It’s a common story about highly creative people – that they’re basically crazy. Creative geniuses end up as loonies, or borderline loonies, or minimally functional. The reclusive writers, the drunks, the suicides, the painter who cut off his ear (Van Gogh), the institutionalized artists…

Turns out, creativity is complex. It’s not dependent on your IQ, and you don’t have to be crazy. There are many characteristics and traits that go into being highly creative, and highly creative people may actually be MORE sane than “normal” folks.

Last week I wrote about boosting creativity through cultivating the Art of Serendipity. (Read that here.) This article builds on that one.

Here are some of the characteristics of highly creative people:

• cultivating serendipity, or discovering “what they were not in quest of”
• introspection and openness to their inner life
• preferring complexity and ambiguity over black & white perspectives
• a high tolerance for disorder and disarray
• yet they are able to extract order from chaos
• being highly independent and unconventional
• willing to take risks
• tolerance of uncertainty and contradictions

Highly creative people develop a higher self-awareness – including awareness of the “shadow” or “darker” aspects of the self. They engage with both the dark and the light – the full spectrum of life. The whole enchilada. The whole human being. All of themselves.Continue Reading