Creativity = Courageous Willpower

The creative process is based on using your willpower, which is where or how creative energies are released. Your willpower is activated through responding to a genuine challenge with courage. See diagram at right and the initial explanation.

The combination of all 7 Levels of using willpower requires addition of the 7^th Level, being fully willing to the hexads to form a heptad. Taking on the challenge demands a willingness that is wholehearted. This positivity enables creativity-RG7¹ to imbue all efforts at all Levels.

On that basis, the components of creativity in rising to a challenge are:

Be wholeheartedly fully willing. Always be deliberately purposeful. Adaptively intensify communications. Reflectively intensify experiences. Shrewdly target change. Sensibly focus inquiries. Take meaningful action.

RL7 RL6 RL5 RL4 RL3 RL2 RL1

You should be able to know whether or not you, yourself, are activating the creative state. Without that state, there is no way that you will handle the challenge.

Negativity can always creep in and start distorting what you perceive and do. So, you cannot take your own positivity for granted. It requires watching (RL4) and talking to yourself frankly in the light of realities (RL5), as well as heeding the other features.

Creativity is not a feeling and it does not mean that your mood or attitudes cannot fluctuate or that intense emotions will not erupt. They will. The issue in being comfortable that you are creative and courageous in handling your challenge comes from whether the various components are being handled as they should. The graphic of creativity at right and the framework as a whole (see review) should give you a good guide.

When combined with denial, over-optimistic or blind positivity is perhaps the commonest cause of failure in business start-ups. So the most difficult part of creativity seems to be openly recognizing incipient failure and emerging obstacles. Disappointments are part of the challenge package, and failure needs to be confronted. Immersion and then perseverance are designed precisely for such situations—as will become evident in the next framework dealing with creativity in practice.

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• Having covered all the elements involved in creative working, it is time to recap and review.

• Then see how creativity operates in the context of employment by an organization.

Originally posted: 31-Jan-2012