Creative Genius & The Power of Hard Work
We know from the latest science by folks like Carol Dweck and books like Nurtureshock by Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman that the praising children can actually help them do worse, rather than better. That it’s much better to say “I see you working so hard” than “I see that you are so smart.”
This learning is key for the creative process. Did you know that Ancient Greeks and Romans believed that genius had nothing to do with the individual talents or competencies of people? In fact, geniuses were spirits assigned to us to help us do great work. In this definition, the spirit provides the inspiration and we do the hard work to make it manifest here, on Earth. Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love (one of my personal favorites) has an amazing TED Talk about this…
Whether or not you believe in spirits, the fact of the matter is that, this idea that we have been holding that some people are just born very very smart and others are not is not getting us anywhere. It’s definitely not helping our kids learn any better. When we start to understand that we may not understand exactly where genius comes from, but we do in fact understand how to work hard, make a bunch of mistakes, and keep working anyway, then we will at least be good partners with genius. And we can pass that on to our kids.
