Becoming Creative

Once upon a time, creativity was thought to belong to artists and poets. It had nothing to do with the real world and certainly nothing to do with the rest of us. Creativity was something you were born with, and that was that. So how does becoming creative fit in with today’s world? Let’s check this out and see what we can find out!

That idea has taken a 180-degree turn and bitten the dust. In our fast-moving times, whether it’s in science or business or many other areas, innovation and creativity are the things that lead to success. Without them, businesses stagnate and fail.

So, What is Creativity Then?

Two French mathematicians, Hadamard and Poincare, have defined the creative process in the following four steps.

Preparation – You discover a problem and try to solve it with established means.

Incubation – These methods don’t work so you go off and do something else.

Illumination – All of a sudden, the answer appears to you.

Verification – You assess the new idea to see if it’s any good.

It used to be thought that only two types of thinking led to creativity: convergent thinking where you draw on all your resources to solve a problem, or divergent thinking when you solve the problem by seeing it in a different way.

What Do Psychologists Believe?

In the last few decades, psychologists have come to believe that there are many different ways to be creative. They think that creativity is simply a state of mind in which a person is ready and willing to entertain new ideas.

Psychologists also believe that almost all of us can learn to be more creative. Some of us may be more creative than others, but we can all be creative, especially in the areas of the 10 intelligence types, where we have our own unique strengths.

Many times we stifle our own creativity with the little voice that says,” It will never work.” Often we say that about other people’s ideas, too. The thing you need to do is challenge that anti-creativity with a counter-argument. When you do this, you give your own creativity permission to flow.

What Do YOU Think?

Ask yourself open-ended questions like…

– Is there another way to do this?

– What’s the worst that could happen if we tried this?

– Are there parts of this idea that will work?

– What’s good about this?

– How can we make it better?

– What can we do instead?

Practice non-judgmental idea gathering to enhance creativity. Do this and watch your creativity explode. I kid you not! It works, for most people, including me!