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3 Lessons From History’s Greatest Geniuses That Will Make You More Creative

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Ideas
Barker is the author of Barking Up The Wrong Tree

1) Reflect On What You Are Trying To Accomplish

Don’t rush in. Plan. Think about what you’re trying to do and what it takes to succeed.

Via Creating Minds: An Anatomy of Creativity Seen Through the Lives of Freud, Einstein, Picasso, Stravinsky, Eliot, Graham, and Ghandi:

…the lessons that the rest of us can learn from individuals who are highly creative. I culled three: (1) Creative individuals spend a considerable amount of time reflecting on what they are trying to accomplish, whether or not they are achieving success (and, if not, what they might do differently).

2) Leverage Your Strengths. Ignore Your Weaknesses.

Forget being well-rounded. Double down where you are great.

Via Creating Minds: An Anatomy of Creativity Seen Through the Lives of Freud, Einstein, Picasso, Stravinsky, Eliot, Graham, and Ghandi:

(2) Creative individuals leverage their strengths. They determine their strongest area and build their achievements around these potent intelligences. They do not worry about what they do not do as well; they can always get help from others and perhaps barter their areas of strength with those who have complementary skills.

Pete Drucker’s work agrees, saying we’re usually better off enhancing our strengths than improving our weaknesses.

And leveraging signature strengths is also a path to flow and happiness.

3) See Failure As A Chance To Learn

Don’t be a quitter or a whiner when things don’t work out. Creative geniuses learn from their mistakes and use them to improve.

Via Creating Minds: An Anatomy of Creativity Seen Through the Lives of Freud, Einstein, Picasso, Stravinsky, Eliot, Graham, and Ghandi:

(3) Creative individuals frame their experiences. Such people are highly ambitious, and they do not always succeed, by any means. But when they fail, they do not waste much time lamenting; blaming; or, at the extreme, quitting. Instead, regarding the failure as a learning experience, they try to build upon its lessons in their future endeavors. Framing is most succinctly captured in aphorism by French economist and visionary Jean Monnet: “I regard every defeat as an opportunity.”

This is reminiscent of “grit.” There are techniques for achieving this level of resilience.

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