In this article you will learn 3 strategies to learn how to awaken creativityd. Additionally, you will learn about 2 other strategies, a bit extreme, used by great thinkers.
Michelangelo decorated the vault of the Sistine Chapel. Fernando Botero painted and sculpted his fat. JK Rowling took us all to Hogwarts. And thousands more have accomplished extraordinary things.
Each created innovative products. And he was able to do it because they knew how to spark creativity.
For some people creativity is something you are born with, but for many others; it’s something you can work on.
How creativity is born.
A study conducted by Dr. Rex Eugene Jung, assistant professor of neurosurgery at the University of New Mexico, provides insight into how creative cognition is generated; suggesting that certain areas should be activated and others deactivated in order to eliminate self-criticism and give way to imagination.
Similarly, other studies have already identified which areas of the brain are activated when performing certain tasks. As are mentally organizing objects, or more complex actions related to language.
Unfortunately, we don’t have the power to consciously stimulate areas of the brain every time we need to generate new ideas. However, we can do certain activities to facilitate the process of opening our minds and removing the barriers that prevent us from being creative.
How to awaken creativity. (extreme techniques)
Salvador Dali.
For example, Salvador Dali would take a metal key in his hand, sit on a chair, and the moment he began to fall asleep, the key would slip and fall from his hand onto a metal plate.
In this way, he woke up just before falling asleep and had hypnagogic hallucinations, which occur between wakefulness and sleep; and can be of a visual and/or auditory nature.
Yoshiro Nakamatsu.
Another somewhat extreme case is that of the Chinese inventor Yoshiro Nakamatsu; creator of the diskette (floppy disk).
Yoshiro says that he submerges himself in water to be more creative. The closer you are to death (seconds before), the flashes of genius appear.
Apart from the lack of oxygen, listening to music and locking yourself in your “quiet room” that blocks all kinds of waves; are for this inventor with more than 4000 patents to his name, ways to learn how to spark creativity.
If you don’t want to have hallucinations or be seconds away from dying for the light bulb to turn on; there are conventional ways to stimulate your creative side.
Tim Brown, CEO of Ideo, analyzes 3 scenarios in which, playing as children, creativity in adults emerges from something specific: feeling confident to express our ideas without fear of being judged. Let’s see them below:
How to awaken creativity.
1. Activate your creativity by exploring.
It is normal that before giving new ideas in a meeting, we make a lot of excuses so as not to appear clumsy. But, why when we are talking with friends can all kinds of meaningless comments come out and we don’t feel ashamed?…
The answer is simple…
It is simply because there is trust.
Children, like adults, wonder what things are for. The difference is that when we stop being children we acquire pre-conceptions that limit our imagination.
Tim credits Bob McKim, a creativity researcher in the 1960s and 1970s, for a simple test that allows you to explore new territory and is very easy to perform.
Just take a piece of paper with 30 empty circles on it, set a time limit, and see how many circles you can fill. It doesn’t matter if they are tennis balls, pizzas or happy faces; The need to fill in as many as you can before the end of time will make you leave your comfort zone and be able to come up with new things.
2. Build what you are imagining.
Children’s games are endless. Plasticine, chips and all kinds of materials allow children to create universes that we would hardly imagine as adults.
Tim explains that creating prototypes of what we are imagining, with conventional elements, such as markers or erasers; they can give free rein to our imagination and in turn facilitate the task of explaining what we want to show.
3. Put your imagination to work.
Since the ideas we need are not always to create material things, acting allows us to develop ideas when creating a service.
By appropriating the roles of client and service provider, situations can arise that will allow the service to be provided to be evaluated from many other perspectives.
Conclution.
To learn how to spark creativity, it doesn’t matter which method you use. The essential thing is to create an environment of trust, where you feel like a child who does not know the limits of imagination; nor the feeling of shame.
We hope you bring many ideas to life 🙂
And remember, if you are really interested in creating your own business, you can read our book “How to create a company while working: Discover how to manage your time, manage your money and motivate yourself while creating a company and working for another” , where you will find all the information you need to found your own company, without having to leave your job.
