Are You Creative?
How To Be More Creative, Part 1
Do you consider yourself to be a creative person? Anybody can be creative. And anyone can improve their creativity with a basic understanding of how creativity works and a strong desire to flex their creative muscles.
Actually, you are already quite a creative person. For example, you have a vivid imagination and often invent stories rich in symbolism, complex in plot, and filled with visual imagery. And not only are you imaginative, you’re prolific as well: every night you create four to seven of these scenes. That’s right, every night you dream.
From beginning to end, dreams are imaginative pieces of pure invention. You create the cast of characters, you write the dialogue and direct the action; you even star in some of these late night productions. Unfortunately, not all of us remember our dreams with equal clarity, leaving many of these elaborate fictions submerged in our subconscious.
In addition to being an imaginative storyteller, you’re also an accomplished problem solver. You successfully solve hundreds of problems every week. They aren’t always momentous struggles, but more often minor, everyday inconveniences that make up daily life. Cooking a meal, for example, is a problem that requires creative vision. Writing an email is a problem that’s solved with an act of imagination. Driving your car across town is a major problem with a whole set of intricate sub-problems. Most of us take driving for granted. But if you consider the matter with perspective, it’s simply incredible that the human mind is capable of sifting through a blizzard of information accurately and rapidly to make all the proper decisions and responses.
Now, many of the problems we solve every day are commonplace, as are many of the solutions we employ. Opening a can of beans is rarely an example of creative thinking. But each of these examples demonstrates a definite creative potential which we utilize, consciously or not, every day of our lives. The point is that everyone has the capacity to solve a multitude of problems, quickly and with ease.
Imagination and problem solving are essential to anyone who wants to be more creative because creativity is the ability to solve problems in imaginative ways. Each of us chooses which problems will push our personal creativity. For a performer the problem may be expressing movement and emotion with the human body; for a lawyer producing a compelling argument for their client; for a scientist inducing theory from observable facts; for a chef developing new and interesting dishes.
Remember: No matter what your interests or goals, to be creative you must solve with imagination the problems you’ve decided are important to you.
When reading this newsletter, consider the areas of your life where you’d like to become more creative. In doing so, you’ll discover the problems that need to be solved creatively.