Here’s a good way of assessing if you have creativity within you. Check your pulse. Can you feel something? Yes? That’s a good start. Because if you are breathing, and if you’re not in a comatose condition, chances are that you’re as creative as the nearest creativity “expert”. Perhaps what may have happened is that this creativity thing got buried deep within by layers of adult life. Surely it’s time to bring it back to the surface…
Some thoughts about creativity that may be helpful to consider to get going again:
1– Yes of course there is the right brain – the creative, artistic hemisphere – but guess what, there isn’t really a specific part that is labelled Creativity. It’s not a question of someone having very developed brain segments for creativity. Creativity is perhaps a combination of many things – ways of thinking, experience and exposure, listening to ideas from others and also your own ideas, individual perceptions, how other people react to you, your inclinations, etc
2– You have creativity. Everybody has it. In fact, you have much more creativity than you will ever use, or need. To leverage creativity, you have to use your brain more – and we have all seen statistics on how little we use brain capacity
Check out the ideas below. Thinking about them will help in getting you back on track. Each person’s track is different and we know you’ll find yours in a way only you know:
The numbers game – you’ll need to think about a whole lot of ideas first before you hit one good one. Emile Chartier said “nothing is more dangerous than an idea if it’s the only one you have”.
Think new – don’t be worried about new ideas, be worried about the old ones
Let logic take a break – Einstein once said that if at first an idea is not absurd, it may not have a future.
Value the “no” vote – Do not discourage debate – encourage it.
A different view – think from the point of view of someone else. A customer, a student, another colleague, someone from another country, the boss etc. This broadens perspective
A different combination – combine your idea with other ideas or objects to produce a different set of options, packaging, solutions than what you’ve been thinking about
It was Oliver Wendell Holmes who said
“a mind stretched to a new idea never goes back to its original dimensions”.
Wishing you happy stretching..