The Psychology of Money - An Investment Manager\'s Guide to Beating the Market

129

CHAPTER

15

The Creative Investor

Taming the Critics

I find the pain of little censure, even when it is unfounded, is

more acute than the pleasure of much praise.

—Thomas Jefferson

Before jumping into the guidelines for creative collaboration, I want

to make a simple point. Simple and all-important. Creativity re-

quires a safe environment. Safe to be natural and unguarded. Safe

to make mistakes. And safety, like charity, begins at home. So how

does one create an inner sense of safety?

I’m amazed that so few books on creativity address this ques-

tion. Even really good books—like the latest one by Michael

Michalko, Cracking Creativity (Ten Speed Press 1998)—don’t

address it. Michalko mentions it in one line, in the section on

brainstorming: “You turn off your internal critic.” Great. How does

one do that? Covering it in one line is a bit like a coach saying to

a basketball player, “Hey, please score 40 points in the fourth

quarter.” It’s reminiscent of Will Rogers’s advice to an aspiring

investor: “Buy the stocks that go up. If they don’t go up, don’t buy

them!”

The inner critic is the single biggest barrier to creativity. There-

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