so it’s come to my attention that every
work of art has a miraculous story
behind it this flow of inspiration that
just continues on and on until
eventually a masterpiece is born well I
made this yes one day a presumably small
version of me sat down and what I’m
pretty sure was my kitchen painted what
I believe to be are some fireworks and
that’s just about all I remember that’s
a great story I know but listen it’s
entirely possible that I’ve just
forgotten the longer more impactful
version of that story after all it’s
extremely unlikely that I’ve retained
any information from that long ago or
maybe my mind has developed and changed
so much to a point where I’ve simply
lost touch well I’m sure that as of now
many of you wouldn’t even begin to
describe yourselves this way the fact is
we were all born creative each and every
one of us it’s when we get older however
that our creativity levels begin to
decline and if you think about it it
makes complete sense like raise your
hand if you have the time to make art
any art on a daily basis excluding
artists okay but now I want you to think
back to how you’d answer that question
when you were five I expect a lot of you
can picture yourselves with markers and
crayons scattered around you without a
care in the world because after all
there’s nothing more important to do
then right but the reality is creativity
was and still is important and it’s a
quality that we can only maintain for as
long as we stimulate and challenge
ourselves to think outside the box
in 1965 researcher George land created a
test that helped him study creativity
and a big project of his was conducted
on a group of sixteen hundred children
interestingly enough his results showed
that 98% of the kids aged three to five
scored high enough on that test to be
considered creative geniuses so for all
I know three-year-old me didn’t see
fireworks but instead envisioned a
modern rendition of the starry night I
mean I see no difference
but still I think it’s safe to say that
my ways of thinking have changed quite a
bit since then when you first saw this
painting what did you see take a look at
where the kids creativity lands at the
age of 10 their scores dropped from 98
to 30 to a 67 percent decrease this is
by far the most drastic drop on the
chart indicating that the most
neurological change occurs at some point
during elementary school and in order to
understand that change it’s important to
consider some general functions of the
human brain we can break it down into
two hemispheres the left and the right
each performing extremely different but
important tasks the left side can be
classified as the logical or analytical
portion that allows us to comprehend
language and process information and
whatnot but then there’s the right side
which functions as the creativity center
this is the hemisphere that allows us to
recall the Tunes to the songs we like or
replicate our visual sensations through
art media and that’s not to suggest that
one of these hemispheres is more or less
important than the other when it comes
to developing creativity I mean our
ability to be creative is what
determines how we connect ideas in order
to solve problems and come to solutions
and in general approach life but our
creative minds in order to reach that
level of productivity require that both
sides be working in tandem and
unfortunately due to the ways in which
children in America are commonly raised
nowadays this is not our natural frame
of mind when we’re young we don’t spend
much time exercising that left side
seeing as we don’t acquire much
knowledge or logic until much later
however we have plenty of opportunities
to develop the imaginative sides of our
brains whether by drawing painting
playing house etc but alas we grow up
and are taught to forget how to access
that side of ourselves and that process
begins when we enter school typical
teenager blaming school for all her
problems but yes school the place where
we learn how to do simple addition and
form proper sentences and that is where
the balance between brain hemispheres
begins to shift left suppressing our
creative abilities in other words the
knowledge we acquire throughout our
lives is what teaches us to reject the
more complex ways of approaching
obstacles later in life
take this for an example we were all
taught that two plus two equals four as
a general principle of arithmetic
but when I think about it it seems that
this rudimentary concept just makes it
that much harder for us to accept that
two plus five times 2 divided by 7 plus
2 is also 4 I’ll spare you the time of
doing that in their head the online
graphing calculator agrees with me but
anyways why are we primarily taught the
2+2 method when there are literally
infinite other ways of coming to the
exact same solution and it appears to me
that the simple answer is because it’s
easy it’s practical and yes I do believe
it’s necessary to learn the basics first
but then again who decided that either
one of these methods is more simplified
than the other we arrive at the same
answer don’t we it’s the minimalistic
view that appeals to our senses but that
instilled fear of difficulty and failure
is exactly what is discouraging young
kids from taking risks or choosing the
creative route and I know that we all
have this urge to get through life
simply by getting into college finding a
decent job and settling down but it’s
those types of attitudes that are
destroying creativity and interpretation
and that’s something that I struggled
with for quite a while but eventually I
realized that my linear ways of thinking
made me just about as qualified to do
any job as a computer and that becomes
more and more literal every single day
as kids continue to grow up with
technology dictating their lives we
think in straight lines but that mode of
thinking is depriving us of so many
meaningful skills to be used later in
life but by instilling creativity early
on we can train ourselves to think just
as innovatively as some of the most
successful business owners in the world
and from a young age too because what
makes these innovators as successful as
they are is their ability to come up
with fresh original ideas and it just so
happens that many of them are also
exercising the creative minds many
businesses including the ones I just
showed you are now enacting policies
similar to the 20% rule which
essentially states that 20% of office
hours are to be spent working on
personal projects in order to exercise
creativity because that exposure to
creativity is part of what helps these
business workers become creative
themselves it was actually during
Google’s use of this time that they were
able to found Gmail and Adsense so my
question is this if big-name companies
as successful as Google are instilling
creativity in the work
then why is it that in schools arts
programs are almost always the first to
go
right now there are 1.3 million
elementary school students in this
country who don’t have access to arts
education but without that opportunity
those kids are losing out on some of the
most creative years of their lives in
another study by Michigan State
University it was actually determined
that people who start our own businesses
have most likely received up to eight
times the amount of exposure to the arts
as children than the general public and
this link between creativity and success
extends beyond the business world as
well Albert Einstein revolutionary
scientists who forever changed the world
with his theory of relativity played the
violin throughout his entire childhood
Alexander Graham Bell spent his life
studying the piano Thomas Edison and
President Truman as well so you can see
through these examples that there is a
direct correlation between balanced
relaxed activity and quality of work and
not just for artists we have this image
engrained in our minds that we can only
become successful if we do well in
school becoming more and more left
minded but again it’s crucial that we
exercise both these areas of our minds
together after all Aristotle did indeed
say the whole is greater than the sum of
its parts but if we don’t take
initiative now then I predict that one
day we will live in a world where
everybody talks stresses eats works and
thinks identically and that’s already
happening I mean think about social
media like how many of you have an
Instagram or snapchat or Facebook
account okay now for all my fellow gens
ears out there how many of you have ever
seen this for the rest of you just know
that every teen on social media has IR
posted this photo or scrolled past it at
least 10 times that one’s mine I
couldn’t resist but I think the reason
for this is because we’re primitively
taught to copy what other people do but
one day that’s going to be turned around
and used against us according to the
verge restaurants are even beginning to
model their interior designs after
popular social media aesthetics but if
we spiral down that path and we’re going
to end up slowly stifling thought
diversity until it no longer exists and
what happens then we talk dress eat work
and think identically
you’re probably wondering well in that
case I want to be creative how do I do
that and based on numerous studies on
creative education the short answer to
that question is practice the first step
is finding the inner motivation
necessary to take a risk and break that
linear cycle of thinking because after
all if we’re not willing to expand our
horizons then we will only continue to
consider two straightforward courses of
action here’s my theory I actually don’t
think that writer’s block exists I think
that our minds are in constant states of
inspirational rush it’s just that we’ve
trained ourselves to filter out the
safest ideas but by eliminating that
filter we bring ourselves closer to
accepting the inevitable truth that not
every idea that comes out of our heads
has to be perfect or is going to be
perfect for that matter and coming to
that realization is something that
happens so rarely and yet it’s also
something that’s so integral to society
that’s why we gravitate toward things
like taiyaki because it’s different it’s
fun it changes the way we think about
food but when us teenagers latch onto
those ideas posting about them over and
over again it becomes the norm but
here’s the silver lining if it only took
one person to invent the genius food
that combines fish and unicorns then
that means that once we all incorporate
creativity into our everyday lives we
will constantly be kept at the edge of
our seats which brings me to step two
exposure to creative thinking as most of
you can probably definitely tell I am a
high school student which means that
sometimes in the midst of writing a
report or an essay or an article in my
mind we’ll just sort of hit a brick wall
and then I panic of course I mean at 15
years old what else am I supposed to do
but eventually instead of panicking I
started shutting the computer closing
the door and just singing as loudly and
obnoxiously as I possibly can and I
don’t just do that to annoy my family no
no I do it because it allows my right
brain the time to catch up to the left
so that by the time I go back to finish
that paper there is nothing within my
mind preventing my ideas from spilling
out because every time you reach that
point of synchronicity it opens this
endless realm of inspiration and ideas
and once you’ve achieved that then the
only thing left to do is to repeat that
cycle over and over until we’ve achieved
an equilibrium of left and right minded
activity allowing our minds
to become stronger than ever placing
ourselves back in that 98th percentile
because in the end if we want to wind up
like these people we may just have to
start thinking a bit more like these ones thank you
work of art has a miraculous story
behind it this flow of inspiration that
just continues on and on until
eventually a masterpiece is born well I
made this yes one day a presumably small
version of me sat down and what I’m
pretty sure was my kitchen painted what
I believe to be are some fireworks and
that’s just about all I remember that’s
a great story I know but listen it’s
entirely possible that I’ve just
forgotten the longer more impactful
version of that story after all it’s
extremely unlikely that I’ve retained
any information from that long ago or
maybe my mind has developed and changed
so much to a point where I’ve simply
lost touch well I’m sure that as of now
many of you wouldn’t even begin to
describe yourselves this way the fact is
we were all born creative each and every
one of us it’s when we get older however
that our creativity levels begin to
decline and if you think about it it
makes complete sense like raise your
hand if you have the time to make art
any art on a daily basis excluding
artists okay but now I want you to think
back to how you’d answer that question
when you were five I expect a lot of you
can picture yourselves with markers and
crayons scattered around you without a
care in the world because after all
there’s nothing more important to do
then right but the reality is creativity
was and still is important and it’s a
quality that we can only maintain for as
long as we stimulate and challenge
ourselves to think outside the box
in 1965 researcher George land created a
test that helped him study creativity
and a big project of his was conducted
on a group of sixteen hundred children
interestingly enough his results showed
that 98% of the kids aged three to five
scored high enough on that test to be
considered creative geniuses so for all
I know three-year-old me didn’t see
fireworks but instead envisioned a
modern rendition of the starry night I
mean I see no difference
but still I think it’s safe to say that
my ways of thinking have changed quite a
bit since then when you first saw this
painting what did you see take a look at
where the kids creativity lands at the
age of 10 their scores dropped from 98
to 30 to a 67 percent decrease this is
by far the most drastic drop on the
chart indicating that the most
neurological change occurs at some point
during elementary school and in order to
understand that change it’s important to
consider some general functions of the
human brain we can break it down into
two hemispheres the left and the right
each performing extremely different but
important tasks the left side can be
classified as the logical or analytical
portion that allows us to comprehend
language and process information and
whatnot but then there’s the right side
which functions as the creativity center
this is the hemisphere that allows us to
recall the Tunes to the songs we like or
replicate our visual sensations through
art media and that’s not to suggest that
one of these hemispheres is more or less
important than the other when it comes
to developing creativity I mean our
ability to be creative is what
determines how we connect ideas in order
to solve problems and come to solutions
and in general approach life but our
creative minds in order to reach that
level of productivity require that both
sides be working in tandem and
unfortunately due to the ways in which
children in America are commonly raised
nowadays this is not our natural frame
of mind when we’re young we don’t spend
much time exercising that left side
seeing as we don’t acquire much
knowledge or logic until much later
however we have plenty of opportunities
to develop the imaginative sides of our
brains whether by drawing painting
playing house etc but alas we grow up
and are taught to forget how to access
that side of ourselves and that process
begins when we enter school typical
teenager blaming school for all her
problems but yes school the place where
we learn how to do simple addition and
form proper sentences and that is where
the balance between brain hemispheres
begins to shift left suppressing our
creative abilities in other words the
knowledge we acquire throughout our
lives is what teaches us to reject the
more complex ways of approaching
obstacles later in life
take this for an example we were all
taught that two plus two equals four as
a general principle of arithmetic
but when I think about it it seems that
this rudimentary concept just makes it
that much harder for us to accept that
two plus five times 2 divided by 7 plus
2 is also 4 I’ll spare you the time of
doing that in their head the online
graphing calculator agrees with me but
anyways why are we primarily taught the
2+2 method when there are literally
infinite other ways of coming to the
exact same solution and it appears to me
that the simple answer is because it’s
easy it’s practical and yes I do believe
it’s necessary to learn the basics first
but then again who decided that either
one of these methods is more simplified
than the other we arrive at the same
answer don’t we it’s the minimalistic
view that appeals to our senses but that
instilled fear of difficulty and failure
is exactly what is discouraging young
kids from taking risks or choosing the
creative route and I know that we all
have this urge to get through life
simply by getting into college finding a
decent job and settling down but it’s
those types of attitudes that are
destroying creativity and interpretation
and that’s something that I struggled
with for quite a while but eventually I
realized that my linear ways of thinking
made me just about as qualified to do
any job as a computer and that becomes
more and more literal every single day
as kids continue to grow up with
technology dictating their lives we
think in straight lines but that mode of
thinking is depriving us of so many
meaningful skills to be used later in
life but by instilling creativity early
on we can train ourselves to think just
as innovatively as some of the most
successful business owners in the world
and from a young age too because what
makes these innovators as successful as
they are is their ability to come up
with fresh original ideas and it just so
happens that many of them are also
exercising the creative minds many
businesses including the ones I just
showed you are now enacting policies
similar to the 20% rule which
essentially states that 20% of office
hours are to be spent working on
personal projects in order to exercise
creativity because that exposure to
creativity is part of what helps these
business workers become creative
themselves it was actually during
Google’s use of this time that they were
able to found Gmail and Adsense so my
question is this if big-name companies
as successful as Google are instilling
creativity in the work
then why is it that in schools arts
programs are almost always the first to
go
right now there are 1.3 million
elementary school students in this
country who don’t have access to arts
education but without that opportunity
those kids are losing out on some of the
most creative years of their lives in
another study by Michigan State
University it was actually determined
that people who start our own businesses
have most likely received up to eight
times the amount of exposure to the arts
as children than the general public and
this link between creativity and success
extends beyond the business world as
well Albert Einstein revolutionary
scientists who forever changed the world
with his theory of relativity played the
violin throughout his entire childhood
Alexander Graham Bell spent his life
studying the piano Thomas Edison and
President Truman as well so you can see
through these examples that there is a
direct correlation between balanced
relaxed activity and quality of work and
not just for artists we have this image
engrained in our minds that we can only
become successful if we do well in
school becoming more and more left
minded but again it’s crucial that we
exercise both these areas of our minds
together after all Aristotle did indeed
say the whole is greater than the sum of
its parts but if we don’t take
initiative now then I predict that one
day we will live in a world where
everybody talks stresses eats works and
thinks identically and that’s already
happening I mean think about social
media like how many of you have an
Instagram or snapchat or Facebook
account okay now for all my fellow gens
ears out there how many of you have ever
seen this for the rest of you just know
that every teen on social media has IR
posted this photo or scrolled past it at
least 10 times that one’s mine I
couldn’t resist but I think the reason
for this is because we’re primitively
taught to copy what other people do but
one day that’s going to be turned around
and used against us according to the
verge restaurants are even beginning to
model their interior designs after
popular social media aesthetics but if
we spiral down that path and we’re going
to end up slowly stifling thought
diversity until it no longer exists and
what happens then we talk dress eat work
and think identically
you’re probably wondering well in that
case I want to be creative how do I do
that and based on numerous studies on
creative education the short answer to
that question is practice the first step
is finding the inner motivation
necessary to take a risk and break that
linear cycle of thinking because after
all if we’re not willing to expand our
horizons then we will only continue to
consider two straightforward courses of
action here’s my theory I actually don’t
think that writer’s block exists I think
that our minds are in constant states of
inspirational rush it’s just that we’ve
trained ourselves to filter out the
safest ideas but by eliminating that
filter we bring ourselves closer to
accepting the inevitable truth that not
every idea that comes out of our heads
has to be perfect or is going to be
perfect for that matter and coming to
that realization is something that
happens so rarely and yet it’s also
something that’s so integral to society
that’s why we gravitate toward things
like taiyaki because it’s different it’s
fun it changes the way we think about
food but when us teenagers latch onto
those ideas posting about them over and
over again it becomes the norm but
here’s the silver lining if it only took
one person to invent the genius food
that combines fish and unicorns then
that means that once we all incorporate
creativity into our everyday lives we
will constantly be kept at the edge of
our seats which brings me to step two
exposure to creative thinking as most of
you can probably definitely tell I am a
high school student which means that
sometimes in the midst of writing a
report or an essay or an article in my
mind we’ll just sort of hit a brick wall
and then I panic of course I mean at 15
years old what else am I supposed to do
but eventually instead of panicking I
started shutting the computer closing
the door and just singing as loudly and
obnoxiously as I possibly can and I
don’t just do that to annoy my family no
no I do it because it allows my right
brain the time to catch up to the left
so that by the time I go back to finish
that paper there is nothing within my
mind preventing my ideas from spilling
out because every time you reach that
point of synchronicity it opens this
endless realm of inspiration and ideas
and once you’ve achieved that then the
only thing left to do is to repeat that
cycle over and over until we’ve achieved
an equilibrium of left and right minded
activity allowing our minds
to become stronger than ever placing
ourselves back in that 98th percentile
because in the end if we want to wind up
like these people we may just have to
start thinking a bit more like these ones thank you
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