Can Creative Thinking be Learnt?

Positive Psychology lists 24 character traits that can contribute to having a positive personality. These are grouped under 6 headings -

1. Wisdom and knowledge
2. Courage
3. Humanity
4. Justice
5. Temperance
6. Transcendence

Wisdom and Knowledge includes creativity, curiosity, open mindedness, love of learning and wisdom. I’ve been looking at creativity this week and asking the question:

Can creative thinking be learnt?

The answer I came to was yes. So how do you learn to think creatively? Where do you start?

On good way is to play games that stimulate creative thinking. Here are some suggestions:

The Good The Bad and the Interesting
You start with a theme, then state what is good about the theme, what is bad about it, and what is interesting.

Here are some examples:

Theme: Disease
Good: Medical doctors make a living out of it and help people get better
Bad: People suffer lots of pain and suffering through disease.
Interesting: The word has tow components Dis and ease. When you have a disease you are not at ease.

Theme: Murder
Good: A great ingredient for a play or novel. Shakespeare loved using murder in his plays.
Bad: Murder causes suffering and pain.
Interesting: Murder helps reduce the population in overcrowded cities.

Theme: Football
Good; Football is a great game to watch with my mates
Bad: Football supporters can be violent.
Interesting: The first balls used in football were made from inflated animal bladders.

The Good Bad Interesting exercise forces you to see different perspectives on an idea. Ideas can be seen as good, as bad or as interesting – and this  depends on the particular frame of mind you are coming from.

Word Association
Write down or say a word, then record the first associated word or phrase that comes to mind. For example:

Worm
long a slimy
an unset jelly
wobble
slippert
slipping
down a dark hole
musty
smelly

Emotion Poems
Create a two-lined poem that starts with an emotion. Here are some examples:

Loneliness is a telephone that never rings
Loneliness is sat at a table waiting for a date that never arrives

Happiness is seeing my lover smile
Happiness is walking barefoot in the park.

For more information read this article on creative thinking