Being Creative is a Choice

One of the constant things that I hear from a lot of people in business is that it is hard to find creative people, who can think out of the box and come up with good solutions to tough problems.

I think being creative is a choice.

Each one of us is potentially as creative as anyone else that you can think of, however, most of us do not make the choice to be creative.

We tell ourselves that we are not the creative type (what we mean is that I am afraid of criticism).

• Anyone who is capable of telling a lie is creative. Can you lie?
• Anyone who is capable of writing in a language is creative. Can you write?
• Anyone who can color a blank drawing is creative. Can you color?
• Anyone who can walk or speak is creative. Can you walk or speak?

Creativity is easy. Expecting that everyone around you like your creative work and offer no criticism is not.

So, what can one do to start being more creative in their lives (both professional and personal)?

1. Make the choice and the commitment to be creative.
2. Start small. Try to take a different route to work than your usual one. If you have a child, draw, color, sing and dance with them.
3. Be curious. About your colleagues. About your product. About your customers. About your competition. About your spouse. About your own habits. About everything that you come across.
4. Be open to new experiences. Read about things that you normally would not read about – space technology, mythology, religion, etc. Watch a documentary about a different culture that you don’t know about. Watch a genre of movie that you normally don’t watch. Watch an animation movie with your kid.
5. Deliberate or reflect, about what you experienced. Once you start deliberating or reflecting about your new experiences, your mind starts to file these information in nooks and corners of your brain and can make them available when you need to become creative yourself.
6. Detach yourself from your creation: Fear of being ridiculed is the biggest stumbling block in people who do not make a choice to be creative. Once you detach yourself from your work, all criticism and feedback is then about the work and not about you. You can learn about how to handle criticism from Marie Forleo talk about it in her video here.
7. Practice and build habits. Every day, come up with 10 ideas. You can learn more about this and how to become an Idea machine in a post written by James Altucher – “The Ultimate Guide for Becoming an Idea Machine”. Learn fro Charles Duhigg about the power of habit in this TEDx video.
8. Appreciate creativity around you. One of the way you can learn to be creative is to become aware and appreciative of creativity all around you and believe me when I say that, once you start looking around you for creativity, you will be surprised at the abundance of creativity all around you.
9. Break down and re-build. Everything in our lives is a system, which is comprised of more systems. This is like an eiffel tower that your child built using Lego blocks. Once you break down the eiffel tower, you can then practically build anything that you want to using the same lego blocks. Everything in life is similar to the same. If you come across a challenge that you want to solve and are struggling, try breaking down the challenge into smaller and smaller components and then try to re-build.

So, do you wish to make the choice to being creative?

Please share your thoughts and if this was interesting or helpful to you.