"No one needs to teach us to be creative— "

A thought by Erwin Raphael McManus, from his book, The Genius of Jesus (p. 26). The Crown Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.  (Click on the book title to go to Amazon to buy the book.)

So that is a necessary place to start.

Erwin continues this thought, "If we can understand the origins of genius, we might discover how to replicate it for ourselves. Put another way, we can ask: What does a genius do instinctively that we could begin to do intentionally?"

They can do it!

He says, "I discovered the critical relationship of the loss of divergent thinking in adulthood and its detrimental impact in every discipline of life while working with universities to develop master’s and doctoral programs, consulting with CEOs and entrepreneurs, doing life coaching with professional athletes and sports leagues, and consulting with churches and denominations. According to one study, at least 95 percent of children are divergent thinkers before the age of twelve. In other words, we are naturally inclined to think outside the box. No one needs to teach us to be creative—we are creative by design.

"The same study concluded that by the age of twelve 95 percent of us become convergent thinkers—meaning we solve problems through conformity and standardization. This would not be a bad change if it meant we added a new skill to our natural ability for divergent thinking, but in fact, convergent thinking replaced divergent thinking. How is it possible that we begin our lives with a natural inclination to be creative and end our lives with a natural inclination to conform? We are born unique and original, but too many of us die tragically ordinary. We have confused growing up with giving up on our genius.

He goes on, "In their work Breakpoint and Beyond, published in 1993, George Land and Beth Jarman detail their work with NASA and later with the Head Start program. In 1968, they had conducted a study to test the creativity, and arguably the genius, of 1,600 children three to five years old, all of whom were enrolled in Head Start. They retested the same children at ten years of age and again at fifteen (a longitudinal study). The results are telling, if not an indictment of our modern educational system.

"The proportion of people who scored at the 'Genius Level' was, among five-year-olds, 98 percent; among ten-year-olds, 30 percent; among fifteen-year-olds, 12 percent; and among adults (280,000 of them, with an average age of thirty-one), 2 percent."

He then shares, " '“What we have concluded,' wrote Land, 'is that non-creative behavior is learned.' "

Now, that is very interesting and could be very discouraging, isn't it? Yes, yes! #continuethought