How to be more creative in life and business.

"God finds himself by creating." – Rabindranath Tagore

"The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources." – Albert Einstein

Take a different view

It was by taking a different view of a traditional business that major innovations were achieved. To find a better creative solution to the current practice, force yourself to reframe the problem, to break down its components and assemble them in a different way.

Creativity defined

A "new" idea is a combination of old elements. Being able to devise new combinations depend on your ability to discern relationships between seemingly disparate items.

'Creativity is the juxtaposition of ideas which were previously thought to be unrelated.' It is your ability to combine ideas in a unique way or to make useful associations among ideas.

"There is virtually no problem you cannot solve, no goal you cannot achieve, no obstacle you cannot overcome if you know how to apply the creative powers of your mind, like a laser beam, to cut through every difficulty in your life and your work."

Huge personal benefits from creativity

Creativity is your key to a brighter future. Creativity gives you an incredible source of adventure, achievement, self-discovery, connection, spirituality, awakening, normalcy, self-worth, identity, healing, happiness, energy and power.

Huge business benefits from creativity

All progress and innovation is the result of finding new – often radically new – better, cheaper, easier, or different ways to do things and solving customer's problems, and this requires the continual honing of your creative thinking arts and skills. The benefits of functioning more creatively can be enormous. You can win customers and retain them by producing more or of better quality or cheaper or faster or differently – and this requires doing things in new ways, differently, using creativity.

You ARE creative!

Creativity is not about inventing something totally new, it is about making new – synergistic! – connections. You don't have to be a special kind of person to be creative – everyone can do it. It's not about who you are, it's about what you do. You just need to start looking for multiple solutions rather than settling for just one, and give yourself permission to be playful and inquisitive, flexible and versatile.

Psychologists call the activities associated with idea generation "loose associative thinking" processes. Associative thinking is not linear or sequential. It is jumpy. To invent new connections, the maintenance of uncertainty is important for a time. "Closure is a killer; it strangles associative thinking, in favor of arriving at "an answer". Early in the process, leveraging uncertainty, riding it, and valuing it are critical to developing robust ideas."

Important pre-condition for creativity

Although creative people come from varied backgrounds, they all seem to have one thing in common – they love what they are doing.

Learn and develop creativity

"The good news is that creativity is a skill and a talent that can be learned and developed through practice. With this skill, you can dramatically accelerate your personal and professional growth. By sharpening your thinking skills and exercising your natural creative powers, you can multiply the value of your efforts and rapidly increase the quantity and quality of your rewards."

Practice creativity every day

How often should you practice if you wish to win the World Tennis Cup: once a month? once a week? every day?

How often should you exercise your right brain's creative muscles if you wish to master your creative skills: once a month? once a week? every day?

Ask searching questions

Creativity requires an inquisitive mind. Unless you ask lots of "Why?" and "What If"? questions, you won't generate creative insights. "To avoid this most common of creative errors, be sure to peek under all carpets, including your own. Don't take anything for granted. Especially success. Try looking at the world through more inquisitive eyes; try getting ideas in motion; try asking the all-important: "Why?" See what happens!"

Mediation as a source of your creative power

Meditation has been scientifically proven to improve creativity, intelligence, memory, alertness, and to integrate left and right brain functioning. It has been shown to improve physical, mental, and emotional health. In a word, meditation is an invaluable tool to ensure that you are at your very best every day.

More about Mediation as a source of your creative power

Guide to your personal creativity

By William N. Yeomans

Use self-talk, "I am creative"
Expect to get creative products
Explore your project. Ask yourself:
Why do I want to do this?
What will happen if I'm successful? What will I get out of it?
What (how hard) have I tried before?
To what extent did I succeed? Fail? Why?
Set modest goals
Accept human limitations
Don't expect your work to be in museum overnight
Be prepared to work hard
Remember Edison: "Invention is 1% inspiration, 99% perspiration."
Take lessons, get advice, criticism
Plan. Think through what you want to do. Get a mental picture of a good finished product.
Revise, redo.
Keep your left brain – dominated by numbers – quiet.
Don't start out going to perfect solution.
Think of many approaches, and ideas that relate to your project. Go for quantity. As many as possible.
Let all thoughts come out no matter how absurd. Don't evaluate. Don't be afraid to be wrong.
Make yourself laugh. Think of illegal, implausible, immoral, or surprising ideas.
Don't worry about the present order of things. Experiment.
Try things you know you're not "supposed" to.
Expect the unexpected.
Expect uncertainty, anxiety. Using your right brain - the original thinking - takes courage.
Play with thoughts and ideas.
Build on ideas to get new ideas.
Use analogues and unrelated objects or situation.
Look at your project from many viewpoints. Can it be made larger, smaller? Turned upside down, inside out?Eliminated, combined, reversed, altered?
Look for clues everywhere. Even in unrelated areas. Borrow from wherever you can.
Relax and have fun.
Take vacations often.
Put your work aside and do something unrelated.
Immerse yourself in a rich environment.
Evaluate what you've done after you've given yourself free rein. Pick the best things. Try them and if they work fairly well, use them again and build on them.
Reward yourself. Even for small progress.
"See I knew I could do it."

Showcase: creative customer service in a furniture shop

The owners of a furniture shop in Boston love what they are doing and genuinely want to make furniture shopping fun. figured out that many customers bring small children with them and that adults would stay longer and shop more seriously if the kids felt happy in the shop. "So they constructed a large children's play area inside the store with every type of game imaginable. By the way, you have to walk all the way through the store to get to the playground, so mom and dad can see the furniture before settling down to serious shopping. The kids are happy, so the parents are happy. It's simple. And one more thing. When you leave the store, your car windows have been washed! It's no wonder that this store has the highest sales of any furniture outlet in the Boston area."

The danger of categorization

"It's a pity nature isn't divided into the same categories as universities." - Roni Horowitz

We need categories to be able to handle the huge amount of information we use and control.

That's why we have a hierarchy of folders and files in our computer, and that's why universities are categorized into faculties and departments. Categorization helps you, but can also prevent you from using what you know about one field in another.

There is a well known problem in education called the transference problem. If you teach something in one context, students most likely will not be able to use that knowledge in another and build synergies.

Unlocking your creativity

By: Brian Tracy

Creative thinking can be stimulated by two things; intensely desired goals and pressing problems. Your creative capacities need something to home in on and your job is to provide it.

Continual stimulus for ideas
Intensely desired goals, clearly defined with detailed plans for their accomplishment act as a continual stimulus for ideas to achieve them.
Visualize your goals
To trigger your imagination, write out a clear description of your ideal end result or goal. Be clear about the goal, be flexible about the process. Think about it, visualize it as realized over and over. Project your mind forward to the picture of the realized goal and then look back to the present.
Define your goals clearly
Think on paper. Make a plan and then work on the plan, updating it, changing it, adding to it as you think of new ways to work toward the goal. The more clearly defined and keenly desired your goals, the more of your natural creativity will be released for goal attainment.
Proper approach to problems
The second stimulant to creativity is pressing problems. The key to idea generation when you face a problem is to approach the problem confidently, expectantly, with the attitude that there exists a logical, practical solution just waiting to be found.
The most creative people have a relaxed attitude of confident expectancy that causes their minds to function in original and imaginative ways.
Diagnose your problems accurately
Define your problems clearly in writing. Accurate diagnosis is half the cure. Sometimes you will find that you are dealing with a "cluster problem," one that is made up of several smaller problems. Your job is to sort them out and then go to work on each one separately.
Break up clusters
In many cluster problems, there is a core issue surrounded by a lot of symptoms. Creative thinking requires that you separate the core issue, and then focus on resolving that before worrying about the smaller problems.

Action exercises to boost creativity

Here are two things you can do to stimulate your creativity.

Be absolutely clear about your goal. Write it down and make a plan to achieve it. Think of different ways you could accomplish it.
Define your problems clearly and then make a list of all the possible solutions to your problem. Take action on at least one idea immediately.

Topics related to "Creativity in your life and business"

Creativity

Creativity – your key to the future

Creativity is your key to the future. All progress comes about as the result of finding better, faster, cheaper, easier or different ways to do things and this requires the continual honing of your creative thinking skills.

No idea is wasted!

Your mind can accept only those ideas that have a frame of reference with your existing knowledge. It rejects everything else. If your knowledge is functionally focused, you'll be open to new ideas related to your functional expertise only and will miss all other learning and innovation opportunities. If you develop a broad cross-functional expertise, no new idea will be wasted. It will immediately connect with the existing knowledge and will inspire you, energize you, and encourage your entrepreneurial creativity. The broader your net, the more fish you can catch.