Have you ever wonder why children are more creative and they have more active imagination than adults? Well certainly as we grow up we start to adapt to social norms of excepted behavior and some established ways of thinking so we become less spontaneous. Some people believe that our schools are killing kid’s creativity through theirs static teaching methods. I believe it has to do with a teachers and the way they teaching and approaching our kids. This is, however, a theme that deserves its own article so I am not going to analyze this time.
We have to realize that we are not actually losing our creativity as we grow up. We simply give more attention to existence issues so we are putting our creativity aside. I find this quite wrong. Because when you manage to approach with creativity all the aspects of your every day life everything will seem easier and more fun believe me. We have to apply our creativity as habitual action in our every day life. You don’t have to wait for inspiration to come of course. Just do it. Very often that flash of inspiration that you are waiting for could be all ready incubated in your subconscious and it will start to glow when you begin the creative process. I have experienced this so many times.
You all ready probably heard about ”Thinking outside the box” process. That means to think differently, unconventionally, from a new perspective. To think outside the box is to look further and to try not thinking of the obvious things, but to look beyond them. This method is often used in creative business environments, especially by creative directors, or executive coaches, in design and marketing industry too. If you want to think and act in the creative way, you have to realize and reject the accepted paradigm so you can be able to come up with new brilliant ideas.
You can find a lot of books about creative thinking ways and how to accomplish to produce creative ideas. One that I can sincerely recommend it is ”Serious Creativity” Edward de Bono. Although the title may sound a bit contradictory, because most of us think that creativity has to be fun, or crazy. Well the creativity is not just about brainstorming and being free to suggest crazy ideas. It is much more than that. In this book Edward de Bono explains why we need creative thinking and he shares his powerful lateral thinking tools and techniques.
You can bust your creativity yourself in many ways. I will give you few ideas how to.
1. Free writing. You don’t have to be writer. You need only a pen and paper. You can do it on your computer too, but I prefer a pen and paper. Just try to fill a page with your thoughts, and let your creative abilities to fire up.
2. Get arty. Visit museum or gallery. Try to focus on experience, not on whether you like what you see or not. Observe, be curious about the meaning of particular piece of art. What was an artist’s emotional state when he created this piece? Which message he tries to send through his work? How does that make you feel?
3. Listen music with your eyes closed. Let your emotions free to follow the rhythm of the music. Let your imagination off. Think how this music make you feel? Let yourself be immersed in that feeling.
4.Unnecessary creating things. Just create something with your hands for joy of creating. Children are doing all the time and this makes them happy. Just create something beautiful, even if this is a simple dish or dining table decoration. It is important to do something creative every day, what ever this means for you. If you continue, you will start experience the life in more creative and positive way. You don’t have to be artist to get creative in your life.
Do not think from the beginning how you are going to sell your creations this is the wrong approach. Just start creating for the joy of creating. For example take look at this crazy hair accessory fascinators that I make. I am doing it because the process of creating something from nothing makes me happy. I have never show them or never tried to sell them to anyone. By the way I don’t even think that regular woman would put on her head this kind of facinator. I do wear them sometimes myself on especial occasions, but I also don’t consider my self a regular woman anyways. One of my gay friends suggested that I should present my creations to some of the Drag queen houses in Amsterdam he think they would love my fascinating fascinators. Who knows maybe I will one day. But to be honest for me is not important at all if I ever going to make any money from my creations. It is all about the process of creating that really matters to me and makes me happy.
Be free to create what ever makes you happy. It is not matter if others don’t like thinks that you create. The most important is to continue to create, don’t let any bad comments stop you. Just remember the story of Emily Dickinson. Known as an eccentric, some said that because of her own volition, most of her voluminous collections of poems were kept away from the public and they were published after her death. Emily Dickinson’s first collection of poetry was published in 1890, and after initially meeting criticism, her works firmly place her amongst the best American poets.
Do not fall in to the trap of striving for success so hard, like the famous artist Vincent Van Gogh. He fell into the mental illness due the stress to create and sell his great works. After all he commit suicide at the young age of 37. Today he is considered as one of one of the world greatest artists. So embrace yourself, embrace the world around you with creativity and positive energy, and don’t forget to enjoy every moment!
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