Before thinking about how to be more creative and gain new skills, let me start pointing out some real barriers that some people seem to have when wanting to enhance creativity, and have a think if any of these things are applicable to you and your life.
1. Lack of time:
This is not as major as you may think. Connecting different thoughts and ideas only takes seconds. It can happen anytime and anywhere. Providing you are in the right state and pay attention to your own experience.
Creativity in my opinion is more about the quality of the time that you have and being receptive to yourself. Though this takes some time.
2. Fear of being judged:
When I worked for a national newspaper, and we had brainstorming sessions: individuals were often scared of expressing ideas. Creativity gives result in unusual ideas and perhaps even being different in some way. Those can be thought of as strange and odd or challenging. Fear of being considered weird, stupid or just different often removes creativity. If I have fear of people thinking any of those things about me, then I would not bother getting out of bed in the mornings. I love the fact that people think I am all of those things.
3. Lack of self-esteem:
When you do something creative or new, you go beyond the bounds of what has been safe and familiar in the past to yourself and maybe even others. When you are just not sure about yourself, to be different from others in any way can feel risky or make you feel vulnerable. The danger thing is that you give up your new insight to just blend in. Smash out of those shackles.
4. Fear of failure:
This inhibits us, right! If you are making a new connection in your mind there can be no inherent 'right' or 'wrong' about it. Failure can only have two meanings; firstly, that it didn’t work in the way you wanted it to. Secondly, there is any other person who did not like it. But so what! I have to tell you all that I get many comments on how I generate so many successful projects and am often asked how I do it. I always point out that these projects are actually only about 10% of what I have imagined. The other 90% didn’t work or didn’t get out of my brain.
Creativity is not reserved for genius only but it's for everyone who has curiosity to know about new things. Einstein was brilliant, but he is not necessarily the best model of creativity for us. You do not need any special or expertise things to be creative. The fruits of your creativity may manifest in many differing ways, in fact I expect so.
If at any time you get doubt on your ability to be creative, then first remind yourself that several times every night you create an entirely new dream. Which you script, act in and watch, which involves all your senses and has effects that can last long after they are over! This creation is so very effortless most people don’t even recognise it as such.
How to be more creative?
Ok, so how does one actually go about getting more creative. Let me give you some basic ideas so that you can relate.
1. So, first find the right frame of mind. Explore more what states you associate with being creative. Discover properly and carefully what it is that triggers and maintains you being creative. What’s your best time of day? The best environment? Do you need to be alone or with others or alone in the midst of others? Do you need sounds or silence or background sounds? Build a profile of your creativity state, then make time and space for it on a regular basis instead of waiting for some divine intervention and for it to just happen on its own.
2. now cultivate dreaming. Pay full attention to your experience of life and attention to your existing creativity rather than dismissing day-dreams and dreams. Don’t allow yourself to waste what you may already be discovering by ignoring it.
3. Ask yourself "What if?" and "What else?" and "How else?" Always go beyond what you first thought, find more and more different ideas.
4. If you hit a problem, pretend your usual solution is not available. This may work in many different ways. when your PC crashes today, how else might you do your work? If you usually argue face to face, what would happen? If you wrote your feelings down instead? Some solutions may be no better than the ones you’re used to: others may offer you brilliant new opportunities. Always try to do something different. I wrote about new and creative ideas in an earlier article entitled Do something Different, go check it out.
5. See how many different results you can get with the same ingredients. I am sure many of you know that there is a cookbook called “Recipes 1 to 2 to 3″ by Rozanne Gold, in which every recipe is made out of only three ingredients. Some recipes use the same three ingredients but different processes or quantities come up with different results. You can have some great fun by taking an every day object and imagine or think about how many other uses it can have, you can even think about how to combine them with other objects.
6. Think of new and different ways to do the familiar. You need to change the order in which you do things, use different things, use your less favoured hand; as soon as we break routine, we move from a state where we are on auto-pilot to one where we are alive and alert. Your exercise is unfamiliar mind connections and help build new links in your brain. A glorious feeling!
7. now, just look out for the difference that makes the difference. When you encounter something that strikes you as different, ask yourself what it is about it that is so different or new or unusual. Where does the key difference actually lie?
Many companies have specialists in each of the three fields and I have done consultancy work with companies myself whereby I have asked different team members to take on one of the roles. You can also play all three roles yourself as I often do in coaching or business consultancy, with your own wants, needs and goals.
However, the usual way to use it is to allocate three roles to different people (realist, dreamer and critic) to assess plans or tasks. Ask someone to act as the dreamer and tell you all the possibilities of the idea. Ask someone else to examine exactly what would be involved in putting it into practice (realist), and someone to take a hard look at it and really evaluate its strengths and weaknesses (critic). You may want to rotate the roles. If doing it on your own, be sure to keep the roles very separate and write them down. I do this with lots of my own ideas and with changes I want to make in my life.
You can even use this in a meeting broken down into three stages; Each role as a separate stage. Get everyone brainstormed and being creative first; then get them thinking about what would actually have to happen in practical terms; then get them critically evaluating the possibilities.
I suggest that you have some fun being creative and doing things differently to generate more creativity. It sounds wonderful and if you have found that your progress to success or the outcomes you desire has been blocked or gone stagnant, then think about being more creative in how and what you are doing.
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