The creative process is a process. It's not a moment in time, it's not a single insight. If Archimedes pops up out of the bathtub with that aha moment. Great. He's not a done. He's just starting. True. You're right. We have to actually use that insight to get some work, done to solve a problem. Maybe the insight's going to go somewhere or maybe it's not going to work out. Who knows? Almost certainly one insight isn't enough and to get to that invention, to get to that enlightenment, it can take many insights and a lot of time. It's a journey. I agree. Creativity is a journey. The thing is there are going to be bumps in the road. When you are traveling, when you are on your road in that journey, there are going to be bumps in the road. It is like any other endeavor. You'll face problems, you'll face hurdles going through anything. Same thing with creativity. We think of creativity as fun and games and that's true, it is. I'm not saying it's not, but it can be a grind sometimes. So true. A lot of people don't appreciate that and they give up. Yeah. If you watch the movie version. Right. If you watch the movie version, you have that moment of insight and then we're cutting the ribbon on that, celebrating the outcome, but we don't focus on all the toil and dead ends and mistakes along the way. True. We have to pull that back in and see that and make sense of it and try to help articulate what the challenges are that arise in that journey and how to help people through that journey. Let's talk about that. Absolutely. Another thing you know what? When we talk about creativity as a journey, it's not that, you'll get hit on the head in the middle of the road or you reach a dead. Many times what also happens is, most of the times you just turned away at the gate itself. People would reject you. You come up with a very beautiful idea. You think it's a great idea, people don't like it, they reject it. Right. The thing is, I don't think there are ways or it happens, when you come up with a new idea or invention, people would say, you know what? Amazing, we'll just take it. There is so many examples of this and I think it helps actually, to appreciate how many really creative ideas. The Nobel Prize-winning breakthrough, the famous book, a movie. It was originally rejected. Right. Stephen King, Carrie. His first book was rejected 30 times. He threw it away. His wife dug it out of the trash, so think about that. Rejected 30 times, throws it in the trash. Absolutely. His wife pulls it out. If that doesn't happen, we don't get that book and maybe not the career. As we'll see, persistence is crucial. We have to have the motivation to keep going. Absolutely. We have to understand that as people working on this creativity, rejection is a big part of creative journey. These ideas, they're untested, unproven ideas. Others are dealing within this realm of uncertainty and rejections seem logical. No one knows, if it's a good idea or not. So many creative inventions and enlightenments have that issue. They're so often a gatekeeper who puts up a block for the creative journey. You are very likely to have to overcome rejection, which means you have to persist. That is so true and here's the kicker. Rejection isn't the only challenge when it comes to the creative process. In many ways, we ourselves are our worst enemy in this journey. No, that is true. We met the enemy, it's us. That's so true. The thing is what happens is our mental process is a very big thing. If we are rooted in our own ways, that puts creativity. We tend to fall back on our past experiences, our past knowledge and that is rigidity in thinking and it's a big hurdle when it comes to creative journey. Absolutely. We talked a little bit about generating insights and how that can be hard, but there is a temptation I think that, once I have the first insight, now it's easy, now I've got it. What's inside the world is open before me and I can see everything. But in fact, that new change in perspective, because it was exciting and we just had it, we want at that point to say, okay, I've solved it and now I can commit to this perspective and just move forward. But one bump in the road solved doesn't mean there won't be any more bumps ahead of us, so just because you change your perspective once doesn't mean you won't have to change it again. I agree. It's so tempting to commit to our current perspective and that is rigidity in our thinking process. That rigidity then is one of the main hurdles in the creative journey. It makes us feel lost and stuck because we're holding on. Frustrating. So frustrating. The funny thing is, we do it to ourselves. It's our own rigidity. Yeah. That leads to this frustration, leads to this feeling of being stuck and feeling of being lost. A very good example of this is, writer's block. Just as you're trying to write something and not knowing what to say, I think. Yeah. I mean and the funny thing is, it's just you and the paper or the computer, there is no one stopping you and there is nothing stopping you from writing anything. Then we don't write anything. No, that is so true. Another very interesting thing is that rigidity. Yeah. Can also be driven by or impacted by these expectations of external rejection. There is a really good example. We have Sylvia Plath. Sure, the poet. The well-known American poet. She also won a Pulitzer Prize. She was looking at or trying to assess why does she face a writer's block? Yeah. What she concluded after all her going through thinking process and everything, what she thought was a big concern was, how would others evaluate her work? There was this concern about external recognition and acceptance. There was this fear of rejection. When that happens, what happens is your mind goes back to simply what know or it goes to your comfort level and that is what rigidity is. Our task then, should we choose to accept it, is to examine rigidity and to examine rejection and how they make our creative journeys difficult. How to handle that. Yeah. What would be the solution? How do we tackle these? And then there are some thinking tools which we can apply and then see if we can make this journey much more productive, much more fruitful. If we understand these common challenges that arise in the creative journey, rigidity rejection, and if we can figure out some ways to handle them, be flexible, be possessed, then we'll be better prepared for the journey and more likely to succeed. Absolutely, so honored. Honored.
