I was listening to one of the most popular Arabic songs “The Ruins”. The author of the song Dr. Ibrahim Nagy- a famous obstetrician had to deal with a dystocia. To his surprise, the pregnant woman was his love from childhood. He went abroad to study but upon returning he could not find his love as she moved out of the neighborhood.
He operated her safely while in tears. He had a duty to complete but also suffered from the sudden loss of his love. His tears turned out in The Ruins poem, which is among the most heart-stirring and creative poems.
This story shows tears and sad feelings.
Positive emotions and negative emotions are energies and it is the transformation of their energies into creative works that makes the difference.
I experienced sad feelings turning to popular work. I lost my mother last year. While in tears, I wrote my article for BIZCATALYST 360° titled “Motherhood Leadership” (see below) which exceeded ten thousand views and more than one hundred comments. It is my most-read article.
My most frustrating research resulted in my most recognized scientific publications. Repeated failure and getting results that were not consistent with the literature seemed to bring many of my research endeavors to a dead end. Creativity from the tension that built up in me transformed into my most novel ideas by doubting the reported literature and proving it wrong or misleading.
You have most likely heard about creative tension. The credit goes to Peter Senge who coined the term “creative tension” in his 1990 book, The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization. In the book, Senge described the gap between where a group is and where it wants to go. The greater the gap is the greater creative tension shall be.
In recent works, the tension we live is due to many paradoxes that we encounter as a major source of creative tension. One prominent example is that we are more virtually connected and yet we feel loneliness. Paradoxes are an igniting source for creativity.
I have not discussed positive emotions because they are an established source of creativity. However, their processing to produce creative ideas are different from those used in cultivating negative emotions.
Have negative emotions spurred any of your creative ideas? Please share your story.
Thanks for drawing our attention to this interesting subject so inspiring and deserving the utmost consideration.
We may think that we are like a battery, which feeds on different types of energy. Someone prefers to talk about emotional energy and mental energy, others add a third type (spiritual).
The right emotional energy is what makes people “in a good mood” (cheerful, happy, etc.) and charged enough to feel able to do whatever they want. Conversely, when emotional energy levels are low, everything seems more difficult, problematic, not to mention impossible to deal with.
Thus, emotional energy must somehow be kept at an appropriate level. As? Just like a battery: storing positive emotions whenever you feel good, so you never run too low. Accepting negative energies, learning to understand their nature; this allows us to scale them down, so that we leave them behind.
If there is a golden rule for managing emotions, it is to live them. We need to learn not to be overwhelmed by it but to be crossed by it.
The “bettery of emotions” is a good metaphor, Rod.
Yes when we have the bettery stored with positiive emotions they can offset the negatibe ones.