People who engage in various tasks can often experience a “creative crisis” when faced with problems requiring creative solutions, yet can’t seem to get that spark of creativity going. Henceforth, being able to approach the creative process in times of need is essential.
According to American Psychological Association, creativity has two aspects: originality and functionality. Let’s say that you have to come up with a new idea to be implemented, but bringing that idea to come to fruition is blocked off somehow. What you consider as a lack of creativity is, more or less, a sudden absence of enthusiasm and inspiration.
Some people think that pure creativity is a phenomenon that cannot occur at will. However, the truth is every one of us is capable of harnessing our own creative ability.
Practice the following activities to unleash your creativity!
Creativity Activity 1: Doing Physical Exercises
You can ignite inspiration through physical activities. They facilitate the production of endorphins that are widely known as “feel-good hormones.”
People do sports and recreations not only to stay fit. Physical exercises are necessary for the mental state. It is vital to provide your body with such hormones because they are like fuel for creative thinking aka creative juice. This is why after a nice jog you find it easier to launch into idea creation.
Creativity Activity 2: Reflecting the Happenings in Subconscious
There is a thought that humans have a river channel of untapped ideas trapped in the subconscious, and that it needs to be constantly unclogged to continue allowing the endless streamflow of creativity.
Understand that it is simply not enough to perform some creative activity in hope of getting some next big idea. You must engage both conscious and subconscious to achieve a satisfactory result. Just like how an appetite appears during the meal, inspiration appears during the creative process.
The easiest way you can practice this is to try your hands on free-writing or free-painting, and reflect on whatever comes into your mind in the form of these words or paintings. This way your subconscious will spark fresh ideas based on the associations to what you need to come up with.
Creativity Activity 3: Brainstorming
Brainstorming needs no introduction for everybody has heard of it, and it is commonly used within a group of people to boost creativity to generate ideas for solving group task.
During the brainstorm, people gather and share all possible ideas that come into mind revolving around their task (e.g., people in journalism can share those generated creative ideas for improving work environment for the new interns with senior members or if needing more diverse custom writing service for their new columns).
Here’s how a group brainstorm usually plays out:
– An ideal group consists of at least 3 people.
– The leader of the group is to keep everybody focused.
– Everyone goes in circle or are encouraged with equal opportunity to contribute different viewpoints without worrying about being criticized.
Creativity Activity 4: Using “What if” Question
When we regret something we’ve done, we always think to ourselves “What if I could have done this or that?” Then you imagine the alternative of the situation that could have worked out if you’ve had this idea before!
This is why it’s important to ask “what if” when you need an increase in creative productivity.
How do you think famous authors and directors bring their masterpieces to life? J.K. Rowling would have had to imagine “What if magic was real and there was a boy who became the most famous person in this world of magic.” J.R.R. Tolkien once had to think “What if all the power in the world were to be concentrated into one small object?’”
You can ask yourself such question to find unusual ideas and unique solutions.
Creativity Activity 5: Mind-mapping
Similar to brainstorming but without the group, mind-mapping is a great way to arrange thoughts and concepts in your head to improve creativity skills. When you begin the process of expressing your ideas visually, you trigger your mind to create more new variants.
Doing mind-mapping is quite simple.
- Start the map by putting an idea in the center of a blank page (which helps to express ideas more freely).
- Surround the central item with associations and ideas.
- Connect your ideas with branches.
- Use colors to underline and highlight various ideas.
- Try to replace words and ideas with images.
By not restricting your mind in how it normally puts ideas down in a linear fashion, it is easier to arrange your thoughts and create excellent ideas.
Creativity Activity 6: Walking in Other’s Shoes
People often compare themselves to those better than they are at something, and try to emulate them.
As an example, you’re having trouble preparing a wondrous feast for a get-together, but your dear aunty Sally is the Betty Crocker of your family, so you resort to “Oh, dear aunty Sally would do this in this particular way.” Because you know habits and character peculiarities of other people, you can predict how they would react and handle certain situations. In fact, you can also predict what ideas or solutions they can express.
You can apply this to help you to look at issues, problems, and tasks from another angle for solutions.
Creativity Activity 7: Defining Point-B Destination First
The final note about getting creative is to define point-B of what the end-goal is before doing anything else. Then work towards it from your point-A, creating your map as you go. Without doing this first, you’ll be lost in limbo like driving on the interstate without a destination.
After all, point-b represents a task that you must complete. Otherwise, you’ll be going on forever not knowing where to go and when to stop.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Lisa Griffin is a blogger and freelance writer whose lifestyle credo is “Always dream and shoot higher than you know you can do. Do not bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself.” You can contact her via Twitter.