Don't be fooled by first glances. What might look furious can be the path to glorious harmony.

One of them has already been published as a post but the other two are new. They are:

• Have you hugged your anger today?
  * Find out why recognizing and accepting your anger can be a major help in life: and how to achieve it.
• Know (and love) your Type
  * Why it’s important to know your psychological type – and how to.
• Turning  frustration into harmonious co-existence
  * Discover how to turn times of conflict into opportunities for creative development.

You’ll find the new articles by clicking here or on the “Dynamic Living Archive” tag at the head of the page.

I hope they’ll resonate with the unique tone of your own inner music.

Sam went on to Cambridge University, became President of the Union, a Conservative MP and eventually a minister in Margaret Thatcher’s Cabinet. Dave rejected academia and left school totally confused, without a clue what to do for a living. It took several decades of experiment before he found his feet.

Conformist or creative?

How come two boys with such similar intellectual resources and training grounds could end up so differently?

Part of the answer lies with their families but another part lies with their natures.

Sam was deeply conformist. He saw that his path to success lay in accepting the status quo and working within it. He rejoiced in his vision and embraced it with gusto.

Dave challenged everything. He saw the inconsistencies, the illogical choices and outright hypocrisy that prevailed on the conformist path. He could not see a way forward that also possessed integrity.

This was not a matter of conscious choice. Sam could no more challenge the existing rule than Dave could avoid questioning it. Sam would fight to support the dominant authority. Dave could only support that which made intellectual sense.

In the terms of giftedness, Sam is a gifted conformist while Dave is a gifted creative.

Comfort and joy?

If you are gifted, your chances of achieving a life of comfort and ease are greatly enhanced if you are conformist.  This study shows why:

In the 1960s, E. Paul Torrance, head of the Bureau of Educational Research at the University of Minnesota, began studying creativity. His focus was on school children but his discoveries will be recognized by many gifted adults who’ve experienced being ‘selected out’ throughout their lives.

A gifted creative justifies the gifted way

Teachers, he discovered, do not like creative children. They prefer the child of high intelligence and low creativity. This child is not a rebel and completes school assignments with dispatch and perfection.

Creative children, on the other hand, “seem to be playing around when they should be working at assigned tasks. They engage in manipulative and/or exploratory activities, many of which are discouraged or even forbidden.

“They enjoy learning, and this looks to the teacher like play rather than work. They are intuitive and imaginative: enjoy fantasy; see unusual uses in ordinary objects; are flexible, inventive, original, perceptive and sensitive to problems. They have vital energy.”

Torrance found that 70 percent of the children who rated high in creativity would not be selected to be members of a special class for intellectually gifted children even if their test scores warranted it. They annoy teachers who see them as not serious or dependable.

Could do better if . . .

These children are the perennial recipients of the: “Could do better ” award. They are the ones who make discipline hard, not from malice but from brightness. They are the ones whose witty answers to prosaic questions make the class laugh and drive their teachers to distraction.

If you’re like me you’re already warming to the idea of these bright kids. However, Torrance was a pragmatist and wrote: “It is evident that many of them [creative children] bring upon themselves many of their woes. Obviously, one task of education is to aid such children to become less obnoxious without sacrificing their creativity.”

It strikes me that this response was well-meaning but a bit half-hearted.  I would rather suggest that the gifted creative adult allow him or herself to be “obnoxious” (to use Torrance’s word, which I wouldn’t) but be ready to accept the inevitable isolation and hostility that goes with it.

Creative autodidact

Very few schools are up to the task of teaching according to their students’ needs rather than the teachers’. This is partly because of lack of resources but also due to lack of will.  (Educationalists have done some great work on differentiating individual learning approaches but they seem to overlook their own discoveries when it comes to lesson planning.)

However, once you’re away from the learn-test-forget environment of formal education you can put your good-humored creativity and passion for the truth to good service as a creative autodidact. After all, as the great creative genius Albert Einstein said: “ The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education”.

Not bad, just buttoned up

It’s obvious that my leaning is toward the creatively gifted.  Otherwise I’d be a retired senior civil servant living in a grace and favor home in the UK’s Windsor Great Park.

Not really blind, just gifted but buttoned up

However, I do feel a lot of compassion for the gifted conformists. Their commitment to the status quo means that they cannot contribute to change but in my experience they often feel quite conflicted about their position.

Their intellects, often developed to a high level of rigor by their profession, cannot easily overlook the defects in the systems they support and thrive within. This means they are forced to live by phrases such as: “That’s just human nature.” to explain their co-existing with the venality of many of their peers.

And, of course, they externalize their inherent need for natural justice by establishing the mechanisms of judgment at various levels: by examination, by professional body, by law, etc.

In this way, they find a comfortable place of limbo, hanging between a radical commitment to ‘truth’ and a pragmatic acceptance of societal imperfection. Interestingly, they are often more radical in their extra-curricula activities, supporting contemporary arts, liberal governments and even causes such as organic farming and the greening of the nation. Thus they find balance.

In my time of youthful innocence  I assumed that every thinking person was a natural-born radical but had had it trained out of them. I no longer think this is true of all. However,  many gifted conformists do turn in later life to develop those aspects of their inner lives which they had carefully put aside “for the sake of their careers.”

It is never too late to draw riches from the mine of the soul. Never too late to open the doors to the gifted creative within. You just have to give yourself permission.

A triumph of collaboration: pork tenderloin with chocolate beef cream broth.

That means that once again these are much longer than typical posts and cover these topics:

• Prorexia: a cure for a jaded appetite for life.
• How to maintain your autonomy in a collaborative partnership.
• How effective a collaborator are you?

The articles on collaboration have a link to a PDF containing the test forms described in “How effective a collaborator are you?”. You can download the PDF and copy it as many times as you like, using it to test your friends, family and work colleagues.

You’ll find the new articles by clicking here or on the “Dynamic Living Archive” tag at the head of the page.

I hope you find them tasty and easily digestible.

These articles tend to be much longer than typical posts and cover these topics:

The compelling power of "Dynamic Living" as portrayed by John Singer Sargent.

• What is Dynamic Living?
• Issues for Gifted Adults (By D. Lovecky Ph.D.)
• Profiting from your own intelligence system.
• Is there such a thing as a Geographical Cure?
• Love: a practical understanding, and
• Love yourself and grow powerful.

You’ll find them by clicking here or on the “Dynamic Living Archive” tag at the head of the page.

Happy reading!

The first question from the floor was very positive: “How do we proceed from here?”.

How scornful the very gifted can be

Her spontaneous response was unguarded and arrogant. Her look said: “What planet do you live on?” and her voice dripped with scorn: “Isn’t it obvious?”

Her mentor and major supporter, sitting at the back of the room, could not quite stifle his groan. How could she have done that?

How indeed. Sadly, not every gifted characteristic is dipped in brilliance. In fact, there is one frequently seen quality – asynchronous development – that challenges even those who love the gifted dearly.

Just as we gifted adults are likely to declare: “How can they be so stupid!?” so the rest of the world, witnessing our seemingly inexplicable gaffes, are going to say the same. And they’ll often often preface it with: “You think you’re so effing smart?”.

Asynchronous development in the gifted

Asynchronous development can take many forms but in the opening example we have a fairly common type: situational judgment lagging behind intellect.

Such judgment calls for an understanding and constant awareness of complex unwritten rules about social behaviors. These are precisely the sorts of nuances which the gifted, in their race to explore, discover and reveal ‘the truth’, will often overlook.

It starts in childhood, when the young gifted person’s facility with logic and reason amazes everyone who comes into contact with her or him. Parents and family, however, quickly discover that logic and reason are not useful tools to develop judgment, social adroitness and tact.

When we learn such things we do so through exposure to a variety of experiences and interpersonal situations. And that’s another challenge for gifted adults. We learn early on that we are our own best company so we can easily ignore social challenges if they get in the way of our fascinating internal adventures.

As a result, we may not learn social interaction at the same rate that other children and adolescents do. Even so, by our mid-twenties, the gap between judgment and intellect will typically have closed considerably.

"How could you ask such a thing!?"

But we will continue to have lapses, especially when under stress. And our brilliantly-wrought presentations will continue to miss their marks.

I have an unfortunate tendency to greet newcomers to our local rowing club with a jocular cry of: “How much do you weigh?”

This is a vital piece of information in a sport dominated by power ratios and boats tailored to strict weight ranges. However, most would regard the individual’s name as being of higher priority, at least on first meeting.

I am trying to cure myself of it. And, being gifted, I call my perceived strengths together to give me the leverage I need to change.

Shedding the scorn: focus on your desired outcome

Those strengths are my (and your) above-advertised powers of reason and intellect. If I remember to use them beforehand to work out what I’m really trying to achieve, I can then focus more successfully on what’s important.

For example, the young woman presenter would have realized that her goal was not to make a brilliant presentation but to win her managers to her way of thinking. From that point she could have analyzed their strengths (good hearts) and made accommodation for their weaknesses (their executive vision). And she would have managed the interactions much more skilfully.

As for me, I will remind myself that a rowing club’s first priority is enthusiastic members. Weight and age data can be gathered once they’ve joined up and understand its relevance. And then they won’t be driven away by important but momentarily inappropriate questions, however friendly their intent.

And I shall still feel as if I’ve contributed to the success of the whole.

• - Their sense of the value of time makes it hard for them to communicate without a specific purpose. So if they’re not looking for a hook-up or a job, for example, they become very twitchy.
• - Their inability to make small talk “like everybody else” makes them feel inadequate and nervous – and excluded.
• - Their compensatory behaviors – drinking, eating, smoking, flirting, etc – actually make them feel worse about themselves.

How the rest of the party sees the gifted individual.

For many of us, the only thing worse than being at a party is not being invited in the first place. Even though we might comfort ourselves with references to ugly ducklings and Groucho Marx’s “I wouldn’t join any club that would have me as a member,” we still end up feeling pretty lonely and rejected.

How the gifted can thrive at a party.

Despite any gloomy history of failed party-going, there are ways that gifted individuals can use to overcome the them-me perception gap.

How the gifted individual feels in relation to the rest of the party.

You can actually do more than just survive a party: you can leave it in a warm frame of mind and with your sense of integrity intact. Here’s how:

1)  You can practice seeing yourself the way others see you, not as you experience yourself (see the pictures on this page). You really are a handsome or beautiful human being who looks as if you have a lot to offer the other people there.  And it’s true: you do.

2) You can modify your expectations. If you go along with the hope of meeting a matching combination of intellect  and creativity you’re probably going to be disappointed. Just go along hoping to find a friendly – not necessarily stimulating – conversation or two and to indulge in some contemplative people-watching.

3) Drop any idea that you’re going to make people love you. It doesn’t matter how attractive you make yourself or how interesting your thoughts and experiences are – they don’t want to know. Your vitality, originality and wit will blow over them and they’ll find someone less intimidating to talk with.

4) On the contrary, go with the intention of making them feel loved. Congratulate them on their outfits or their choice of music, compliment them for their home-made dip, and – above all – listen to them. They will reward you with warmth and admiration that you can live off for weeks.

And one day you will find yourself listening to someone and something they say will really click with you and you’ll feel the power of human contact when it takes place between two potent equals. Irresistible!