How to Nurture Your Child to Be Creative #1 Let Them Lead the Play

Latest research suggests that although it’s good for us to provide interesting objects and materials for children to play with, and to be on hand to help and play with your child, your child will be happier and more creative if you allow time for unstructured play – in other words, you sometimes need to take a step back and let your child decide what they want to do.

Your child will need access to resources to encourage play and so it is a good idea to set out several different toys and materials (paper plates, paints, glitter, Lego, etc.) which they can use as and when they wish during their playtime. Because they have initiated the play, they will be more actively engaged in whatever activity they are doing and as a result, they will learn more from it.

Allowing your child to lead their own play is not the easy option. Painting and crafts can certainly be messy and after all your careful preparation you may find you child is more interested in playing with teddy bears. This can be very frustrating, however, remember that your child is going to be more creative if they are making more choices about how they use the resources they’re provided with.

Lord, Give Us Today Our Daily Idea(s)

Change Your Life: Listen with Empathy and Openness (Don't Rush to Give Advice)

“It is the province of knowledge to speak,

And it is the privilege of wisdom to listen”
(Oliver Wendell Holmes)

I’m still learning this: the key to providing emotional and moral support to people in need, is the ability to listen to what they are saying. When others need our help, my instincts, our instinct is to rush in and provide comfort and practical advice. But no matter how valuable the knowledge that we wish to share, no matter how well intentioned our desire to help, our first obligation is to provide the space and the opportunity for others to share experiences, feelings and thoughts. We need to beware of our inclination to think about our response while others are speaking, jump to complete their sentences, or interject with our advice – even if it is the best advice possible.

Learning from the experience and advice of others is extremely important – it is one of principal ways in which we grow as individuals and humankind. But it usually works only if those receiving the advice feel that they have been heard. Once a student told earnestly to me, “Thank you for listening to me.” I didn’t give any advice, I just listened and I asked questions. Well, if advice is needed and necessary, then give advice. But first – listen.

In the early 1970s, Robert Greenleaf coined the term Servant Leadership after noticing that the great leaders throughout history spoke and acted as servants. According to Greenleaf and other leadership scholars, one of the core characteristics of servant leaders is that they listen first and talk later. In fact, in become a servant leader, Greenleaf argued, a person has to go through “a long arduous discipline of learning to listen, a discipline sufficiently sustained that the automatic response to any problem is to listen first.” First we need to learn how to listen.

Don’t rush to give advice,

Listen with empathy and openness

Lord, Give Us Today Our Daily Idea(s)

 References:

1. Choose the Life You Want: 101 Ways to Create You Own Road to Happiness by Tal Ben-Shahar, PhD (New York: The Experiment, 2012) Buy this book!

2. On Becoming a Person: A Therapist’s View of Psychotherapy by C.R. Rogers (Boston: Mariner Books, 1995)

Change Your Life: Choose to Choose

Don't just go with the flow in choosing college: What's your interest?
What's your dream? What's suit your talent and passion? Choose to choose.

“Understand that the right to choose your own path is a sacred privilege.
Use it. Dwell in possibilities” (Oprah Winfrey)

Lately I’ve noticed that a lot of conversation about dealing with the stresses of modern life seem to conclude with someone advising that we should all stop worrying so much and trying so hard, that we should go with the flow and “just live our life.” Sometimes this is good advice, as many things are beyond our control and worrying about them will not make any difference. And we can often be so focused on the future that we miss out on all there is to enjoy in the present moment. But this advice has a serious downside: “Just live your life” can lead us to turn our back on our most sacred privilege, our ability to choose our own path. In the guise of freeing us from stress and struggle, “just live your life” can actually have the sinister effect of preventing us from making the most of our life.

When the injunction to just live our life becomes a license not to choose, we end up being pulled along by other’s choices, simply behaving the way we always have in the past, passively reacting to life rather than actively creating the life that we really want to be living. To make the most of our life, we must first of all choose to choose – this is the fundamental choice underlying all other choices. We must commit ourselves to the idea that there are far more possibilities than we normally see, and then to the effort that it takes to examine these possibilities and choose the one that is best for us.

Lord, Give Us Today Our Daily Idea(s)

 References:

1. Choose the Life You Want: 101 Ways to Create You Own Road to Happiness by Tal Ben-Shahar, PhD (New York: The Experiment, 2012)

2. Think! Why Crucial Decisions Can’t Be Made in the Blink of an Eye by R. M. LeGault (New York: Threhold Editions, 2006)

                                                                     

Common Blocks to Creativity #2: Conformity

“Let us not follow where the path may lead.

Let us go instead where there’s no path and leave a trail” (Japanese Proverb)

My dictionary defines conformity as “compliance with standards, rules, or laws” and “behaviour in accordance with socially accepted conventions.” Negative form of Conformity creeps into us because of the fear of disregarding social norms, the fear of social disapproval. A number of factors raise the desire to conformity. Fear of failure, fear of humiliation and rejection, and allergy to ambiguity (or uncertainly) may make one escape into a safe, don’t-rock-the-boat, conformist niche. Conformity permits a relatively risk-free existence through the acceptance of the status quo. It manifests itself in excessive compliance to customs, traditions, rituals, and procedures. (Also standards, rules and man-made laws).

An excessive desire for conformity is clearly a block to creativity, since creativity implies change in the status quo. Indeed, conformists have often blocked creative individuals. Jesus, my Lord was rejected by the Pharisees for his teachings (and his claiming to be equal with God) and Galileo was made to recant his theories by the Roman Catholic Church. No doubt, some research evidence suggests that conformity to social pressures dampens creativity.

Some conformity is, of course, essential for any social existence. But without creativity, a society would soon face extinction since the world keeps on changing, thereby making the status quo obsolete. Societies that adapt quickly tend to survive and prosper. Those that stick to conventional modes are often superseded by those that do not.

“The roots of conformity may go deep, into child-rearing practices, into what is considered right and wrong behaviour, and the severity with which deviation from socially prescribed behaviour is punished,” write Pradip N. Khandwalla in his book Lifelong Creativity. He added: “Conformity cannot be got rid of easily. Active questioning of conventions and habits, exposure to dynamic cultures, and rewarding of creative forays, however, can break the shackles of conformity. A study of individuals who successfully broke conventions can also fortify one’s resistance to conformity, as also friendship with unconventional types.”

“Creativity often rewards the non-conformist, the iconoclast, the generalist who treats life not a linear fast track to success, but as a forest of rich discoveries that one can meander through, creating one’s own trail” (Ho Kwon Ping). Most of the time, be a non-conformist!

Lord, Give Us Today Our Daily Idea(s)