Resilience in creativity and creative problem-solving

Resiliency in Creativity

Challenges can either be something that makes one more resilient or challenging times can bring one down to the literal and proverbial bottom. There is a saying that what does not kill one, makes one stronger.

Challenging Times

The work of Bruce Elkin examines how one might thrive in challenging times and states that the key to thriving in these times is "to build personal resilience and develop your capacity to create what matters -- with whatever life gives you to work with." (2011) This is akin to the saying of "When life gives you lemons, make lemonade." (Author Unknown) Resilience is needed in times of "financial crisis…climate change, and global warming, weird weather, peak oil fears, resource wars, mortgage meltdown, housing markets collapse, job losses, bailouts, insecurity…" (Elkin, 2011)

When the focus of the individual is one such matters, people tend to worry and this leads to the individual being "depressed, and dispirited." (Elkin, 2011) In addition, those who worry are those who lack in "energy and foresight." (Elkin, 2011) Some people just quit trying and according to Elkin "This leads to a negative spiral down into hopelessness, and eventually, despair, it is a nasty, vicious circle." (Elkin, 2011) According to Elkin, the healthiest and most productive view is to see problems "as raw material for building personal resilience and creating what matters." (2011 ) Complexity is stated to be an integral part of life in that complexity serves to "keep novels interesting, fine wine enjoyable, and living systems resilient and healthy." (Elkin, 2011)

II. Defining Resilience and Creativity

The work of Bain (2010) states that resilience is "the capacity of a system to tolerate disturbance without collapsing, to withstand shocks, to rebuild itself when necessary and to improve itself when possible." Bain (2010) describes creativity by stating the following:

(1) Creativity is putting together disparate ideas in new and useful combinations;

(2) Creativity is an assumptions-breaking process;

(3) Creativity is the generation of ideas and concepts that have not existed before. (Bain, 2010)

Personal resilience is stated in the work of Bain (2010) to be "finding ways to foster and inspire resilient behavior" including;

(1) individual creativity;

(2) organization design thinking; and (3) resilient systems. (Bain, 2010)

Peterson (2011) write that when one attempts to find the solution to a problem, they must begin by focusing on facts that are obvious and solutions that are familiar to see if the answer can be identified. This is stated as a left-brain process. When the answers are not readily identified the right and left-brain hemisphere activate together and "neural networks on the right side scan remote memories that could be vaguely relevant." (Peterson, 2011) Peterson (2011) states that there is a broad range of information that generally is not attuned to that makes itself available to the brain's left hemisphere which seeks patterns that are undiscovered, meanings that are alternative and abstractions of a high level. The left-brain has to react quickly to hone in on the ideas and connections pulling the various threads of information together and bonding them in a singular thought, which then enters upon the individual's consciousness. This is described as "the 'aha' moment of insight, often followed by a spark of pleasure as the brain recognizes the novelty of what it's come up with." (Peterson, 2011)

Discussion