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Friday, November 19, 2010

Can I Make Myself More Creative?

 By Mike Bond

Photo: carboblog.com

The initial problem of being creative is that people may think you're nuts! We all seem to travel through life on one straight little single track, neither looking to the left nor right and certainly not jumping off the track at any point, in case we meet someone or something that unnerves us. But can I make myself more creative?
Of course you can. Creative people, though, are seldom happy with the status quo. They'll cheerfully jump off their track and go exploring up the lesser travelled paths of life. Now, if you do learn creativity, don't expect people to understand what you mean from the word 'go.' They're still thinking along linear lines, while you've left those lines and started to go somewhere completely different.
Most of us think of creativity as the domain of the artist, painter, writer, etc., but this is by no means so. You can bring creativity to bear in any walk of life and indeed it's usually the creative members of a firm that receive the promotions and the most approbation. They seek out ways of doing things that save the firm money, time, effort, you name it.
There are ways of entering the creative zone. One way of lighting the creative fuse is to be playful. In today's world of the Internet, so many of us work alone. Obviously, we find all sorts of problems, but to simply sit there wracking your brains for a solution isn't going to take you anywhere. Face your problem, then think of a way round it. Think of the silliest ways, the most far-out ways, it doesn't matter Don't discount anything, however weird it may seem to you.
This is just as important if you're in a group of people. Everyone's shooting off ideas, probably pedestrian ideas and going nowhere. Then you let some of your ideas go, and they look at you as though you're insane. A little bit of insanity in our lives never hurt anyone anyway, but pursue even the silliest idea. Again, you never know where it'll lead.
Now, here's where your unconscious mind comes into play. It used to be the case that people were advised to 'clear their minds' if they wanted to be creative. Research has shown, though, that if people are given tasks to do which are quite unrelated to the problem they're attempting to solve, they become far more creative.
The reason is that they're tying up their conscious mind, the thinking part of their brain, with practical matters, thereby giving the unconscious room to work. As I said earlier, trying to be creative very seldom works. Wracking your brain will probably only give you a headache. Do some conscious pondering on the problem, this is fine, but then forget all about it and go on to something totally different.
Play with the dog. Start to write the Great American Novel. Play with your toys, if you have any around; as long as you don't sit and brood on your problem
Sometimes, an idea will flash into your head and you don't even recognize it straightaway as a solution to your problem. Ever had that happen? Then the more you think about it, the more sense it makes. An idea that makes a great deal of sense is a visit to Mike Bond's website, The Hypnosis Attraction, where you'll find lots of ideas

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