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** THE TOP 10 WAYS to ENHANCE YOUR
CREATIVITY – written by Diana Robinson
**
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Creativity is
generally regarded as desirable, and something to be enhanced. With this view
in mind, below are some steps to help the development of creativity. However,
although creativity is often thought of as relating to the creative and
performing arts, remember that can take many forms. The criminal can turn
creativity to illegal use as easily as the artist puts brush to canvas. Do not
assume, therefore, that creativity is good in and of itself. Like most forms of
power, it can be used for good or for harm.
1. Insist on
giving yourself daydreaming time.
Schedule it if
necessary. During that time allow no shoulds or musts to intrude. Give your
mind this time to float freely, untethered to tasks. Do not think of what you
will be doing when this time is over. Allow yourself to gaze out of the window,
stare at the clouds, daydream. SONY used to allot time slots for its scientists
to daydream!
2. Be curious.
Ask why? How? How
come? Don't accept easy answers if they don't make sense to you.
3. Ignore
tradition.
Just because
something has always been done that way, or used for that purpose, doesn't mean
things can't change.
4. Play a game
with yourself--or with others--in trying to find the most uses other than the
obvious ones for every-day items like paperclips, bricks, anything that comes
to mind.
Like most of these
points, this will stretch and develop your creativity muscles.
5. Ask "What
if?"
Pick one aspect of
an ordinary situation and imagine what would change if that one aspect were
different. Follow this through in all its implications.
6. Read science
fiction.
Allow yourself to
become immersed in the worlds it depicts. Contemplate impossible things and
parallel universes. The Queen of Hearts advised Alice to believe one impossible
thing every day before breakfast. It was good advice.
7. Accept your
initial ideas without judgment.
Give them time to
grow and develop before you test them. Butterflies that have just emerged from
the crysalis have wet, crumpled wings. Give them time to develop before you
decide if they can fly. The reason brainstorming has become such a standby when
group creativity is involved is that all criticism is put on hold during the
initial idea-generating phase. Allow yourself the same freedom.
8. Take risks.
It's okay to be
wrong. By definition, to be creative you must consider new, and therefore
untested, ideas. Einstein said that he could have ninety-nine ideas that were
wrong before he got the one that was right.
9. Enjoy the
PROCESS of creation.
Do not focus on
the result. The secret and ecstasy of creating is being in the flow, of losing
yourself in the process. If you constantly break the flow to check to how the
final result will look to others, to ask yourself, "Will it sell?" "Will
it win?" you will subvert the process and possibly damage your creation.
10. Go ahead and
DO IT!
Don't wait for the perfect moment, it won't arrive. Painters paint, scrape the paint off and paint again. Writers write and delete. They don't wait until they can do it perfectly before they start. You do not need twelve sharpened pencils and perfect silence before you put pen to paper. Remember that Shakespeare wrote in an age when the whole family sat at the same table and shared the same oil lamp. It is unlikely that he had a separate study or could wait until the family had gone to bed in order to write. You CAN follow your muse.