I’ve shared this list with a lot of people. Ran across it on a songwriting forum a few years ago. It really stuck. It reminds me how great & weird “being creative” is.

Now that Sue and I have so many visitors to our cool blog, we can post this list here, give Liz Strauss credit and hopefully get her some new readers. I love being able to talk about something I read, and do the world some good with it just by sharing it. Wow it’s my birthday tomorrow, and I just noticed that this piece was written the day after my birthday 3 years ago. That was before the “change” from songwriter to philosopher took hold of my life.

Anyways, without further ado, the reason for today’s blog post is to share this wonderful piece that has helped a lot of creative people understand their own motivations and how to survive being labeled as different. Click on the link to read even more on the subject, or cruise through her blog. It’s pretty darned wonderful!

Now by all means share this with lots of people, but please always remember to mention the creator Liz Strauss, and use her link to her blog as well! a Link to her new YouTube channel.

Steve

10 Reasons Creative Folks Make Us Crazy

Do any of these definitions describe you?

The 10 Dimensions of Creative Complexity

I’ve read this book several times, but each time that I show it to a friend, the first place that I turn to, the place where the book falls open, is to the 10 Dimensions of Complexity of the Highly Creative Personality. That’s what Dr. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi calls them. I call them the 10 Reasons that Creative People Drive Us Crazy. Each item is a paradox, a complexity, a contradiction that’s frustrating to others when they exist together at odds in one human being. Take a look and then I’ll tell you how knowing them has helped me keep my sanity, or at least relieve some stress.

1. Creative individuals have great physical energy, but they become extremely quiet when they are at rest. This restful period can lead others to think that they are not feeling well or that they are unhappy, when the truth is they are fine.

2. Creative folks tend to be both highly intelligent and naive at the same time.

3. Creative people are disciplined and playful simultaneously. In some creative people, this can mean that they are responsible and irresponsible at the same time as well.

4. Creative minds move between a spectrum of fantasy and imagination and a firm grounding in reality. They understand the present and need to keep in touch with the past.

5. Creative individuals seem to be both introverted and extroverted, expressing both traits at once. An image to explain this might be that they are shy showoffs, if you can picture that.

6. Creative people are sincerely humble and extremely proud in a childlike way. It requires ego to have a risky, fresh idea. It takes self-doubt to hammer it out to a workable form.

7. Creative folks don’t feel as tied to gender roles. They feel distinctly individual. They don’t feel the barriers of authority or the rules of what they are “supposed to do.”

8. Creative individuals are thought to be rebellious. Yet, in order to be creative one has to understand and have internalized the traditional culture. Therefore creativity comes from deep roots in tradition. Creative people are traditional and cutting edge.

9. Creative people are deeply passionate about their work, yet can be extremely detached and objective when discussing it.

10. Creative people are highly open and sensitive, which exposes them to pain and suffering, but also allows them to feel higher values of joy and happiness.

I find that these 10 paradoxes explain a lot the creative folks I work with. I also use them to understand what’s going on when things aren’t going well, particularly when we have a creative project going full speed under tight deadlines. That’s when I review this list to look for pairs that are out of balance. When I find and adjust the imbalances, the stressful moments fade away.