1.   sensitive

2.   not motivated by money

3.   sense of destiny

4.   adaptable

5.   tolerant of ambiguity

6.   observant

7.   perceives the world differently than others do

8.   sees possibilities when others do not

9.   question asker

10. can synthesize correctly, often intuitively

11. able to fantacize

12. flexible

13. fluent

14. imaginative

15. intuitive

16. original

17. ingenious

18. energetic

19. sense of humore, varied or unique

20. self-actualizing...developing unique self

21. self-disciplined

22. self-knowledgeable

23. specific interests....fairly intense

24. divergent thinker

25. curious

26. open-ended in making decisions...does not go to immediate answer

27. independent thinker

28. severely critical

29. non-conforming

30. confident

31. risk taker, not fearful of failure...sees failure as non-successes

32. persistent

Explanation of the Traits

1. sensitive

Being sensitive helps creativeness in many ways:

 a. it helps with awareness of problems, known & unknown

 b. it helps people sense things easier

 c. it helps to cause people to care and commit themselves

   to challenges or causes.

2. not motivated by money

As important as money is in most societies or economies it is not a driving force for a creative person. Generally they have an intuitive sense of the amount of money they basically need and once that need is fulfilled then money stops affecting or driving them.

3. sense of destiny

Intuitively creative people know that they have a purpose, a destiny or they realize that they can choose or create one to drive them to reach greater heights of skill, ability, or talent.

4. adaptable

Without the ability to adapt people could not become creative. But rather than adapt to something they choose to adapt things to suit them, their needs or the goals they are striving towards.

5. tolerant of ambiguity

Two or more things or ideas being right at the same time challenges the thinking of a creative person. They love to be ambiguous to challenge other people and ideas. Ambiguity helps them see things from many different perspectives all at the same time.

 6. observant

Creative people constantly are using their senses: consciously, sub-consciously and unconsciously, even non-consciously.

 7. perceive world differently

Thoreau talked about people drumming to a different drum beat. Creative people thrive on multiple ways of perceiving: seeing, hearing, touching, smelling, tasting, sensing things. These different perspectives open up their minds to unlimited possibilities.

8. see possibilities

Average people, people who dont believe they are creative, people who are fearful or resistant to creativeness or creative thinking prefer to work within limits with limited possibilities. Creative people love to see many, even infinite possibilities in most situations or challenges.

9. question asker

Creative people, especially highly creatives, probably came out of their mothers wombs asking questions. Its in their nature to question. Question yes, not actually criticize. Their questioning nature often mistakenly appears as criticism when it is simply questioning, exploring, examining, playing with things as they are or might be.

10. can synthesize correctly often intuitively

This is the ability to see the whole picture, see patterns, grasp solutions with only a few pieces, even with major pieces missing. Creative people trust their intuition, even if it isnt right 100% of the time.

11. able to fanaticize

Stop looking out the window Billy. Susie pay attention. Teachers, parents, and even friends often tell creative people this. Highly creative people love to wander through their own imaginary worlds. This is one of the major themes of the very popular cartoon strip Calvin and Hobbes. Both Calvin and Hobbes (Calvin's alter ego?) are perpetual CRAYON BREAKERS.

12. flexible

Creative People are very flexible when they are playing with ideas. They love to look at things from multiple points of view and to produce piles of answers, maybes, almosts, when other people are content with the or an answer or solution.

13. fluent

It could be a door stop, a boat anchor, a weapon, a prop, a weight for holding down papers, etc., etc., etc. This is what a creative person would say about the possible uses of a brick.

14. imaginative

Creative people love to use their imagination to play to make seem real to experiment.

15. intuitive

The more creative a person is the more they tap their intuition skills; the abilities to see answers with minimum facts, to sense problems even when they arent happening.

16. original

Being original is a driving force for creative people. They thrive on it.

17. ingenious

Doing the unusual. Solving unsolvable problems. Thinking what has never been thought of before. These are all traits of a creative person that make them be ingenious at times.

18. energetic

Challenges, problems, new ideas once committed to by a creative person truly excite them and provide them with seeming unlimited amounts of energy; such as Sherlock Holmes once he grasps a sense of the mystery.

19. sense of humor

Laughter and creativity truly go together. Many experts believe that creativity cant occur without a touch of humor believing that seriousness tends to squelch creativeness or creative thinking.

20. self-actualizing

The psychologist Abraham Maslow created this term in the 1960s representing the ultimate motivator of people the need or desire to be all you can be, to be what you were meant to be.

21. self-disciplined

This is one trait that appears to be ambiguous in highly creative people. They can appear disorganized, chaotic at times while at the same time they are highly self-disciplined. At the same time the greatly resist the discipline of other people who are not of like creative mind.

22. self-knowledgeable

During my life I have read biographies and biographic sketches or over 4,000 people, mostly considered to be the highest of the highly creatives in their respective fields. One of the few things they had in common is that they all kept some form of journal and were constantly striving to better understand themselves.

23. specific interests

This is still another ambiguous trait of creative people. They appear on the surface to be interested in everything, while at the same time they have very specific interests that they commit their true energies and efforts to. By being willing to be exposed to seemingly unlimited interests they discover more about their particular specific interests.

24. divergent thinker

Creative people love to diverge from the norm, to look at things from multiple positions, to challenge anything that exists. Because of this they are seen at times to be off-key, deviant, atypical, irregular, or uncharacteristic.

25. curious

Like the Cheshire Cat of Alice in Wonderland, creative people are continuously curious, often child-like.

26. open-ended

In order to explore many possibilities creative people tend to stay open-ended about answers or solutions until many have been produced.

27. independent

Creative people crave and require a high degree of independence, resist dependence but often can thrive on beneficial inter-dependence.

28. severely critical

Yes creative people challenge most everything, every idea, every rule. They challenge, challenge, and challenge some more to the point that most other people see their challenging as severe criticism.  They are generally most critical of...1. themselves, 2. their work, 3. their professions, 4. potentials of people, organizations, governments, countries, the world or humanity in general.

29. non-conforming

Conforming is the antithesis, the opposite of creativeness and in order to be creative, creative people must be non-conforming and go against the norm, swim up stream.

30. confident

This is another ambiguous trait in creative people. When they are at their most creative they are extremely confident. When they are in a stage of frustration when nothing seems to be working they often  lack confidence. After much positive experience they begin to trust themselves and know that they will become depressed, frustrated nearly devastated but their internal sub-conscious confidence keeps them moving or at least floating until they experience or discover an aha! (a breakthrough idea or piece of information)

31. risk taker

This trait is a general mis-understanding of many non-creative people or people who fear the creativeness of creative people. Highly creative people are not really risktakers because they do not see what they are doing as a risk. They simply see it as a possible solution or path towards a solution. They have other possible solutions, often many others in their head or their notes to use if a particular idea or solution does work. As Thomas Edison once said when asked how it felt to have failed nearly 7,000 times trying to discover the best filament for an incandescent light bulb, those are not failures, they are solutions to problems I havent started working on yet.

32. persistent

Charles Goodyear (discover & inventor of vulcanized rubber) and Chester Carlson (inventor of electrostatic copying, the Xerox process: xerography) are two of the best examples of this trait in creative people. Both of them worked over 30 years trying to make a solution they discovered work. Creative people do not give up on things that mean a lot to them.

33 to 52 from the work of Dr. E. Paul Torrance will be added based on his 50 years work from the TTCT = Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking.

The following was added September 6th, 2007.