Flash Upon That Inward Eye

Yesterday I attended a breakfast meeting at Glyndwr University as part of Wrexham Business Week. It was called "Flash Upon That Inward Eye" and was facilitated by Jan Green of Wrexham Business School.

My knowledge of English poetry is sadly lacking and so I hadn't recognised the title of the session as coming from Wordsworth's "I Wandered Lonely As A Cloud/The Daffodils". So I learned something there for starters - and it caused me to go home and read the poem. I also had a nice hearty breakfast and met some interesting people.

The purpose of the session was to talk about creativity and to generate our own personal creativity profile. Jan brought a lot more out of the session that I had expected and I came away with several useful insights into myself (always useful!) and creativity in general.

I wanted to share with you a couple of those general points which I thought were interesting.

Myths about creativity

• The smarter you are the more creative you are - FALSE. Above a threshold of around an IQ of 120 there is no correlation between intelligence and creativity.
• The young are more creative than the old - FALSE. Research shows that it takes seven to ten years to build up a deep expertise in a given field - the kind of experience that enables you to perceive patterns or meaning that might not be visible to a novice. HOWEVER, some experts find it difficult to see or think outside established patterns and minds of newcomers are not contaminated by conventional thinking.
• Creativity is reserved for the few flamboyant risk takers - FALSE. A willingness to take calculated risks and the ability to think in untraditional ways do play a role in creativity but it doesn't mean you have to be markedly different to everyone else.
• Creativity is a solitary act - FALSE. A high percentage of the world's most important innovations are products of collaboration among groups of people with complementary skills.
• You can't manage creativity - TRUE & FALSE. A manager can create the conditions that make creativity more likely to occur.

Some useful tips for engaging your own personal creativity include:

• Look after yourself physically and mentally (meditate, relax, eat and drink healthily, take exercise).
• Persue the passion (whether it's work or a hobby).
• Go with your natural rhythms (fighting them will only staunch the flow of creativity).
• Create some space for yourself.
• Do something different for a change!

Thanks Jan for a thought provoking session and thanks also to the organisers and sponsors of Wrexham Business Week for making these events possible (and free!).

Namaste,
Tracy x