoever you do is prayer fullness. And whatsoever you do is an offering at the altar.
"Drop this belief that you are uncreative. I know how this belief is created: you may not have been a gold medalist in the university; you may not have been top in your class; your painting may not have won appreciation; when you play on your flute, neighbors report to the police. Maybe – but just because of these things, don't get the wrong belief that you are uncreative. That may be because you are imitating others.
"People have a very limited idea of what being creative is – playing the guitar or the flute or writing poetry – so people go on writing rubbish in the name of poetry. You have to find out what you can do and what you cannot do. Everybody cannot do everything. You have to search and find your destiny. You have to grope in the dark, I know. It is not very clear-cut what your destiny is, but that's how life is. And it is good that one has to search for it – in the very search, something grows.
"If God were to give a chart of your life to you when you were entering into the world – this will be your life: you are going to become a guitarist – then your life would be mechanical. Only a machine can be predicted, not a man. Man is unpredictable.

"One great Zen master was a carpenter, and whenever he made tables, chairs, somehow they had some ineffable quality in them, a tremendous magnetism. He was asked, "How do you make them?"
"He said, "I don't make them. I simply go to the forest: the basic thing is to enquire of the forest, of trees, which tree is ready to become a chair."
"You can go and ask Asheesh – he has a feel for wood, and wood also has a feel for him.
"Even trees are creative, rocks are creative. You are man, the very culmination of this existence. You are at the top, you are conscious. Never think with wrong beliefs, and never be attached to wrong beliefs, that you are uncreative. Maybe your father said to you that you are uncreative, your colleagues said to you that you are uncreative. Maybe you were searching in wrong directions, in directions in which you are not creative, but there must be a direction in which you are creative. Seek and search and remain available, and go on groping – unless you find it.
"Each man comes into this world with a specific destiny: he has something to fulfill, some message has to be delivered, and some work has to be completed. You are not here accidentally, you are here meaningfully. There is a purpose behind you. The whole intends to do something through you."

Attitudes of a Creative Person:

 1. Curiosity

Curiosity is an important trait of a genius. I don’t think you can find an intellectual giant who is not a curious person. Thomas Edison, Leonardo da Vinci, Albert Einstein, Richard Feynman, they are all curious characters. Richard Feynman was especially known for his adventures which came from his curiosity.

The important thing is not to stop questioning… Never lose a holy curiosity.

Albert Einstein

• Keep an open mind
• Don’t take things as granted
• Ask questions relentlessly

A sure way to dig deeper beneath the surface is asking questions: What is that? Why is it made that way? When was it made? Who invented it? Where does it come from? How does it work? What, why, when, who, where, and how are the best friends of curious people.

• Don’t label something as boring
• See learning as something fun
• Read diverse kinds of reading

2. Seeing Problems as Interesting and Acceptable

 we often see problems or obstacles in life as unacceptable parts of life. We avoid pain or suppress it when it comes and in doing so don’t often see and feel symptoms that are there to tell us something important. Creative people see problems as a natural and normal part of life – in fact they often have a fascination with problems and are drawn to them.

 

 

3. Confronting Challenge

Many of the most creative ideas through out history have come from people facing a challenge or crisis and rather than running from it asking ‘how can I overcome this’?

4. Constructive Discontent

Creative people often have an acute awareness of what’s wrong with the world around them – however they are constructive about this awareness and won’t allow themselves to get bogged down in grumbling about it – they take their discontent and let it be a motivation to doing something constructive.

 

5. Optimism

Creative people generally have a deeply held belief that most (if not all) problems can be solved. No challenge is too big to be overcome and no problem cannot be solved (this doesn’t mean they’re always happy or never depressed – but they don’t generally get stumped by a challenge).

 

 6. Suspending Judgment

The ability to hold off on judging or critiquing an idea is important in the process of creativity. Often great ideas start as crazy ones – if critique is applied too early the idea will be killed and never developed into something useful and useable. (note – this doesn’t mean there is never a time for critique or judgment in the creative process – it’s actually key – but there is a time and place for it).

7. Seeing Hurdles as leading to improvements and solutions

This relates to some of the above – but by ‘hurdles’ I mean problems and mistakes in the creative process itself. Sometimes it’s on the journey of developing an idea that the real magic happens and it’s often out of the little problems or mistakes that the idea is actually improved.

8. Perseverance

Creative people who actually see their ideas come to fruition have the ability to stick with their ideas and see them through – even when the going gets tough. This is what sets apart the great from the good in this whole sphere. Stick-ability is key.

9. Flexible Imagination

I love watching a truly creative person at work when they’re ‘on fire’. They have this amazing ability to see a problem or challenge and it’s many potential solutions simultaneously and they have an intuitive knack at being able to bring previously disconnected ideas together in flashes of brilliance that seem so simple – yet which are so impossible to dream up for the average person.

How to become Creative?

Three well-known techniques for igniting creativity:

Brainstorming

A term invented by Alex Osborn, and first used in his book "Applied Imagination"–Brainstorming works best in small groups of people, but can also be done individually.

Lateral Thinking

Lateral Thinking is a creative technique that encourages reasoning that is not immediately obvious, and ideas that may not be obtainable by using only traditional step-by-step logic. It is about finding a solution to problems through an indirect approach.

Edward de Bono, who coined the term Lateral Thinking (acknowledged in the Oxford English Dictionary) is regarded by many as the leading authority in the field of creative thinking, innovation and the direct teaching of thinking as a skill. De Bono claims that it is important to disrupt the conventional patterns adopted by the brain. In notes from definition on Lateral Thinking, De Bono states: "Lateral Thinking is used for changing concepts and perceptions instead of trying harder with the same concepts and perceptions".

To demonstrate this form of thinking, take for example a simple problem like opening a door. Now think of some new solution except the doorknob. This forces you to think about creative solutions that are close to or the extreme opposite of a doorknob. It promotes thinking outside of the box.

Albert Einstein, whose name is a synonym for genius of originality and creativity, once said: "The problems of today will not be solved by the same thinking that produced the problems in the first place". It is obvious that Einstein had used lateral thinking to go around existing paradigms. He used Lateral Thinking in coming up with his theories to explain the physics world to us.

Problem Reversal

In his book "What a Great Idea", Charles Thompson suggested that the only way to truly understand this world is to learn from positives as well as from negatives. Ying-Yang, Summer-Winter, Day-Night are just some examples of that.

Problem reversal method is based on stating the problem in reverse. Change a positive statement into a negative one. Next, try to define what something is not, change the direction or location of your perspective. This will give you the opportunity to look at your problem from radically different point of view, which might lead to completely new and unexpected practical solutions.

Rene Magritte, a famous Belgian surrealist painted this picture that shows a smoking pipe.

Below it, Magritte wrote – "Ceci n’est pas une pipe" (This is not a pipe). By explicitly stating that this is not a pipe, Magritte tricks the observer into posing a question to themselves: if it’s not a pipe, what is it actually?

Naturally, the answer comes: it is a painting. Magritte used the problem reversal technique to emphasize the real subject of his work: a painting, rather than what that painting is supposed to represent.

How To have a Creative Mind

Despite seeming vague and mysterious, creativity can actually be very logical in many cases. Here are a few methods for being creative:

1 — Combination and Synthesis

Combination and synthesis is the method of being creative by examining ideas from several different existing works, and combining them into something new and different. Many people frown on looking to others for ideas, but in reality almost every creative work is influenced or even directly related to something already out there. This method, combination and synthesis, is probably the most frequently used form of creativity. Side note: you’ll have to do your research if using this method — isolating yourself won’t work :-)

2 — planned revolution

Planned revolution is a method often used by people who want to appear distinctly creative. It involves researching the existing market or design space, and then intentionally doing something completely different. This method can often produce greatly creative works, but be careful of ignoring very important paradigms simply in the name of creativity (aka, building a website that is creative but entirely unusable).

3 — Sequential Addition

Sequential addition is a creative game where you start from an idea, either one you’ve produced in isolation or one you’ve found by research, and then slowly build, add to, or change the idea in small steps until it no longer resembles the original starting point. This method is useful in trying to imagine the future of a certain type of work or design, and then from there create something that is ahead of the majority.

4 — Outside Influence

Outside influence is the idea of being creative by looking to radically different sources for inspiration sources that are completely unrelated to the work you are doing. For example, if you normally look to other websites for blog post formats or ideas, try looking to magazines instead. Or, even more radically, try adapting a television formula into a blog post. Such outside influences can often provide a very new and interesting jolt to your creativity.

5 — Selective Perspective

Often times when your creativity seems to stop flowing, the idea of selective perspective can help get you started again. Using this creative method, you want to look at your design or project from a very narrow point of view, and imagine how you would finish the project based on just that perspective. Then, you simply repeat this from a different perspective, and try to come up with a new idea yet again. Finally, you can compile and integrate your various points of views into a single, optimum result.

6 — Create and Compare

Create and compare is a strategy based around the idea of isolating yourself and creating something from scratch. Often, when you create something without even looking at the competition you’ll come up with very good ideas — the problem is that it’s easy to overlook other very good ideas that are already in use. With this method you begin entirely in isolation and then compare your ideas to the existing space afterward, when you can make subtle additions and changes without worrying about contaminating your own ideas.

Tools to Amplify Your Creativity Skills :

Defining and deciding upon your favorite creative methods is one step towards becoming more creative. Another big gain can be made by integrating the right tools into your creative process. Here are a few that you might take a look at:

1 — Visual Thesaurus

This is a very good twist on the idea of a thesaurus. This tool can be incredibly valuable to writers and even designers in creating new ideas.

2 — Mind Mapping

Mind mapping is a great way to logically create new ideas, and it’s also invaluable for recording and defining new ideas you’ve already had. There are a number of great programs out there.

3 — Prototyping/Sketching

Sketching and prototyping are a designer’s two best friends. If you don’t already have one, get yourself a good notebook that you can easily write and draw in. As for prototyping, I recommend using whatever medium or application you are familiar with that you can work in very quickly (frequently Adobe Illustrator, for designers).

4 — Inspiration Galleries

Sometimes all it takes is a good creative jolt to get you started, and galleries of other people’s work can often provide just that.

Conclusions:

GOD is real creator and creativity is his characteristic, we naturally born creative, we destroy creativity. Nobody is born uncreative, but we make ninety-nine percent of people uncreative.
Creativity has too often been suppressed through our education system. We are always in a hurry and materialistic in nature love fame and money, so how can be creative. People have a very limited idea of what being creative is – playing the guitar or the flute or writing poetry – so people go on writing rubbish in the name of poetry. You have to find out what you can do and what you cannot do. Everybody cannot do everything. You have to search and find your destiny. You have to grope in the dark, I know. It is not very clear-cut what your destiny is, but that's how life is. And it is good that one has to search for it – in the very search, something grows.

“The best way to predict your future is to create it!”                          

(Abraham Lincoln)