Blog Archives

Creative People and the Urge to Shop

9/27/2022

Creative People, we know, feel things powerfully. Many Creative People have spent much of their lives suppressing traits of their powerful personality, told by society, family, friends, teachers, bosses, and more that their natural inclinations are “too much” or even “harmful.” In Creativity Counseling and Creativity Coaching, we learn the power, gifts and benefits of our Creative Personalities, and reclaim them. Your passion is your strength, not your problem. And so, for our conversation about the urge to shop, we start firmly from this position: as a Creative Person, you likely feel powerful urges to buy beautiful, useful and exciting things. You are not wrong for these feelings.

In addition to powerful feelings as part of your Creative Personality, you also have powerful impulses. This is an important feature that facilitates your Creativity and your Creative Flow. The amount of energy required, both mental and physical, to innovate, design and put together new concepts, ideas and works is huge, and you need large energies to accomplish this. That is why you have them!

Is impulsivity good for creativity?

Picture of a woman holding a credit card up looking at the numbers dialing the phone. Shopping, impulse buying, and creative people is an important thing to discuss with a creativity coach or creativity counselor for neurodiverse people in the United States.

In fact, In a study by Brem and Utica (2019) a Creative Person’s autonomous performance improved directly related to their level of impulsively. In other words, the more impulsive a person was, the more creative they were.

Impulsivity is a part of the creative personality.

What we are essentially saying is the urge and impulse to buy, in this case, is a part of you. Let’s accept that together. It is a byproduct of your creativity- which is desirable. It is also, therefor, not going to change. That means fighting or blaming ourselves over it is unhealthy and harmful. However, this is likely the approach we have been given to work with- guilt, shame and suppression- when it comes to impulse buying.

Options for Creative People

Let’s discuss some better options. When you can accept and embrace impulsivity and powerful emotions and innate and important parts of your creativity, and understand that resisting, controlling and fighting with them is a detrimental exercise for you, you have made great progress already.

Redirection Strategies for Creative People

Picture of a couple with a happy guy shopping and a woman looking annoyed. Creative people and impulse shopping can use guidance from a creativity coach and counselor here. Get creativity coaching in Richmond, VA and beyond in the United States.

Dholakia, Jun and Chowdry (2019) recommend a redirect for impulsive shopping. In fact, in their study they found that focusing the urge to impulsively buying instead on appreciation for what you already have, participants were significantly less likely to want to spend money on something new. This is an important finding, and pieces of this I would like to borrow and recommend to you, as a Creative Person. Based on my experience and knowledge of Creative People, perhaps we should add one additional component: creativity.

Exercise for Creative People When you Feel the Urge to Shop:

Recognize and honor the Creativity in you that appreciates the item you see (beauty, functionality, etc, powerful feelings such as appreciation are part of your personality)
Recognize you are having a powerful moment driven by impulse, which serves your
Creativity, which is an important part of you Take the powerful feelings you are having and redirect them towards something you already have that you have carefully chosen and feel good about
Consider, can you create something beautiful/functional to appreciate the item you would otherwise buy, that would serve your life in the same/similar/better way?

Controlling Your Urges as a Creative Person

It is important to remember, with such powerful energies at work as a Creative Person, to shut them down, dishonor or deny them, such as “don’t buy it” or “you are being greedy/stupid/ gluttonous/etc” is creating an expansive void inside of ourselves which is not sustainable and will ultimately lead to over-something in the future. This is why it is a better strategy to recognize the source of our emotions and redirect them towards something that will feel more satisfying to us long term.

Applications With Children

Creative Children, with developing brains, growing personalities, synapses, emotions and emotional awareness, regularly feel powerful feelings and impulses. While they may need more support in managing them and understanding them, they are entirely capable! As everything with children, patience and consistency is key. Here is wonderful model for managing impulses, recommended by ADDitude (a great resource for neurodiverse families!), called “feeling the “urge monster”):

For [adults]...

Picture of a woman sitting on a couch with a computer holding the credit card. Impulse shopping for creative personalities and neurodiverse individuals in Richmond, VA and beyond in the United States here.

Find a day, or a half day, or even a couple of hours, to spend following your own urges – walk in the woods, eat a hot fudge sundae, sleep late.
If acting on some of your impulses would be inappropriate, let yourself explore them mentally. Ask yourself, “What is underlying this urge? Is there some way I can honor it?” Suppose you felt like telling off a friend. How could you communicate your needs to this friend without being explosively angry? Could you ask another friend to help you come up with the right words and practice them with you? Follow through on the action. Use this experience to help you connect with your child for the next part of the exercise.

For [children]...

If he is between the ages of 5 and 9, tell [them] you want to talk to [them] about the “Urge Monster,” that thing inside each of us that pushes us to do things we shouldn’t. (If [they are] older, you can talk more straightforwardly about uncontrollable urges.) Share some of your own urges as examples. Tell [the] child that it is important to feed the monster but not to let it control you. Ask [them] to talk about some of [their] urges. Work with [them] to think of ways to control the Urge Monster and to feed it [safely]. [1]

Celebrating Creative People

If you have powerful feelings, have struggled with impulsivity, and/or have felt stigmatize or silenced by those around you, these could be signs of your Creative Personality. Creative People are more than what they do- Creativity is who you are. If you are interested in learning more about reclaiming your Creative Strengths and living well, here are three steps you can take today:
1) Book a Free Consultation. All new clients to Creatively, LLC are entitled to a 15 min, free creativity coaching or counseling consultation to sit with me and discuss your needs, services available, and we can problem solve and hand-pick the best next steps to help you succeed.
2) Begin Counseling for the Modern Day Creative Person. Are you a working Creative in need of specific support? I offer a range of Counseling Services so you can select exactly what you need, and nothing that you don't. Creativity Counseling offers 30 min sessions to 60-minute sessions, as well as asynchronous support.
3) Join my Artists in Residency Program. This is a Free, Online Community of Artists where you can build support, accountability, and a network of Creative People as a stepping stone towards reconnecting and committing to your authentic, creative self.

References
[1]https://www.additudemag.com/positive-parenting-tips-impulsivity-self-esteem/
https://neurosciencenews.com/creativity-impulsiveness-14068/
“How to manage creativity time? Results from a social psychological time model lab experiment on individual creative and routine performance”. Alexander Brem, Verena Utikal.  Creativity and Innovation Management. doi:10.1111/caim.12309
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0743915618813582
Dholakia, Utpal, Jihye Jung, and Nivriti Chowdhry (2018), “Should I Buy This When I Have So Much? Reflection on Personal Possessions as an Anticonsumption Strategy,” Journal of Public Policy & Marketing, 37 (2), 260 –63.

Back to School for Gifted, Creative and Neurodiverse Students

9/13/2022

It's Back-to-School time, and that surfaces a slew of complex issues and feelings for Creative People - by nature of their Neurodiversity. Many students, both kids and adults, that have Creative Personalities, are also gifted, and many school systems are not adequately equipped to support you. Socially, educationally, creatively, and aspects of your personality can be misunderstood and present challenges in school. My fear for Creative People is they mistakenly learn their creative strengths as problems because they aren't main-stream, and therefore recognized or supported. Here is a place to get started, arming yourself with knowledge, to succeed as a Creative, Gifted, Neurodiverse student.

Creative Personalities: Who are we?

Reminder: Creativity means Creative Personalities, which is a specific set of traits and features that include the element of creating something. Not always in the Arts, Creative People are Scientists, Engineers, CEOs and business owners, Computer Scientists, Investment Analysts,
Board Members, Franchise Owners, Administrators, Nonprofit Executives, Medical Professionals, and beyond. They are also Writers, Performers, Visual Artists, Culinary Artists, Directors and Filmmakers, Cosmetologists, Designers and more.
Creative People also feature powerful emotions, a drive towards meaning making, authenticity, purposefulness, strong sensory capacities, and other aspects that set them apart in how they interact with and see the world. You can see more of the research about Creative People on this website under “Creative People.”

Creative People, Neurodiversity, Gifted...What's the terminology here?

I also want to note that I regularly interchange the words “Creative People” with “Neurodiversity” and “Giftedness” and within this article is no exception. While I want to acknowledge there are specific ways in which each of these have different uses from each other, they have significant overlap in the intended population described in much of the content here. What we are acknowledging with “Giftedness” and “Neurodiversity” and “Creative Personality” is the Creative Personality as a whole having non-typical ways of interacting with the environment that are extra-adaptive and beneficial to them, while underrecognized by the comparative population at large. Similarly, we understand “Giftendess” to mean the benefits of the Creative Personality such as hyper focus in areas of interest allowing rapid learning and information retention, flexibility and rapid progress.

Supporting Creative Personalities in Education

While there is much progress to be done in education in recognizing and supporting Creative Personalities, for the purposes of this article we will focus on five:

Managing Emotions
Juggling Relationships
Classwork that is too easy
Perfectionism
School feeling boring

Managing Emotions

A regular features of the Creative Personality are powerful emotions. For a variety of reasons, acknowledging improvement in recent years of mental health in the public school system in some areas, school can be an emotionally unstable and difficult place. Generally expressing, communicating and feeling emotions is not supported by peers nor staff, “shutting emotions down” the regular practice, and this is especially unhealthy for the experience of Creative Personalities who experience so much of the world through a powerful emotional lens. The inability to express, communicate or share emotions in school without ridicule or correction results in an environment for Creative People that is poor in experience and rejecting of their overall experiences.

Juggling Relationships

Many Creative People demonstrate a combination of powerful intuition and empathy. While this serves their Creativity, Authenticity and Meaningfulness personality goals very well, it can be difficult to navigate at school. It can be confusing for Creative Personalities to see others not as impacted by events as they are, and/or not treating other, seeing others, or caring about others as they do. Without knowledge and support of their empathy and intuition, and how to protect themselves with healthy boundaries, Creative People often find themselves in relationships and friendships that are unbalanced, or otherwise unhealthy for them.

Classwork That is Too Easy

Meaningfulness is an important aspect to Creative People, and when they become excited about something, they will quickly learn everything they can about that subject- often quickly, easily and efficiently. Regularly, Creative People are quite bright, and, as a result of both of these, can find themselves in classes where the work they are doing are things they already know, and therefore, does not feel meaningful to them.edit.

Perfectionism

Counter to work being too easy, it is also commonplace for Creative People to fall into perfectionism in subject areas that they are highly invested in. Guidance and support to help redirect the powerful creative energy and separate work identity from personal identity is necessary for mental health and balance.

Image of an artist writing, with text saying

School Feeling Boring

Again, related to work that is too easy, and perfectionism, regularly, Creative People find school to be boring, and, even if they can easily complete work, find it difficult to engage in subjects that do not interest them. This is because there is a direct correlation between motivation to do something and the execution of that thing, and this correlation is emotional, and therefore extremely powerful in Creative People. Once Creative Students understand this about themselves, they can released the shame often assigned to them as “lazy,” for example, instead redirecting their emotions to an aspect of school that is motivating enough to them to help move forward.

Are you a Gifted, Creative, and/or Neurodiverse Student? It’s Time for Your Best School Year Ever.

Let's connect and launch your life to the next level! I have three steps you can take, right now from my site if you are ready to take an important step forward in your life:
1) Book a Free Consultation. All new clients to Creatively, LLC are entitled to a 15 min, free consultation to sit with me and discuss your needs, services available, and we can problem solve and hand-pick best next steps to help you succeed.
2) Join my Artists in Residency Program. This is a Free, Online Community of Artists where you can build support, accountability and a network of Creative People as a stepping stone towards reconnecting and committing to your authentic, creative self.
3) Book a Coaching Package. Are you a working Creative in need of specific support? I offer a range of Coaching Packages starting at $150. let's get started with one that is right for you.