Exploring Your Creative Genius: Episode 138
For this column I’m not going to revisit this radio show. It’s a show about how important it is to allow folks to use their preferred behaviors when working on a project—if they are analytical their brains function better when they are allowed to use bring their analytical talents, for instance. We reviewed three other behavior preferences—having a bias for action; wanting to work collaboratively; being predisposed to work within your imagination. I identified the creative qualities inherent in those behavior sets.
Instead I want to bring a smile. I kick off my workshops and classes telling a joke. I do this for two reasons.
First, because jokes are irrational and unexpected they bust the status quo, and that’s a good thing at the beginning of a creative activity.
Second, when a room of 15 people laugh at the joke, when they ‘share a laugh’, they show early signs of trust, and even if only a little they begin to come together from that act of sharing.
Here’s two of my favorites. The first was a joke one of my granddaughters created when she was 7 or 8.
‘Knock knock
Who’s there?
The chicken who crossed the road.
The chicken who crossed the road who?
The chicken who crossed the road to get to a better eggsit.’
I had never heard of anyone mashing together those two iconic child’s joke structures. I loved it even before we got to the punch line.
And my brother, when he was about the same age, came up with this one.
‘What did the snail say when it hitched a ride on the back of a turtle?
He said, Wheeeee!’
I used that second joke at the beginning of the first class of a new semester when I taught at Duke not only for the benefits I listed above but also because I would really throw myself into the ‘wheee’ and show the students I am not a professor and am prepared to be a silly fool if it will help them open up to the creative content that’s coming.
“Exploring Your Creative Genius” takes an expansive view on what it means to be creative and entrepreneurial in an ongoing conversation led by Carl Nordgren — entrepreneur, novelist, and lifelong student with decades of experience growing his own creative capacity and assisting others to do the same in exciting new ways!
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