Creativity lays cocooned inside each of us. It is often buried by a pile of routine, professionalism, responsibility, and “grown up” appearance. Sometimes the spark of creativity is dimmed by criticism, duty or simple neglect.If you’ve been doing the “same old same old” for a while now, then consider switching up your routine in an effort to get yourself out of a rut.A flash of insight. A solution to a longstanding problem. We all long to express ourselves creatively, admire the capacity to be original. It seems to be part of human nature.
Nevertheless, it is always possible to reawaken your dormant creativity. The benefits of being more creative will then flow through all of your pursuits, providing you with inspiration for new ideas, new ways of doing things. It will brighten life and lighten your daily tasks.When you’re creativity has dried up, it can help to immerse yourself in the work of someone you admire.Creativity fundamentally involves expressive power; it is the catching of the “gleams of light” that flash across our mind and forming that vision into something.
You will be re-exposed to insights and strategies which will enable to crank up your creativity and bring the spark back into your life. Feel free to experiment. Explore the ideas one at time or in combination and incorporate those that work best to uncover and heighten the joy and rewards of living a more creative life.
What can you do to unleash and tap into the creativity within yourself? Here are some ideas:
1. Create A Fun & Messy Workspace
2. Stalk The Work Of Someone You Admire
3. Give Yourself A Break
4. Change Up Your Routine
5. Interact With Other Humans
6. Listen To A Motivational Speech
7. Move Around To Stimulate Your Thoughts
8.Accept that you are creative. Some people will happily inform you that they’re “creative”, while others are convinced you’re either born with it, or you’re not and they don’t think they have any creativity. The truth is that everyone is creative, and researchers have proven that it is possible to improve creativity in various ways including diet, exercise, and practice.You have the potential to be creative provided you want to give it a try to believe in your potential.
- Creativity is a pathway to knowing yourself better and to creating balance in your life. If you see it this way, rather than as being about something that only some people are gifted with, you’ll be better placed to find creativity within.
- Not allowing yourself to be creative is like freezing over a part of yourself and denying yourself the therapeutic and tranquil focus that creativity brings. See being creative as being good for you.
9.Change your perspective. You might have heard the phrase ‘Think outside the box’. Doing this is important for sparking creativity because it lets you see each situation from a different point of view. When changing your perspective, approach problems by breaking them down into several elements. Then, shuffle the elements around and look for new ways of finding solutions. Think of what would happen if an idea you’re stuck on is replaced.
- This method is important in enhancing creativity because it helps to remove you from fixations that can hinder creativity.
- Read Think ‘Outside of the Box’ for more ideas on using this method.
10.Shift your mental landscape.
11.Embrace your imagination.
12.Immerse yourself in the artistic process.
13.Find your comfort spot. Have a place that you stake as yours, however temporarily so – it might be a desk, a rock out near the sea, a little nook in the garden, or a certain seat in the library. It’s your thinking spot, your personal quiet place to sit, contemplate, and to let the fires of imagination free. Make sure it is somewhere where you won’t be disturbed and where you can give your thinking and ideas your full attention.
- Cyberspace is not a personal thinking space. It’s interactive, busy, and sometimes fatiguing. While it holds an incredible amount of ideas, you need to have distance from the online space in order for your own creative ideas to truly spark. Once you’ve had that distance, you can return your creativity to cyberspace fully fleshed out.
14.Take your time. Time, time, time. You can’t rush creativity. Hurrying does not help in the outflow of ideas. Your mind tends to go into a state of slight disarray when you are trying to force things. If you’re low on time, keep a list of activities able to spark your creativity and pull it out whenever there are spare moments, such as waiting for a bus or while dinner cooks. Allow ideas to percolate; sometimes the best thing you can do for creativity is to simply let things bubble away over time.
15.Soak up solitude.Learn to be good company to yourself. Highly creative people are very comfortable around themselves and Leo Babauta says that it is the number one habit to cultivate for ultimate creativity.His personal study found that appreciation of solitude as a creativity generator is a common thread of creative people throughout history. Some of the things to consider when enjoying your solitude include:
- Find quiet places to contemplate, away from the hubbub of everyday life. Quiet is essential for creativity, as is taking time out specifically to just allow creativity to wash over you.
- Use solitude to recharge. A tranquility of mind comes with solitude that is hard to find in any other place or condition. This is therapy without someone else’s interpretations or cost!
- Love the time you have to yourself, when you can dance alone, ponder on life without interruption, and enjoy everything around you for no other reason than that these things “just are”.
16.Revel in connection.After you’ve soaked in solitude, reach out to others and get help. Communicate your ideas to others. A different view of the situation or challenge might help. Better yet, get many different views! Read the ideas of others, collaborate with people, and be inspired by them.
- Never be too shy to ask. Diversity is very helpful in inspiring creativity.
- Organize a brainstorming session. The spontaneous generation of new ideas helps in formulation of more ideas. The products of brainstorming can be the raw material in the construction of the idea.
- Being around like-minded people can inspire your creativity when you’re firing ideas off one another. However, be careful of falling into group think ruts; diversify your group every now and then to allow yourself to be confronted by new ways of seeing things.
17.Creative People Are Energetic, but Focused
18.Creative People Are Passionate, but Objective About Their Work
19.Creative People Are Playful, yet Disciplined
20.Creative People Are Realistic Dreamers
Immersion in creative enterprises is hugely rewarding by itself. And often during that immersion we experience that special state called “flow,” a feeling outside of time, of effortlessness that is so extraordinarily satisfying it bestows on us the sense that life is worth living.Beauty is something that seizes your attention, stops you in your tracks, silences you. It can be the way light filters through the trees in your backyard or the magnificence of a fifteenth century Italian painting.
All truly great thoughts are conceived while walking.Set up your workspace (desk, home office, studio, what have you) to be a reflection of the work you’re trying to do. This can include anything that gets your creative juices flowing.Try taking your journal and sketch pads outdoors. Exposure to fresh air, the sounds of wildlife, seeing the color green and enjoying the benefits of vitamin D from sunlight will all help you feel your best and be your most creative.