Mindfulness at Work by Stephen McKenzie

Author:Stephen McKenzie
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Self
Publisher: Exisle Publishing Pty Ltd
Published: 2009-01-01T04:30:00+00:00

What is creativity and can we create it?

Psychology describes creativity as a type of intelligence, whereas broader descriptions of human behaviour, such as religious, spiritual and philosophical systems, describe intelligence as a type of creativity. Fundamentally, it is an important human attribute that relates to a universal creative principle.

Psychology has many ways of dividing intelligence into types. A division that goes way back to British psychologist Charles Spearman’s early work on intelligence divides it into firstly a general ‘G’ factor, and secondly into particular intelligences that are usually further divided into performance abilities such as number and pattern recognition skills, and verbal abilities which include general knowledge.[1] General intelligence can be described non-technically and reasonably accurately as mental computational ability, and even more non-technically (and perhaps even more accurately) as mental horsepower. Some recent developments of psychological intelligence theories include a growing recognition that intelligence takes place in a context: we use it to help us do stuff, such as work, so intelligence is increasingly seen as a problem-solving ability. Intelligence is therefore a useful thing to have in our working tool kit, whether we work as a brain surgeon, plumber or shop assistant because it helps us to do stuff well no matter what we are doing.

Intelligence is much broader (and more useful), however, than just the ability to do sums in our head or remember facts (and fictions). Emotional intelligence was described in Chapter 3 as something that helps us to work well, and to work well with others, because it helps us to see what we and others need. Mindfulness improves our emotional intelligence because it helps us to be aware and accepting, and therefore aware and accepting of others, and therefore connected with them in a way that works well for them, us and our mutual work.

Developments in psychological theories of intelligence include a division of it that includes creative intelligence.[2] Our convergent intelligence is our ability to be logical, to converge on solutions by a process of reducing and reducing until we end up with nothing but an answer. An example of convergent intelligence is deducing the answer to a puzzle, such as the relationship between time and space or the behaviour of our friends. Divergent intelligence is our ability to creatively solve problems, or even to creatively transcend problems, by diverging further and further from our starting point until we might even end up a very long way away from it. An example of divergent intelligence is starting with the puzzle of the relationship between time and space or the behaviour of our friends, and ending with a theory that links all of them. A well-known example of a divergent intelligence test is ‘How many uses can you think of for a brick?’ Dropping it on the toe of the person giving us the test will score us a point for divergent intelligence, but it might also inspire them to give us some personality tests as well!

Another psychological approach to creativity uses the concept

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