Unit 1

Personal growth and development

In Psychology, the notion of the self refers to a person's experience as a single, unitary, autonomous
being that is separate from others, experienced with continuity through time and place.

Personal development is also known as self-development or personal growth. It involves the growth and
enhancement of all aspects of the person, the feelings the person has about himself or herself, and their
effectiveness in living. It includes the development of positive life skills and the development of a
realistic and healthy self-esteem. Personal development involves mental, physical, social, emotional, and
spiritual growth that allows a person to live a productive and satisfying life within the customs and
regulations of their society. This is achieved through the development of life skills.

Personal growth: personal growth, which can be defined as the life-long process of improving one's
awareness of self and identity, developing talents and building human resources to ultimately enhance
one's quality of life and performance at work, refers to the methods and techniques that support human
development at the individual level.

Aspects of personal growth:

1. Social aspects

2. Spiritual aspects

3. Interpersonal aspects

4. Physical aspects

5.Mental aspects

6. Emotional aspects

- Mental aspects: Exercising your brain and staying mentally fit is critical to personal
development. At BetterUp, this comes to life in a few ways: coaching, learning opportunities,
and career growth. For example, right now, I’m taking a creative writing course to help keep my
mental creative muscles going strong. (And BetterUp foots the bill as part of our learning
stipend.)

Mental development can be anything from workshops, training sessions, or even just rest. Rest is
just as (if not more) important than mental exercise. And as your mental fitness improves, so
does your resiliency, innovation, and self-awareness.

- Social aspects: Social connections and relationships are also a must-have for any
personal development. After all, self-improvement is not a solitary pursuit. Humans are
social creatures — we need that connection to learn and grow.
And from social connections, we gain important skills. Like communication skills,
problem-solving, relationship-building, and the ability to receive (and give) feedback. We
also learn from those around us and their experiences.

- Spiritual aspects : Personal growth and development — whether you’re religious or

not — can come through in spirituality. It’s important to recognize that religion and
spirituality are not synonymous. In fact, far from it.

Spirituality means you’re investing in a deeper understanding of your own self in the world
around you. It helps you get to know yourself and uncover your values. And in the context
of Inner Work®, the spiritual personal development tool can bring greater awareness to self
and change.

- Emotional aspects : personal development often goes hand-in-hand with emotional

intelligence. At its simplest, emotional intelligence is the ability to understand feelings.
Beyond feelings, it’s understanding how those feelings shape our thoughts and actions.

Any number of experiences lends itself to emotional personal development. And those
experiences can help you in your pursuit of self-improvement. Take your own Inner Work®
journey so far. What experiences have shaped you into who you are today? When you
reflect on your journey, what have you learned?

If you’re looking back at your journey and identifying the growth, it’s likely you’ve fostered
a sense of emotional development along the way. This requires emotional intelligence to
understand what role your feelings and thoughts played.

- Physical aspects: A healthy body nourishes a healthy mind. There’s an intrinsic link
between your physical, mental, and emotional well-being.

This aspect of personal development is focused on physical health — like nutrition, sleep,
exercise, and movement. When your physical self is nourished, it’s likely your mind is also
reaping those benefits. Consider ways you can build this area of personal development and
take note of how your body and your mind feel.

The benefits of personal development

 Increased self-awareness and self-esteem. Personal growth requires looking inward

at your own thoughts, feelings, habits, and reactions. It requires attentiveness — and
awareness — to who you are as a person in a present state. But it also challenges you
to look to the future to where you want to go. By investing in yourself, yo u’re
increasing your self-awareness and by default, self-esteem.

 Increased mental fitness. Becoming mentally fit requires work. And many aspects
of personal development aid in building strong mental fitness. With increased mental
fitness, you’ll see a ripple effect of positive benefits. We’ve gathered data
 around the impact of mental fitness. People with strong mental fitness are more
productive, are less likely to experience mental illness, and are more creative and
innovative.

 Greater resilience. With personal development, you gain greater resilience. This is
another positive symptom of strong mental fitness, too. Investing in your personal
growth means investing in your ability to bounce back after rough patches.

 More knowledge and learned skills. Oftentimes, personal development comes with
more knowledge and learned skills. This can come to life in different ways. For
example, you may take courses in digital marketing that help you gain the skills you
need to further your career development. Or, you may sign up for art or pottery
classes, which help you gain skills in entirely different areas of your life.
 Improved personal and professional relationships. Another personal development
benefit is improved personal and professional relationships. This is an area that
flourishes when you invest in your personal growth, especially in emotional and
social aspects.

Personal development skills to work on

If you’re not sure where to start, consider working with a coach. Personalized coaching can
help serve as your guide while you’re building your roadmap to self-actualization.

Your coach will work one-on-one with you to help identify key skills to work on catered to
your own experience. You can start by taking the Whole Person Assessment to help assess
where your strengths and areas of opportunity lie.

We’ve identified some common areas of self-improvement and personal development you
may consider investing in:

1. Communication and interpersonal skills

2. Problem-solving
3. Cognitive agility and adaptability
4. Self-compassion, self-care, and self-reflection
5. Conflict and conflict resolution
6. Navigating change and uncertainty
7. Future-mindedness
8. Organizational skills
9. Growth mindset
10. Teamwork and collaboration
11. Self-awareness

Self awareness: Self-awareness is having a clear and realistic perception of who you are. Self-
awareness is not about uncovering a deep dark secret about yourself, but understanding that you
are, why you do what you to, how you do it, and the impact this has on others.
Self-awareness is directly related to both emotional intelligence and success.

Benefits of self awareness

1. It helps you create achievable goals because you can consider your strengths,
weaknesses, and what drives you when goal-setting.

2. It allows you to guide yourself down the right path by choosing to pursue the
opportunities that are the best fit for your skill-set, preferences and tendencies.

3. It makes identifying situations and people that hit our triggers and anticipating our
own reactions easier.

4. It allows us to make positive behavioral changes that can lead to greater personal and
interpersonal success.

Building Self-Awareness

A. Put the time in – Self-awareness is not learned in a book, but achieved through self-
reflection! Use what you have learned about yourself to inform decisions, behaviours,
and interactions with other people. Some guided questions to get you started:

1. What are 3 of your strengths and 3 of your weaknesses?

What do you value most?

2. What are the feelings you are more aware of experiencing than others?

3. What are your triggers (people and situations most likely to trigger negative or
uncomfortable emotions)?

4. How do you respond under stress?

5. How do the different roles you play in your life make you feel (e.g. sister, student,
best friend, employee, athlete, etc.)?

B. Predict how you will feel and respond before a situation and reflect on your actual
feelings and response after the situation.

C. Focus on your choices - What can you learn from your past triumphs and mistakes?
Why did you make a particular decision? How did this choice make you feel?

D. Ask for feedback – Self-awareness is as much about acknowledging what you still
need to learn as it is about identifying your strengths. Asking for feedback on your
performance, behavior, interactions, can serve to improve your future actions and
responses. Feedback can also identify aspects of your behavior you aren’t seeing clearly
(your blind spots).

E. Record (keep a journal) – Allows you to reflect on daily thoughts, feelings,

perceptions, choices, behaviours, and interactions with others. Be honest with yourself.
Reflecting on your experiences allows you to learn something that can guide your
personal development so think about it and write it down!

F. Label your emotions – Feelings can be expressed using one word, but are often held
back. Use the below Inventory of Feelings to practice labeling what you experience in
different situations throughout your day. Your feelings provide insight into your thoughts
and actions, as well as allow us to better relate with others.

What is Self-Esteem?

Self-esteem is part of everyday language, and at an intuitive level, everyone seems to

know what self-esteem “is.” It may surprise you then to know that there is less than
perfect agreement within the psychological literature. Part of the problem is that the term
is used in three different ways.

Self-esteem is a way of thinking, feeling, and acting that implies that you accept, respect,
and believe in yourself.

- When you accept yourself, you are okay with both the good and not so good things
about yourself.

- When you respect yourself, you treat yourself well in much the same way you would
treat someone else you respect.

- To believe in yourself means that you feel you deserve to have the good things in life. It
also means that you have confidence that you can make choices and take actions that will
have a positive effect on your life.

-Part of self-esteem is knowing that you are important enough to take good care of
yourself by making good choices for yourself. For example, choosing nutritious food for
your body, exercising, giving yourself time to relax, etc.

-Self-esteem doesn’t mean you think you are better or more important than other people
are, it means that you respect and value yourself as much as other people.

- Self-esteem needs to come from within and not be dependent on external sources such
as material possessions, your status, or approval from others.

- Having self-esteem also means you don’t have to put other people down to feel good
about yourself.
Signs of low self-esteem

- Lack of confidence

- Negative view of life

- Perfectionistic attitude

- Mistrusting others inappropriately

- Blaming behavior

- Fear of taking appropriate risks

- Feelings of being unloved and unlovable

- Dependence on others to make decisions

- Fear of being ridiculed

- Distorted view of self and others

Signs of high self-esteem

- Confidence

- Self-direction

- Non-blaming behavior

- Awareness of personal strengths

- Ability to make mistakes and learn from them

- Ability to accept mistakes from others

- Optimism

- Ability to solve problems

- Independent and cooperative attitude

- Feeling comfortable with a wide range of emotions

- Ability to appropriately trust others

 - Good sense of personal limitations

- Ability to set boundaries and say no

- Good self-care

Unit- 2

Facets of interpersonal trust

Interpersonal trust refers to confidence in another person (or between two persons) and a
willingness to be vulnerable to him or her (or to each other).

Interpersonal relationships make up every relationship that fulfills a range of physical and
emotional needs for you. These are the people who you’re closest with in your life.

While romantic relationships are interpersonal, family members and intimate friends are, too.
There’s also such a thing as secondary interpersonal relationships. These include acquaintances,
neighbors, and others who you interact with on a regular basis.

In short, you have some kind of interpersonal relationship with everyone you know.

Given the importance of relationships to our emotional and physical well-being, it’s necessary to
learn how to develop and maintain them.

Stages of relationships

Relationships don’t develop suddenly. One psychologist, George Levinger, identified five stages
of interpersonal relationships in a 1980 study. He called this stage theory, which includes:

 acquaintance

 buildup

 continuation

 deterioration
  ending (termination)

A successful interpersonal relationship will only go through the first three stages. A relationship
that ends in a breakup with a friend or romantic partner will go through all five of these stages.

Not all relationships will make it past the first stage of acquaintance, either. Part of the
importance of Levinger’s theory is to show that interpersonal relationships are just as dynamic as
they are varied.

Dimesions of interpersonal relations

All interpersonal relationships are built on loyalty, support, and trust. Close relationships may
also be built on love. Mutual respect and reciprocation of these qualities is important in
maintaining all your relationships.

Loyalty : Loyalty is a commitment to respect, support, and protect the other person in a
relationship. This commitment includes honoring the other person's feelings and physical
comfort and safety.

Support: to agree with and give encouragement to someone or something because you
want him, her, or it to succeed: My father supported the Democratic Party all his life.

Trust: assured reliance on the character, ability, strength, or truth of someone or

something.

What is self-disclosure and what are the benefits of doing it?

Here, we’ll talk about the science behind self-disclosure and offer some tips to help you
self-disclose effectively in your own life.

Are you feeling disconnected from others? Do you want to share more of yourself with
your friends but aren’t sure how to do it? Then learning about self-disclosure may help
you. Self-disclosure of personal information is one part art and one part science. So, in
this article, we’ll break it all down for you to help you better understand how to self-
disclose in ways that boost your well-being and sense of social connection.

The Meaning of Self-Disclosure

Psychology research often focuses on the disclosure of highly personal information but in reality,
self-disclosure exists on a spectrum. We could disclose something fairly easy like “My favorite
food is lasagna”. We could disclose something a bit more personal like “I’m having problems
with my boyfriend.” Or we could disclose extremely personal things like “I was raped as a
teenager.” Of course, the experience of sharing personal details of our lives depends crucially on
how personal they are.

The intensity and frequency with which we self-disclose personal details shape the types of
relationships we have with people in our lives—our family, friends, coworkers, and other
communities (Greene, Derlega, & Mathews, 2006). For example, if we disclose virtually nothing
at all, people often have a hard time connecting to us—they don’t really know who we are. If we
disclose too much, too often, others might feel overwhelmed or burdened by the content of our
self-disclosure. That’s why I think of self-disclosure as a Goldilocks tool. Not too little, not too
much, but just the right amount of sharing is what we’re aiming for.

Features of self-disclosure messages

In addition to the intensity of self-disclosure, there are several other features
of self-disclosure that scientists have explored (Greene, Derlega, & Mathews,
2006). They are:

 Accessibility – How easy or difficult is it for the discloser to share the

information?
 Reward value – How positive or negative is the experience of self-
disclosing for the discloser or the listener?
 Informativeness – How much breadth (variety of topics disclosed) or
depth (level of intimacy of topics disclosed) is there?
 Truthfulness – How true is the disclosure and how much does it
represent the discloser’s true self?
 Social norms – How much does the disclosure adhere or go against
what’s socially acceptable in the larger society?
 Effectiveness – How much does the disclosure help the discloser and
listener achieve their goals (e.g., building intimacy, connection, or
understanding)?

Unit 3

Personal change
By means of this article, my intent is not to generate just yet another
spark of motivation in your life that lasts only for a short period, but to
equip you with the scientific knowledge that goes behind transforming
oneself, thereby making Personal Change a logical process for you.

So then let’s first define what is Personal Change, or what does

Personal Change mean to you at the most fundamental level?

Personal Change (or changing oneself) really means to be

able to comfortably demonstrate new behaviors that
produce new results in your life which in turn causes you to
feel differently.

Assuming you agree with this definition, the central thing to note here is that the end result is a
feeling, i.e., you have determined to change something in your life because you are chasing after a
particular feeling. For example, you want to feel confident and attractive when you decide to lose
weight, you want to feel happy and accomplished when you determine to follow through on your
side projects/hobbies, etc.

If a feeling is a goal, let’s then reason out why you feel the way you feel. Would you agree that
the way you feel is dependent on the experiences you have at the moment? Taking a step back,
would you then also agree that your experiences are determined by how to behave/act in your
environment? Taking another step back, wouldn’t your actions or behaviours depend on the
choices you make in a given situation? And finally, aren’t the choices you make depend on the
thoughts that you have been thinking at the moment?

Please note that the understanding of this concept (as explained by Dr.
Joe Dispenza in his book “Breaking the habit of being yourself”)
that “your thoughts determine your choices, your choices determine
your behaviours, your behaviours determine your experiences, and
your experiences generate the feelings” is extremely relevant to
appreciate what goes behind the process of personal change.

So, a natural conclusion would be — if your thoughts ultimately

determine your feelings, and if you essentially are running after a
feeling, then to change yourself means to change the way you think.
However, before concluding this, I would like to introduce what Beliefs
are, and how they affect and interact with our thought process.

Belief is an unchallenged acceptance that a statement is true or that

something exists. For example, a belief could be that everything always
turns out all right.

Dimensions of belief :

For instance, if you are working on a time-sensitive deadline driven

project, and you unchallengingly believe that everything always turns
out all right, you are more likely to think clearly about the tasks at
hand, choose to not be stressed but rather take it up as a
challenge, behave in a focused manner and probably encourage others
to do the same, experience high performance despite stressful
situation, that finally makes you feel accomplished, inspired,
energized, and happy.

Therefore, based on the above illustration, it proves that it is your

beliefs that drive your thoughts which then generate your feelings.
Beliefs → Thoughts → Choices → Behaviors → Experiences → Feelings

Now, imagine what if instead of believing that everything always turns

out all right, you believed that you cannot work well in stressful
situations or you always get unreasonable deadlines, it is not hard to
imagine that the outcome of the same stressful situation (and hence
your reality) would be very different, that would make you feel angry,
frustrated, deflated, and victimized.

Therefore, some of your beliefs can support you in your growth, others
might limit or impede your success. While the situation in your
external environment may remain the same, how you choose to react
to it ultimately determines your reality.

Beliefs that impede or hold you back from achieving your desired
results are called self-limiting beliefs. The takeaway here is that, in
order to change, you need to identify these limiting beliefs that have
produced undesired results in your life, and change them.

Since we now appreciate that:

a. Personal change is the ability to comfortably demonstrate new

behaviours that produce new results in your life which in turn cause
you to feel differently;

b. Our beliefs drive our thoughts which ultimately generate the

feelings;
c. We are essentially chasing the feelings as an end result of change;
and

d. The first step to making a long-lasting change is to identify our

limiting beliefs, and change them to the new beliefs that reflect our
desired destiny,

let’s delve into why changing oneself is such a hard and an

uncomfortable process.

Why is change hard?

At this stage, it is important to establish that your mind has two

compartments; one is the conscious mind (which is only 5–10%) and
the rest 90–95% is your sub-conscious mind. Your conscious mind is
your objective or thinking mind that is responsible for making choices,
planning, learning new information, etc. Your subconscious mind is
your memory bank that performs the function of storing and retrieving
data, and keeping your body systems running efficiently (i.e. heart
functioning, digestion, creating enzymes and proteins for body
maintenance, etc.). It is your subconscious mind only where all
your beliefs about life reside.

So then wouldn’t you want to know how these beliefs got programmed
in your subconscious mind in the first place?
Your subconscious programming begins the time you take birth (the
science actually suggests that we start downloading information as
soon as six weeks from the time we are conceived and while still in our
mother’s womb through the emotions she experiences during her
pregnancy). From the time of birth till the age of seven, the brain’s
primary function is to observe and record the information from the
outer environment without any filters (information such as beliefs and
behaviours necessary to operate in this world). So, if your parents
demonstrated the emotions of unworthiness, guilt, suffering,
victimization, resentment, etc. while you were growing up, you would
download these emotions without any filters and form beliefs equal to
these emotions. As you grow past seven years, you begin to put some
weight on your own life experiences but are still highly suggestible to
the information from your outer environment. Only around the age of
13, you have developed your own analytical/thinking mind. But the
critical thing to note is that most of your sub-conscious programming
is complete by the time you turn 13.

Therefore, while you get motivated after reading an article or a self-

help book or by watching a video and make a conscious decision to
change, the motivation wanes quite fast if your beliefs are not
supportive of your desired future state. For example, if you want to lose
weight, but you believe that obesity runs in your family and it’s a
genetic issue, then you are most likely to return back to your old habits.
This happens since you are basically caught up in the fight between
your 5–10% conscious mind (that is wanting you to change) and 90–
95% subconscious mind (which contain your beliefs most likely
responsible for creating your present reality). Due to the conflicting
states of your conscious and subconscious minds, true change never
occurs, and you end up finding yourselves in the same undesired
situations over and over again.

How to inspire a mindful and everlasting change in your life.

three-step process:

1. AWARE — becoming conscious of your current/old self

2. ASPIRE — creating an inspiring vision of your future

3. ACT — demonstrating becoming of your new self

Step #1 “AWARE” deals with the awareness of your old self. In this
step, you first discover your beliefs that are in conflict with the change
you desire to bring in your life, and then become aware of how you
operate (i.e. think, feel, and act) out of these beliefs. As you do this
exercise, you would begin to notice that some of your beliefs such as ‘I
don’t have enough time’, ‘I gain weight easily’, ‘Things always turn out
harder than it seems’, ‘I have to work harder than others’, ‘All the good
guys/girls are already taken’, etc. are exactly the things that are
stopping you from demonstrating the behaviors required to reach your
desired future state. Through this process of assessment and
awareness, you recognize that most of your limiting beliefs are the
record of the past, and they may not have anything to do with your
future.

Step #2 “ASPIRE” is about creating an inspiring vision of your new

self, including planting a belief that reflects your new destiny.

1. Determine a future event you want to witness as the new-self.

2. Get juicy about the details and list 3–5 great things that will come
true with the unfolding of this future event.

3. Now visualize yourself in the future event and notice how you would
feel and how you would behave as your new self.

Notice that becoming truly inspired is the key since actions when
inspired by a vision of your future are more likely to form into long-
term habits.

Step #3 “ACT” is where you plan specific actions every day to

demonstrate becoming of your new self. In this step, list 1–3 important
things that you should focus on doing every day. Remember, the main
thing here is to keep the main thing the main thing. In prioritizing your
daily tasks, ask yourself the following question — completion of which
task would take me closest to the future event? Visualize yourself in the
future event every day and recall the feelings that you identified
during the “ASPIRE” phase. These feelings produce the emotional
charge (or the energy) within you to activate your subconscious mind
and helps to register a new belief that reflects your new destiny. By
repeating and rehearsing these feelings during your daily
visualizations, you are essentially reprogramming your sub-conscious
mind to the new expression of yourself, thereby making change real.
Finally, do a daily/weekly/monthly review to self-evaluate how did you
and if there is anything you can do differently.

As I end this article, my hope is that you are able to apply this
information to deliberately create the life you have always wanted. You
are able to acknowledge your own greatness and know that you are
meant to achieve whatever you wish to in your life. As you take
personal ownership to bring the desired change in your life, I hope you
also accept that there will be times when you would fall from grace, but
you would still be kind to yourself. Last but not the least, I hope you
recognize that the effort it takes can be tiresome, but if you endure and
persist as you cross the river of change, in time you will relish the
results.

Habit formation

Habit formation is the process by which behaviors become automatic. Habits can form without a
person intending to acquire them, but they can also be deliberately cultivated—or eliminated—to
better suit one’s personal goals.

How We Form Habits

People develop countless habits as they navigate the world, whether they are aware of them or
not. The knee-jerk nature of these behaviors can help people get their needs met more efficiently
in everyday life. Yet the fact that habits become deeply ingrained in our brains means that even if
a particular habit creates more problems than it solves, it can be difficult to break. Understanding
how habits take shape to begin with may be helpful in dismantling and replacing them.

What are examples of habits?

Habits may be harmful or health-promoting. Instinctively reaching for a cigarette after waking
up—or any drug associated with particular cues—is a habit. So is picking up a pair of running
shoes after getting home each day or buckling your seatbelt without thinking about it.

Why do humans have habits?

One likely reason people are creatures of habit is that habits are efficient: People can perform
useful behaviors without wasting time and energy deliberating about what to do. This tendency
toward quick-and-efficient responses can backfire, however—as when it gets hijacked by the use
of addictive drugs or consumption of unhealthy food.

What causes a habit?

Habits are built through learning and repetition. A person is thought to develop a habit in the
course of pursuing goals (such as driving to a destination or satisfying an appetite) by beginning
to associate certain cues with behavioral responses that help meet the goal (turning at certain
streets, or stopping at a drive-thru with a familiar sign). Over time, thoughts of the behavior and
ultimately the behavior itself are likely to be triggered by these cues.

What is a habit loop?

A “habit loop” is a way of describing several related elements that produce habits. These
elements have been called the cue (or trigger), the routine (or behavior), and the reward. For
example, stress could serve as a cue that one responds to by eating, smoking, or drinking, which
produces the reward (the reduction of stress—at least temporarily). The “habit loop” concept was
popularized by Charles Duhigg in The Power of Habit.

What’s the difference between a habit and a routine?

While a routine involves repeated behavior, it’s not necessarily performed in response to an
ingrained impulse, like a habit is. You might routinely wash the dishes or go to the gym without
feeling an impulse to do so because you feel you need to do those things.

What are the most common bad habits?

Widespread bad habits include drinking or eating more than is recommended, smoking, and drug
misuse. Other common and potentially harmful habits include excessive viewing of phones or
other devices (which can, for example, be disruptive to sleep when done at night).

Why are habits so hard to break?

A person may not be fully aware of how her habit works—habits are built to make things happen
without us having to think much about them. Consciously intervening in one’s own habitual
behavior likely won’t come naturally, so breaking a habit can require some consideration and
effort.

Unit 4

Creativity and innovation

What are innovation and creativity? Innovation can be broadly thought of as new ideas, new ways of
looking at things, new methods or products that have value. Innovation contains the idea of output, of
actually producing or doing something differently, making something happen or implementing
something new. Innovation almost always involves hard work; persistence and perseverance are
necessary as many good ideas never get followed through and developed. Creativity is an active process
necessarily involved in innovation. It is a learning habit that requires skill as well as specific
understanding of the contexts in which creativity is being applied. The creative process is at the heart of
innovation and often the words are used interchangeably. According to Kampylis and Berki (2014, p. 6):
‘Creative thinking is defined as the thinking that enables students to apply their imagination to
generating ideas, questions and hypotheses, experimenting with alternatives and to evaluating their
own and their peers’ ideas, final products and processes.’ Kaufman and Beghetto (2009, p. 6) developed
four categories of creativity which help to reveal the nuances between different levels and types of
creativity.

Four categories of creativity

Big-C creativity Big-C creativity is reserved to describe the work of an elite few who have transformed
(sometimes their discipline with their inventions. Their work has been generally accepted as being
called ‘high’ innovative and ground-breaking, even if it was considered controversial when it was
creativity) first created. Some examples are scientific works such as Einstein’s theory of relativity
and Darwin’s theory of evolution, and works of art such as Picasso’s Guernica, Jane
Austen’s novel Emma or Ludwig van Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 in D Minor. Big-C
creativity is out of reach of most of us, and big-C creators themselves are often as
extraordinary as their creations.
Pro-c creativity This type of creativity has involved time (usually at least 10 years) and effort to
develop. A musician who showed promise as a child, has trained to degree level and
now makes a living teaching and playing classical music could be classified as pro-c. A
physicist working at a university who teaches and undertakes academic research
could also be classified as pro-c.
Little-c Little-c creativity is about ‘acting with flexibility, intelligence and novelty in the
creativity everyday’ (Craft, 2005, p. 43). This results in creating something new that has
‘originality and meaningfulness’ (Richards, 2007, p. 5). This everyday kind of creativity
can be found in the kind of person who can resolve a complex problem at work, is a
keen gardener with an eye for design, or takes creative photographs and exhibits
them on a photo-sharing website. School-age learners may work at little-c level if they
engage in purposeful practice in their discipline. Little-c creativity involves practice
and may be developed over a long period of time. The internet has provided the
 infrastructure for little-c creativity to thrive. Websites such as YouTube, Instagram and
Etsy enable creative people to share their expertise and work.
Mini-c Mini-c is defined as the ‘novel and personally meaningful interpretation of
creativity experiences, actions, and events’ (Beghetto & Kaufman, 2007, p. 73). This is the kind
of creativity that can be nurtured by teachers and parents. ‘Mini-c happens when a
person demonstrates “flexibility, intelligence and novelty” in their thinking’ (Craft,
2005, p. 19). It is usually applied, but not necessarily limited, to children’s creativity.
Mini-c creativity may not be visible to outsiders and may consist purely of ideas and
connections that the learner creates. As Vygotsky (1967, p. 7) explains: ‘Any human
act that gives rise to something new is referred to as a creative act, regardless of
whether what is constructed is a physical object or some mental or emotional
construct that lives within the person who created it and is known only to him.’ Piaget
suggested that ‘to understand is to invent’ (1976, cited by Richards, 2007, p. 95)
meaning that a learner ‘invents’ an understanding of new material for themselves.
Mini-c creativity could describe a learner’s achievement in finding several different
ways of approaching a maths problem. It could also involve making a new connection
between their existing knowledge and a new piece of information which helps them
to understand the subject more fully

The boundaries between these categories can be blurred and they are not age specific. A person could
fit into multiple categories in different areas of their life. For example, a chef who could produce dishes
at a pro-C level while at work might work at a little-c level when attending a watercolour painting class.

The two categories most relevant to schools are little-c and mini-c creativity. They highlight the fact
that being creative and innovative is not so much about revolutionary ideas or new inventions that
change the world. It is about individual growth achieved through small insights.

Creativity and innovation are fundamental to all disciplines and an essential part of the learning
process. They are also fundamental to teachers improving their professional practice and to school
development.

Being innovative and creative is dependent on the other attributes. Being creative requires reflection,
encourages engagement and develops confidence and responsibility. The ability and inclination to be
creative is essential to living a fulfilled and successful life, and it is valued in higher education and the
workplace. There are many other benefits of maximising one’s own creative potential such as physical
and psychological health improvements, improved resilience in the face of difficulties and even lower
levels of aggression (Richards, 2007, p.9).

Craft (2005, p.15) points out that our understanding of innovation and creativity have progressed and
broadened over time. In the early 20th century creativity was considered to be an innate, elusive quality
that individuals were born with. Initially creativity was most closely associated with the arts but grew to
include science, technology and other disciplines. In the 21st century creativity is increasingly viewed as
a distributed and collaborative process of communal sense making and problem solving.
As with all the learner attributes, cultural perspectives are also very important when considering
creativity. Confucian heritage cultures, for example, tend to see creativity more as a collective exercise.
They place responsibility for creativity on the social group rather than the individual. Individuals,
therefore, are not encouraged to stand out from the class in the same way or to the same extent as in
Western cultures. This does not mean that creativity is in any way less valued. As with all the learner
attributes, ideas presented in this chapter need to be interpreted and implemented in a culturally
sensitive way

Creativity, innovation and learning

Learning involves challenging, refining and improving understanding by being made to think hard.
Sometimes, to understand new concepts and broaden perspectives, our approaches to thinking need to
be creative, imaginative and lateral (incorporating new ways of looking at things), as well as linear (using
existing patterns of thought).

One characteristic of the creative process that makes it particularly powerful is that it requires not only
knowledge and understanding of the domain being investigated, but also a willingness to question and
not be constrained by existing knowledge. Learners should understand how they can question or
challenge established knowledge to help them to formulate their own understanding, and imagination
can play an important role:

‘One cannot think creatively unless one has the knowledge with which to think creatively. Creativity
represents a balance between knowledge and freeing oneself of that knowledge’ (Johnson-Laird, 1988,
p.207, cited by Sternberg, 2012, p.4).

For creative thinking to deepen and extend learning, rather than be an enjoyable but superficial activity,
it must be grounded in understanding of the content being investigated. It is vital that learners have
sufficient understanding of the material with which they are being asked to be creative. Creative
practice needs to complement diligent and deliberate practice that develops foundational skills – not be
a substitute for it.

A revised version of Bloom’s original 1956 taxonomy by Krathwohl (2002, p.212–218; see Figure 4)
includes creativity in the taxonomy and places creativity above evaluation as a higher order thinking
skill. An alternative, and probably more accurate, representation would be to include creativity as a
process involved in skills at all levels represented in the taxonomy, and increasingly so with higher order
skills. It might be thought that remembering factual information does not involve creative processes. In
fact, as the section later in this chapter on mind maps reveals, creative approaches can be very helpful in
remembering information. The processes used by champions at the World Memory Championships are
highly creative as they use the mind’s capacity to recognise and remember chunks or patterns that have
meaning to the individual much more effectively than isolated facts.

Creative learning activities, like any other, need to respect Vygotsky’s zone of proximal development
with appropriate scaffolding provided by the teacher.
This is an area in which cultural sensitivity may be particularly important. If students are not used to
being asked to demonstrate creative habits and skills they need to be guided. How the creative activity
links to broader learning objectives needs to be clearly understood by teachers and students.

Having a creative habit, the disposition to behave creatively is critical. Csikszentmihalyi (2002, p.99)
emphasises the importance of having a playful attitude while remaining disciplined. Whenever possible,
play should be used to extend the range of opportunities to think. There are several character traits and
learning habits that affect a learner’s personal disposition, motivation and confidence to be creative. For
example:

• resilience: an ability to tolerate uncertainty and persevere at a task to overcome obstacles

• not being afraid to make and learn from mistakes

• an ability to suspend judgement while generating ideas

• willingness to take sensible risks or go out of their comfort zone in their work. A creative learner needs
to be able to develop and apply a set of skills that they can use in the creative process. These include
being able to:

• clarify, analyse and re-define the problem or question to uncover new ways of looking at it

• ask thoughtful questions

• notice connections between seemingly unrelated subject matter

• challenge established wisdom by asking: how would I improve this?

• recognise alternative possibilities

• look at things from different perspectives. Creative processes usually require self-regulation, and the
ideas relating to reflection and metacognition considered in Chapter 3 apply. These include learners:

• being aware of their own skills, both strengths and limitations

• thinking of a range of different strategies or approaches to use in response to a problem or question

• planning which approach to use

• monitoring their work, and being flexible enough to change to a different approach if necessary

• critically evaluating their work at appropriate points