There is no thinking without feeling

In my last post, I started diving into assumptions about how we think about creativity that I wanted to challenge in The Creativity Choice. As I started writing, I realized that I will need more than one piece. So this is part two. Although it could have been the only part if I wanted to condense and focus on the core of what got me inspired to write this book.

I am posting this on the UN Creativity and Innovation Day. And it is intentional. Because I think this is the chance to look ahead.

What we get wrong in understanding creativity is talking about it as a cognitive process. As if what we need to know about creativity to truly understand it is about thinking – coming up with ideas, solving problems.

The truth is that thinking alone cannot explain creativity that is meaningful in real life. There is no action without caring to act.

Another issue is that thinking and feeling are not separable. We can say that one influences the other, but it is even more fundamental than that. They are part of each other. Emotion scientists talk about appraisal – judgments of the nature of emotion-eliciting situations (e.g., are they challenging or threatening) – as part of how emotions emerge. And creative thinking is curiosity in action.

My biggest frustration about messages about creativity out there [waves hands] is that we do not talk about the emotional side of creativity.

Have you ever seen the quote, “Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life”? I think it is funny that it is variously attributed to Confucious or Mark Twain (neither are correct, origin seems unknown). This sentiment is particularly associated with creative people.

The assumption here is that if only you love what you do, creativity will not be difficult.

You have to find your passion. This message implies that the passion is there, playing hide and seek with the rest of you, and the task is to reach deep and bring it to the surface. Alas, it does not work like that. We do not come into the world with a given passion; we develop our passions by trying out activities and by developing expertise and mastery.

Loving what you do matters. People who are motivated to do creative work have intrinsic motivation, which means they enjoy what they do and they are attracted by the challenge of it. But that is not enough.

Intrinsic motivation and passion,are energize the creative drive. However, the drive also needs direction or focus. It needs to answer what is a good, important and fruitful direction. Noticing points of dissatisfaction or frustration can provide focus and imposing constraints (which are almost definitionally frustrating) is a way to direct thinking to more original paths.

Problem solving is mentioned so frequently together with creativity that it has become almost synonymous with it. Solving problems sounds like an orderly process. You focus, work on coming up with solutions, and check out that they work as intended or needed.

But successful creative problem solving is rather different than this. It requires that much of the time is spent on working out the problem. Asking questions about it. If we are working in a team, listening to everyone’s take on it. Wondering about what these takes suggest or imply. Considering whether various ways of seeing the nature of the problem can be integrated.

Yet, we don’t often do this with intention. Because it is emotionally difficult. If we are focusing on the problem, it appears we are not focusing on solutions (or seemingly making progress). Therefore, tension. Therefore, not enough time on what actually makes the solutions creative.

The belief that emotions lead to irrational and necessarily flawed thinking is deeply ingrained in our culture. When I tell people that I study emotions and creativity, they can imagine emotions being expressed in artistic creation (and that is a good thing) and they can imagine emotions being in the way of creativity – fear of failure interfering with action, frustrating creative blocks diminishing motivation, anxiety-provoking challenges shutting down exploratory thinking.

Sure, all of this happens. But there is also great power in emotions. And people are rarely aware of it. Emotions are conveying information that we can use in making choices along the way and different feelings boost particular kinds of thinking. In these ways, emotions help, rather than hurt creativity.

To use the power inherent in emotions, we need to know what they are saying and put it to use. That takes skill.

Research on emotions and creativity started by asking which feelings help and which hurt creativity. Implicit in this research was the view that creativity equals coming up with ideas. A reliable answer emerged from studies of creative thinking in the laboratory – positive energized moods, such as being happy or amused – is helpful.

Therefore, reasoning went, to be more creative, we have to regulate emotions to feel more positive.

The fine print in these studies was that this finding is limited to very quick creative idea generation. Once people have more than 4 minutes to think, it does not matter whether they are feeling happy. And, of course, in everyday life, we rarely, if ever, think of ideas for less than 4 minutes.

Another problem yet is that the research was limited to creative thinking when the problems were already presented to people. For instance, they were asked to come up with ideas about different uses for a tin can or list what might happen if people became invisible at will. In real life, problems are not obvious or are much more vague. Perhaps you are working in higher education and developing a new honors program or capstone experience – what could or should it be? Or you are working in organizational learning and development. What is needed?

Sometimes, when our goal is creativity, regulating emotions means approaching discomfort without an explicit intention of making yourself (or others) feel immediately better.

I keep being amazed (in the most exquisitely frustrating way) that this assumption about regulating emotions to help creativity is about making yourself feel good is widespread even among many scholars. Recently, we got reviews on a paper dealing with emotion regulation for creativity saying that surely we are not proposing that people might willingly make themselves feel discomfort. Yes, indeed, we are proposing that. Not just proposing, there is evidence that this is important.

If you have a nagging feeling something is off in your work – whether that is a painting, a design for a new product, a research paper, or any other creative endeavor – you can regulate that sense of displeasure to make yourself feel better (by focusing on the positive or doing something distracting and fun) OR you can regulate it by staying in the discomfort for a while and trying to work out what it is pointing at.

The first is likely to result in what psychologists call premature closure. And the second will likely maximize the potential of what you are working on.

What is better than celebrating creativity diving intro frustrations that become inspiration that become action that become a book.