I recently read an op-ed post by Eric Kaplan for The New York Times titled “Five Theses on Creativity” which made me a bit curious. Isn’t that what op-ed pieces are supposed to do? Well, if yes, then this one did its job for me.
In the post, Eric shares the following five theses on creativity:
1. Creativity makes something new
2. Creativity hides itself
3. Creativity permeates life
4. Creativity can break your heart
5. Creativity is a kind of love
I have written about these themes in the past. I believe that creativity is all around us {permeates life} and yet not always visible {hides itself}. It is on our face sometimes {makes something new}. Creating something new makes us feel as good as we feel when we are in love {kind of love} and when it fails, it also breaks our heart {can break your heart}.
What I believe is that everyone of us is creative. It is a matter of where on the scale we fall when it comes to activating this creativity. We can be creative in every aspect of our lives. We can dial up or dial down our creativity as needed.
I also believe that we need to work on 7 areas in our lives to lead a full life – physical, emotional, social, intellectual, spiritual, financial and creative. Each one aspect of our lives is important in its own way and neglecting any of these areas only creates heartburns and whacks our lives out of balance. I know by experience – mine, a lot of other people around me and a lot of people who have lived in the past.
Since we are talking about creativity, here is one way to amp up our creative skills that almost always works. When stuck with a problem that needs a creative solution, ask a different question from what you {or anyone} would usually ask in this situation. Our minds are great at answering any question that we can ask of it.
When you ask a different question {reframing, questioning assumptions, using imagination, etc}, you will usually get a different answer. In most cases, the answer would be different and creative than usual. The more different the question is, the more creative the solution will be.
