People say this stuff all the time:
- I’m not creative.
- He/she IS creative.
- I wish I could be more creative.
- The creativity genes passed me by.
We talk as if “creativity” were a thing that we could own, as though it’s an object that sits on the shelf, that we pick up when we need it. I have a mental image of a magician’s hat. As though a person sits at their desk and thinks, “I need an idea. I’ll just go to my creativity and pull an idea out of it.”
So what exactly is creativity?
- Webster.com defines it as: the ability to make new things or think of new ideas
- Dictionary.com defines it as: the ability to transcend traditional ideas, rules, patterns,relationships, or the like, and to create meaningful new ideas, forms,methods, interpretations, etc.
- Creativityatwork.com says: the ability to perceive the world in new ways, to find hidden patterns, to make connections between seemingly unrelated phenomena, and to generate solutions.
Creativity isn’t a thing at all. It’s a process. It’s a way of thinking that involves making connections between seemingly unrelated ideas and bringing them together to generate a new concept. If you consider the most creative thing you have ever seen, you can probably break it down into the basic non-original concepts that were blended into the new idea.
The way to increased creativity is through increasing your ability to connect unrelated ideas. The great news is that there ARE ways to do that. Your brain is constantly at work making connections. Oftentimes these connections and new relationships are rejected or dismissed before they even make it to your consciousness. I’ve blogged before about how certain activities (taking a shower, driving home) create the mental environment for allowing those connections to actually make it to the surface.
Today at noon, I’m giving a free webinar on a simple 10-minute technique to help you attain the ideal brain-state for creative thinking. Click Here to join me, or to view the recording later.
In the meantime, do you need to pull a creative idea out of your magic hat? What is your challenge? Comment about it here and maybe we can all get creative ideas flowing for you!
