Excerpt from 7 Sins That Kill Creativity in America by Michael Michalko
We are taught to be critical, judgmental, negative and reproductive thinkers. In our "culture of helplessness," we take pride in dissecting the ideas and thoughts of others and demonstrating their flaws. The more negative we can be, the more intelligent we appear to others. In meetings, the person who is master of destroying ideas becomes the most dominant one. The first thought we have when confronted with a new idea is "Okay, now what's wrong with it?"
When forced to come up with ideas, we come up with only a few. These are the ideas we always come up with because these are the same old safe ideas that are closest to our consciousness. Our judgmental mind will censor anything that is new, ambiguous or novel. We respond to new ideas the way our immune system responds to a deadly virus. Our inner voice will advise us to "Not look stupid," "Give up. You don't have the background or expertise," "It's not relevant," "If it was any good, it would already have been done before" "This will never be approved," "where's the proof? "This is not logical," "Don't be silly," "You'll look stupid," and so on. Anything that is not verifiable by our past experiences and beliefs is not possible.
Instead of looking for ways to make things work and get things done, we spend our time looking for reasons why things can't work or get done.
Michael Michalko is the author of the highly acclaimed Thinkertoys: A Handbook of Creative Thinking Techniques; Cracking Creativity: The Secrets of Creative Genius; ThinkPak: A Brainstorming Card Deck and Creative Thinkering: Putting Your Imagination to Work. http://creativethinking.net/#sthash.SXV5T2cu.dpbs
