5 Traits Creative People Have That Most People Will Never Understand

from Elite Daily

Creative people are troublemakers. They’re druggies. They’re slightly bonkers. And they usually dress funny… or so many of us would like to think.

Creative people are, by definition, different. Of course, everyone in the world is a little different from the next person, even though most of us are trying our best to blend in.

For creative individuals, “blending in” sounds like the exact opposite of being creative. Most creative individuals aren’t crazy; they’re simply misunderstood.

Of course, some are literally crazy… but only a small proportion. Most of us just don’t like lying about who we really are.

Creative people see the world differently than most.

At the same time, creative people are willing to share what they see and how they interpret it with the rest of the world. To them, the world has more meaning, more intricacies, more complexity and more possibility than it does for the average person.

Creative people believe in the possibility of the impossible because they understand you never really know anything for sure.

They see the world filled with endless possibility — and they want to leave their marks. They want to add to the beautiful work of art life already is.

When you see the world differently than most people, you’re going to stand out. Some people don’t like outliers — they’re scared of them.

Others like stagnancy and changelessness. What we don’t know or understand often frightens us and leaves room for misunderstandings.

They’re often introverted and tend to be loners.

Creative types don’t dislike all people; they just usually spend more time on their own because it allows them to focus on thinking and imagining — even drawing, planning and creating.

Creative individuals have to act on their creativity. Otherwise, they’re left with an itch they can’t scratch. While they do enjoy the company of their friends, they’re also very passionate about their ideas and creations — sometimes to the point of obsession.

Who can blame them, though? When you have work you need to get done, being productive requires alone time. There’s always time to socialize.

And the reason creative people often have a leg up on the competition isn’t because they’re necessarily smarter, or because they think outside the box, creative people just have great work ethic.

They’re already used to diving into a project and allowing it to consume them — it’s hard to compete with.

They don’t judge their abilities the way others do.

They don’t always do too well in school or work what most would consider normal jobs because they’d rather be doing and creating than studying and working. Of course, who wouldn’t?

The only difference is creative people are passionate about being creative. Their passions cannot be squashed.

If you’re a creative individual, you almost certainly find it difficult to do monotonous work. When you’re creative, you live off the excitement of learning and doing something novel, trying your hands on something different.

Creative people go to school and go to work like the rest of the world, but only because they have to. They’ll most likely take a less-than-ideal job unless they’re able to find something to catch their creative interest.

They’re more emotional.

To them, life is much louder and brighter; not because their senses pick up more information, but because they pay closer attention.

Creative individuals may often be introverted, but they spend just as much time looking outside as they do looking inside.

They pay better attention to the little things and, in doing so, allow those little things to elicit a greater emotional response than to the average, not-so-creative individual.

To them, the world has more meaning. To most of us, the world around us is just a blur. To creative individuals, it’s everything.

Of course, such individuals often do lose themselves along their journeys. No one in life has it easy. If anything, being creative can make dealing with reality more difficult.

They’re dreamers.

And people misunderstand dreamers. Dreamers always dream of change. They dream of a better world, a better reality, a better future. They can imagine the unimaginable and often believe themselves capable of turning the impossible, possible.

They’re used to getting their hands dirty and are proactive — a scary combination if you’d like to keep things exactly the way they are. Creative people live a life defined by change. Specifically, by the changes they make.

People always have been and always will be afraid of dreamers. We prefer our populace complacent and average. We don’t like to mold outliers and thinkers. We are a nation doing our best to mold an ever-rising middle class.

Hilariously enough, we’re failing at that as well.

Creative, Intellectual Lives are Not Self-Indulgent

from Richard Metzger at Dangerous Minds:

Wonderful and thought-provoking essay at The Chronicle of Higher Eduction website from Nation/New Republic contributor, William Deresiewicz about not boxing yourself and your life into what others think you should do with your short time on this planet. You will only ever get one life, so live it wisely, but of course, that’s easier said than done and Deresiewicz counsels constantly questioning the choices you’ve made and not being afraid to face up to what your heart desires.

This was adapted from a talk delivered to a freshman class at Stanford University in May, 2010 and comes near the end. Absolutely worth reading, no matter if you are a student or a senior citizen. A straight life and a job or career is not for everyone and Deresiewicz, while not exactly saying “fly your freak flag high,” offers much to ponder here for iconoclastic and creative personalities who might be pressured to conform:

In A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce has Stephen Dedalus famously say, about growing up in Ireland in the late 19th century, “When the soul of a man is born in this country there are nets flung at it to hold it back from flight. You talk to me of nationality, language, religion. I shall try to fly by those nets.”

Today there are other nets. One of those nets is a term that I’ve heard again and again as I’ve talked with students about these things. That term is “self-indulgent.” “Isn’t it self-indulgent to try to live the life of the mind when there are so many other things I could be doing with my degree?” “Wouldn’t it be self-indulgent to pursue painting after I graduate instead of getting a real job?”

These are the kinds of questions that young people find themselves being asked today if they even think about doing something a little bit different. Even worse, the kinds of questions they are made to feel compelled to ask themselves. Many students have spoken to me, as they navigated their senior years, about the pressure they felt from their peers—from their peers—to justify a creative or intellectual life. You’re made to feel like you’re crazy: crazy to forsake the sure thing, crazy to think it could work, crazy to imagine that you even have a right to try.

Think of what we’ve come to. It is one of the great testaments to the intellectual—and moral, and spiritual—poverty of American society that it makes its most intelligent young people feel like they’re being self-indulgent if they pursue their curiosity. You are all told that you’re supposed to go to college, but you’re also told that you’re being “self-indulgent” if you actually want to get an education. Or even worse, give yourself one. As opposed to what? Going into consulting isn’t self-indulgent? Going into finance isn’t self-indulgent? Going into law, like most of the people who do, in order to make yourself rich, isn’t self-indulgent? It’s not OK to play music, or write essays, because what good does that really do anyone, but it is OK to work for a hedge fund. It’s selfish to pursue your passion, unless it’s also going to make you a lot of money, in which case it’s not selfish at all.

Do you see how absurd this is? But these are the nets that are flung at you, and this is what I mean by the need for courage. And it’s a never-ending process. At that Harvard event two years ago, one person said, about my assertion that college students needed to keep rethinking the decisions they’ve made about their lives, “We already made our decisions, back in middle school, when we decided to be the kind of high achievers who get into Harvard.” And I thought, who wants to live with the decisions that they made when they were 12? Let me put that another way. Who wants to let a 12-year-old decide what they’re going to do for the rest of their lives? Or a 19-year-old, for that matter?

Read the entire essay: What Are You Going to Do With That? (The Chronicle of Higher Education)