Creativity

Creativity can consider as a mental and social process involving the generation of new ideas or concepts, or new associations of the creative mind between existing ideas or concepts, creativity is fueled by the process of either conscious or unconscious insight. An alternative conception of creativeness is that it is simply the act of making something new.
Creativity is always said to associated with our right brain activity or even specfically with lateral thinking.

Creative is too have as many idea as you can, think out of the box. Try to be different with others. When we have many ideas, we can then discard the useless ones and trying to improve more on the good ones. This is where creativity comes from. For an example , Linus Pauling, an American Scientist who asked at a public lecture on how one creates scientific theories. It was replied that we must endeavor to come up with many ideas and then discard the useless ones.
There are another adequate definition of creativity is that it is an "assumptions-breaking process." Creative ideas are often generated when one discards preconceived assumptions and attempts a new approach or method that might seem to others unthinkable.

Base on this website:
http://www.virtualsalt.com/crebook1.htm
It's all about creative thinking by Robert Harris

He commented that besides our old way of thinking that our former education had teaches us, there is another kind of thinking that focuses on encourage our new generation to exploring ideas, generating possibilities, looking for many right answers rather than just one.
According to him, we can differetiate critical thinking and creative thinking by this :

Critical Thinking / Creative Thinking

analytic / generative
convergent / divergent
vertical / lateral
probability / possibility
judgment /suspended judgment
focused /diffuse
objective /subjective
answer /an answer
left brain /right brain
verbal /visual
linear /associative
reasoning /richness, novelty
yes but /yes and

Creativity is a process :
Creative people work hard and continually to improve ideas and solutions, by making gradual alterations and refinements to their works. Contrary to the mythology surrounding creativity, very, very few works of creative excellence are produced with a single stroke of brilliance or in a frenzy of rapid activity. Much closer to the real truth are the stories of companies who had to take the invention away from the inventor in order to market it because the inventor would have kept on tweaking it and fiddling with it, always trying to make it a little better.
The creative person knows that there is always room for improvement.

For an example : When we produce an artwork/ project, we will have to do background research on our object..draw sketches as many as we can...Simplifly the object and then stylize it until it comes to a satisfaction to be present.

Creativity is An Ability:
A simple definition is that creativity is the ability to imagine or invent something new. As we will see below, creativity is not the ability to create out of nothing (only God can do that), but the ability to generate new ideas by combining, changing, or reapplying existing ideas. Some creative ideas are astonishing and brilliant, while others are just simple, good, practical ideas that no one seems to have thought of yet.
Believe it or not, everyone has substantial creative ability. Just look at how creative children are. In adults, creativity has too often been suppressed through education, 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 An Attitude :
The ability to accept change and newness, a willingness to play with ideas and possibilities, a flexibility of outlook, the habit of enjoying the good, while looking for ways to improve it. We are socialized into accepting only a small number of permitted or normal things, like chocolate-covered strawberries, for example. The creative person realizes that there are other possibilities, like peanut butter and banana sandwiches, or chocolate-covered prunes.

Wel,l in order to make creativity a possibility we must not have these qualities..
1. Oh no, a problem!
2. It can't be done.
3. I can't do it. Or There's nothing I can do.
4. But I'm not creative.
5. That's childish.
6. What will people think?
7. I might fail.

Sounds familiar?? Yes..this is what we've always think and have in mind.
So why don't we try something new staring from today? Have some of these :
1. Curiosity.
2. Challenge.
3. Constructive discontent.
4. A belief that most problems can be solved.
5. The ability to suspend judgment and criticism.
6. Seeing the good in the bad.
7. Problems lead to improvements.
8. A problem can also be a solution.
9. Problems are interesting and emotionally acceptable.


Characteristics of the Creative Person
curious
seeks problems
enjoys challenge
optimistic
able to suspend judgment
comfortable with imagination
sees problems as opportunities
sees problems as interesting
problems are emotionally acceptable
challenges assumptions
doesn't give up easily: perseveres, works hard

p/s : Do you have such qualities? If you have means..you deserve to be a FCMERs..but if you don't...why not try ? It will be fun!!