Get to know the culture

Am I creative? Do I know people’s creativity? What are other culture’s habits and traditions? What do other cultures find important? Questions like these came up when I thought of the development goals I drafted. Thinking of such questions helped me understand my goals and help achieve them.

Development goals

As the goals that I set myself are 1) find my own creativity, 2) learn and understand the Chinese culture, and 3) appreciate and respect other traditions, I want to achieve these development goals. I am constantly aware of ‘finding’ my own creativity, as everybody has his own creativity somehow. Mine will be, being creative with (business) solutions, leadership and presenting styles, which is totally different what I expected from being creative; creative in drawing. This thinking process made me aware of the fact that everybody has got their own way of being creative, which help me understand other people way better. In the picture below, thirty ways to stay creative are shown. Number 13, 17 and 29 apply to this part being creative. 

30 ways to stay creative

The second and third development goals have to do with (Chinese) cultures and traditions. It is hard to set proper targets as cultures and traditions have to with a lot of aspects, and in different levels and stages. At the moment I am learning Mandarin and aspects of the Chinese culture. For me this is a good start of the second and third goal, as this is the base of the culture. When I will be in China next month, I will be able to communicate a little bit in Chinese and understand their habits, doings and culture. For now, I think this is enough to visit various cities, like Beijing and Shanghai. Most of the development goal ‘learn and understand the Chinese culture’ will be experienced in China itself, while ‘appreciate and respect other traditions’ is a way more ‘deeper’ goal; it starts with yourself, you have to be open to other traditions. I see this goal more as a personal development goal, as you need to show respect to other culture’s  traditions. I see myself as a person who is very open and exited to meet, see and experience someone else’s traditions and culture. So this goal is about the growth process; from denial to integration. In the figure below this growth process is displayed, where the red arrow shows where I was in the beginning of this course, and the green arrow shows where I want to be at the end of this course. It shows the process from denial to integration, which is about cultural differences. 

Figure 1 Growth proces; from denial to integration

Realize limitations

The realization of what I can do is limited, as I cannot experience every aspect of a culture or tradition. An example to make this clearer is the visit to the MuZIEum in Nijmegen, where I was ‘blind’ for over an hour.  Hereby I experienced to be careful in what you do and what you want to do; this applies also in real life, for example experiencing the Chinese culture; I have to be careful in what I want to do, as China is way different compared with the West.