Posted on 17 Mar, 2010 -
We are all artists of life, all of us creative
* Creativity is essential for problem solving, for innovation at work and for personal expression
* The more creative you are, the more successful and fulfilled you are likely to feel
* Try out the ideas below to help you tap into, nurture and give expression to your creativity
(For anybody still interested in onions or the issue of trying to find the truth on the internet, there’s a FINAL word in the PS at the bottom.)
Creativity’ is a very ambiguous - or at least seldom-defined - word.
Think of the words ‘creative’ or ‘creative person’ and you’ll often think of an artist or a novelist or a musician, perhaps.
But are you a creative person? Of course you are! We all are. Even if you’re not an artist, for example, you are creative in the way you decorate your home, the way you dress or in the ideas you come up with at work or in your life. You are even creative in the complexity of feeling and meaning you can experience from looking at a tree or contemplating politics.
As human beings we cannot help but use our imagination and inventiveness. It is part of what we are. And as individuals who vary so incredibly from one to another, we are uniquely original in the ways in which we act, in the way we talk - even in the way we drive our cars or arrange the jars in our kitchen cabinets.
So why is it good to foster and nourish our creativity?
From a quick search around the internet, I have found a few definitions of and statements about creativity that may be useful for our purposes.
Our country’s own National Curriculum, for example, believes that creativity is an essential part of education because creativity “increases the pace of learning, motivation, levels of achievement and self-esteem.”
Elsewhere:
“Being creative helps us to adapt and respond to a rapidly changing world.”
“This ability to transcend the traditional and create something new and meaningful is the very beginning of any true progress.”
“It’s important to be able to tap into your creativity in order to let people know what is important to you in a way that satisfies you.”
And from actor and screenwriter, Alan Alda: “The creative is the place where no one else has ever been. You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition. What you’ll discover will be wonderful. What you’ll discover is yourself.”
Creativity is essential for problem solving, for innovation at work and for personal expression. The more creative you are, the more successful and fulfilled you are likely to feel.
So if creativity is so important, what steps can we take to increase and tap into its power?
Here are some tips I have found:
Allow your creative mind to get a word in edgeway. From the book 59 Seconds by Professor Richard Wiseman I found the very useful idea that your conscious mind (who’s voice you hear all the time in words in your head) and your unconscious mind (where a lot of your creativity goes on) are like two different people in a room together. The first is clever, domineering but not especially creative. The second is highly creative but very shy. Give them a problem to solve and it’s often the domineering one who takes over.
In some fascinating experiments, scientists discovered that if you can distract this domineering mind, the more creative unconscious mind can have the chance to come up with far more creative ideas for you. In one experiment, for example, they set people the task of coming up with some new names for types of pasta. One group of people were give time to sit down and think about it while the other group were given a mentally taxing task to distract their conscious mind. At the end of the time alloted, the people who had had the mental distraction came up with considerably more imaginative and creative ideas than people whose not so creative conscious minds had taken over.
So what can you do to release your creativity? Next time you have a creative task to do or a question to solve that needs creative thinking, simply put the question forward then distract your conscious mind with a sudoko puzzle or a word search. I personally find that I can do some of my best unconscious thinking while doing the hoovering, walking or gardening.
Surround yourself with greenery and plants. Another idea from the same book is the discovery that having plants in view can have a wonderful effect on people: reducing crime and anti-social behaviour, improving recovery from illness, and increasing creativity. In a series of experiments by Japanese psychologists Seiji Shibata and Naoto Suzuki, even a plant pot in an office increased creativity. Children are also found to behave more creatively in environments with greenery.
Give the shy one some pens and pencils. Another effective way of allowing the shy creative side of you to be heard is to give him or her a pen and a blank piece of paper. Or how about several different colour pens? And tell him to write down whatever comes in his mind. Working with Mind Maps are particularly effective: Just put one idea or word in the middle, draw a circle round it then put branches off. On each branch, write something else then do branches and words off each of those. Alternatively, just allow yourself to doodle.
Writing or drawing with your left hand (or right if you’re left-handed) is another way to get the creative brain flowing.
Try to think outside the box (and clichés like these!). Whenever we have certain problems to solve or ideas to come up with, we often think from within a certain discipline or restricted sphere of possibilities. As Beatrice Potter said of her own education, “Thank goodness I was never sent to school; it would have rubbed off some of the originality.” Whenever you have new ideas to come up with for your life or at work, realise where you are drawing a line around possibilities and then try to go beyond that.
Feelings of envy signal a need to make more use of your creativity. A fascinating idea I found in Tiki Kustenmacher’s book, Simplify Your Life is that feelings of envy are often a sign that you are not giving sufficient expression to your creative potential. “The more clearly you recognise and develop your own talents, the less reason you will have to feel envy. The satisfaction experienced after time spent creatively quickly erodes the feeling of envy.”
Tap into the child like quality of openness and wonder. Next time you are looking for a solution to a certain problem or question, write down a request on an index or record card. So for example, you might write: ‘I wonder how it is possible for me to start falling for the right kind of person’… or ‘I wonder how it is possible for me to cut the cost of production at work’. Then for the next three days, read through that statement last thing before you go to bed. Don’t try to think about the statement during the day but listen out for any solutions that your creativity or intuition comes up with for you.
Stimulate the brain into non-linear thinking. Instead of thinking in words, try thinking in images. Browse through books on art or visit a modern art gallery. Think in a foreign language if you can or read a page of a foreign language that you don’t understand before you start thinking of a problem or something creative you want to do.
Treat your brain and the child within you to some creative activity. I know it can be really hard to motivate yourself to do this kind of thing from cold - and indeed to find the time to do it. You may even feel embarrassed to do it in case others find you at it… But any kind of creative activity like drawing, painting, writing a story or a poem is great at keeping the creative side of you alive, stimulated, working for you and happy in itself. And if you really don’t fancy any of the above, trying coming up with 30 uses you could find for a brick or for an empty kitchen towel tube.
In anticipation of a highly creative future
Wendy
P.S. The final word on onions: Basically, I don’t know and if I did it would probably make me God of the internet if not the universe. Like many subjects on the internet and indeed in books and in the world, you can find opinions, stories and facts supporting opposite truths (homeopathy, vitamin supplements, weapons of mass destruction, the success of certain kinds of surgery and God to name but a few). I have had people writing in saying I was an idiot for falling for such obviously ridiculous notions as onions collecting viruses from the air. I have people saying that ‘no, these are not myths at all but true’. I have heard many stories about people protecting themselves from illness with onions - including a story of a doctor who always kept one on the dashboard of his car. Several people have said that they do indeed collect paint and many people have said that they are brilliant at getting rid of bad smells.
And it’s not the first time. I often get emails telling me that this or that thing is a “scam” when other people have told me they’ve loved it and/or had great success with it.
Are the banks a scam? Is Gordon Brown a good man? Will eating broccoli prolong your life or is it your income level that is more likely to determine both the amount of broccoli in your diet and your final longevity?
Has it always been like this? Or do we live in a world where everything is rapidly losing its credibility, validity or claim to certainty? Where everything is either a scam or a sham or just plain lazy or crazy or bad? Do we actually believe in ‘truth’ anymore? And does it actually matter? You can call a friend, ask the audience or take two away. But when it comes to making the final decision, you’re the one who has to decide. WC
