"PEOPLE GO INTO BUSINESS TO DO WELL
BUT STAY IN BUSINESS TO DO GOOD" Mahatma Gandhi
"The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources."Einstein
One of the most famous quotes from Albert Einstein is, "Imagination is more important than knowledge." You see, Einstein placed incredible value on creativity. His theories and ideas were all about creativity. He made a toy car for his young son out of shoestring and some boxes—that was creativity. When he was down and out and needed money, he posted an ad for tutoring lessons—that was creativity in making money.
Since Einstein was one of the most accomplished and greatest thinkers of our time, an argument could be made that he was also one of the most creative people of all time. You can know more about your product than anyone and have more degrees than anyone you know, but if you don't have a little bit of creativity to take advantage of what you do have, then it is useless.
Credentials and knowledge will do you little good if you lack the creativity to take advantage of them. Einstein once said, "The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources." I think he was being a little humble and a lot humorous here, but he was once again acknowledging the importance of being creative!
So you may ask yourself, "What is creativity?"
That is an excellent question. Let's go straight to the source to answer it. Einstein said, "Creativity is seeing what others see and thinking what no one else has thought."
Robert Kennedy said the same thing this way: "Some look at things that are and ask, why? I look at things that never were and ask, why not?" Robert Kennedy was talking about creativity, just as Einstein was.
So how do you do it? How do you model the creativity of Albert Einstein? First, we need to address the idea of the limiting belief that you are not creative.
There is a prevailing belief that creativity is an inborn trait—you are either creative or you're not. Well, while creativity is an inborn trait, we are all born with a creative brain (your right cerebral hemisphere) and have many creative skills.
Children are naturally curious and eager to explore the world around them and spend hours playing with toys, making up imaginary friends and pretend games. But as we get older, we begin to lose some of our natural creativity as we learn and use more left-brain thinking skills in school and at work.
Research shows that our propensity to generate original ideas drops from 90% at age 5, to 20% at age 7, and even further to 2% as adults! However, unless you have suffered brain damage in your right hemisphere or had it surgically removed, you still have a creative brain; so you are still creative. It's just that maybe you don't use your creative skills as much as you used to.
Now for the good news! You can reawaken your creative brainpower.
What would Einstein tell you in regard to increasing your creativity? Well, we don't have to guess on that one, because he told us. He said, "The important thing is to not stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing."
Develop the curiosity of a child. Leonardo da Vinci, who is said to have been one of the greatest geniuses of all time, also had this creativity. I don't think that it is a coincidence that Da Vinci and Einstein were both extremely creative and that so many years after their deaths we are still talking about them. Let me give you a few of Da Vinci's credentials.
Five hundred years ago, Da Vinci:
- drew blueprints for the world's first helicopter
- drew blueprints for a submarine
- built an extendable ladder whose design is still being used by fire departments today
- built the world's first hydraulic jack
- built a rotating stage
- built a water-powered alarm clock!
Those are some pretty amazing credentials if you ask me.
While curiosity might have "killed the cat," it can help you think like a genius. Leonardo da Vinci had a book of questions. In his journal he would write down questions as fast as they would pop into his head. He would write down questions such as:
Why do birds fly?
Why do they slow down as they land?
What do their feathers do?
The interesting thing is that he didn't worry about the answers. He simply wrote down the questions because he knew something about the power of the human mind. He knew the subconscious mind was powerful and if he wrote down the questions his subconscious mind would continue to work on the answers.
