by Phyllis Mufson, Catalyst for Personal and Professional Growth

Are you creative? Once upon a time, long ago, when the Russians were launching Sputnik into space, there was a giant Fortune-500 company headquartered in the United States. This firm was investing millions of dollars of research-and-development money into beating the Russians in the “Space Wars.”

They hired the best scientists and engineers and gave them the best equipment and absolutely anything they could think of to help the scientists to generate creative ideas and innovative products. And the results were – disappointing.

A few scientists were innovating, but the majority were not.

What to do? Thus began some early research into creativity. Researchers were hired to survey what the scientists read, what they ate for breakfast, their relationships with their mothers –- the list goes on –- and they found — nothing. They found no correlation between the questions they were investigating and who was producing results.

Until the researchers asked, “Are you creative?” It turned out that the scientists who answered “yes” were producing creative, innovative, groundbreaking work, and the scientists who answered “no” were not.

This was the breakthrough. With further investigation the researchers found out more. The scientists who considered themselves creative turned out to be better at tolerating ambiguity. This tolerance allowed them to keep going when the outcome was unclear, when the data didn’t make sense, and when they ran into information that seemed to be a paradox, to contradict itself. These traits allowed the creative scientists to persist until they finally reached success.

How about you? How might your life be different if you had faith in your creativity, in your ability to venture into the unknown and persist until you reached success?

What would you begin if you had that confidence?

Are you creative? Are you willing to consider the possibility that you are?