Shocked Out of Creativity as Kids?

Although I haven’t read Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman’s book Nurture Shock about child development, the title sparked a thought: Are we shocked out of creativity when we are growing up?

We do know that adults ask fewer questions, laugh a whole lot less than kids and certainly don’t play as much with some exceptions. Those include people such as comedians, clowns, magicians and jazz musicians and employees who are part of organizations that encourage fun like IDEO, Zappos, Southwest Airlines and many software companies. But, for the majority of adults, working life at least is far too serious and the idea of fun is often viewed as flaky.

The scarcity of questions, laughing, fun and play may go way back to the settling in of “judgment” when we were growing up - self-consciousness from how we were taught to react to mistakes, problems and uncertainty. Play is a safe harbor for facing challenging and hostile environments – experimenting without suffering dire consequences. Fun and laughter allow us to let go, reduce the noise level thereby allowing weak signals in our brains where insights reside to be detected. But, we also lose control temporarily. Questions take us out of our comfort zone because they stir the pot and introduce uncertainty. All of these factors battle with judgment for mind and body space.

After a screw up, we have about 500 milliseconds to react with awareness: ignore the mistake and brush it aside for the sake of our self-confidence or investigate the error and learn from it. Let the judgment mindset in? Or, take more of a growth mindset?

What can we do? Young children and students who are praised for their efforts, not their "smarts", typically demonstrate significant self-improvement. They are encouraged to challenge themselves, learn from their mistakes. We can do this for ourselves to bury the judgment factor and soften the bruising of our egos. Who knows what wonderful ideas may emerge when our more open minds are simply wandering around?

Are You the Salad Bowl or the Salad?

Finally brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, let your mind dwell on those things.

---Philippians 4:8

In Daniel Amen, Change Your Brain, Change Your Life

I was introduced to the salad bowl/salad concept many moons ago when immersed in an intense personal growth exploration phase. It goes like this:

When confronted with an issue or a conflict which provokes emotionally-charged views, do you get right in there and fight with the cucumbers and tomatoes or do you take the role of the salad bowl, holding the entire salad in place for the sake of all?

The Tucson, Arizona shooting rampage reminded me of the significant role of any leader and any person in setting and managing the emotional tone of each and every difference of opinion. This is the least we should expect from our political leaders. Better to be the salad bowl with the aim of making everything work than inciting riots among the salad ingredients.

Our deep limbic system, the seat of our emotions, is much older than our rational brain. It generates our first reaction to all that goes on around us. At the same time, it is directly connected to our executive brain, the pre-frontal cortex which helps us with judgment, sifting and sorting information, thinking about our thinking and ultimately with good (or bad) decision-making. But when the deep limbic system is in overdrive, reason goes out the window. We know from our family environments, that one upset leads to another at times spiraling our of control. The opposite is true too. So is the case in an organization or a nation.

Leaders do set the emotional tone. Each of us sets the emotional tone. Will it be rhetoric twisting the truth to bash those with whom we differ?Or, will it be issue-focused, not person-focused, with the aim of finding good solutions to shared, vexxing problems with no obvious solutions?

Dacher Keltner, author of Born to be Good emphasizes that self-interest, competition and vigilance have been built into our evolutionary makeup to survive. But, he explains that these tendencies are only half the story. "Homo reciprocans" is a more apt description of our social nature with emotions as the glue that binds. Emotions trump facts and figures. They are infectious, especially positive ones which open minds up to possibilities. Fear or negativity makes for more closed minds, reducing novel approaches to intractable problems. How does a leader deal with this responsibly to bring about change for the whole, critics and supporters alike? 

The "Jen ratio" is a tool that can help us cultivate being the salad bowl holding the whole rather than being one piece of the salad having no impact or inciting riots with other pieces, so to speak. "Jen" means "humane". The numerator (the salad bowl) refers to acts of kindness, compassion, awe, love and gratitude. It implies, "I am responsible" for the process and the results. The denominator (the salad) embodies the "bad" action when establishing one's character in relation to others. Such a person, who is "in the salad" is disdainful, critical, condescending and contemptuous. Each of us can track our "Jen ratio" and make improvements consciously.

So can leaders of nations. Keltner further explains in his book that "nations whose citizens bring out the good in others thrive because it generates trust". Trust facilitates "economic exchange with fewer transaction costs, adversarial settlements, discrimination and economic inequality."

Americans are united in grief now over the attack on Congressman Gabrielle Giffords and many other innocent people. But they are not united in responsibility. Time will tell. If politicians and pundits alike can choose the salad bowl as a stance for action, rather than the salad only and a positive Jen ratio as a continuous goal, always in need of calibration, issue by issue, conversation by conversation, the emotional tone in America might shift for the betterment of all.