How to Enrich Your Life by Stimulating Your Creativity
Beatrix Potter famously said, "Thank goodness I was never sent to school; it would have rubbed off some of the originality." But what if your parents insisted on sending you to school? What if you're not naturally artistic? Are you doomed to a life of humdrum habit, devoid of creativity? By no means. A great many writers and thinkers are convinced that creativity can be developed and nurtured if you know how.
Here are five suggestions to get you started.
- Think about what you love doing, and do more of it. Relaxation and enjoyment are good for both your health and your creativity. Whether or not you agree with George Scialabba's suggestion - "Perhaps imagination is only intelligence having fun" - there's little doubt that a mind at rest lets the subconscious release ideas that would otherwise remain dormant. According to Susan Gunelius, "You never know what might happen when you focus on your strengths and making yourself happy. Women don't do that enough." Nor do men, in our opinion!
- Recognise the value of both intuition and logic. Albert Einstein saw it this way: "The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honours the servant and has forgotten the gift." It's all too easy to emphasise stability and structure at the expense of creative solutions that could improve our lives. Margaret J Wheatley has noted that "The things we fear most in organizations - fluctuations, disturbances, imbalances - are the primary sources of creativity." Her comment can apply to individuals as well.
- Acknowledge your fears. This is essential if you want to learn how to control fear and build confidence. Whether you're afraid of failure or success (or both), the effect can be thoroughly immobilising. It may be tempting to focus on all the things that can go wrong, but this will only shrivel your creativity. Rita Mae Brown said, "Creativity comes from trust. Trust your instincts."
- Practise seeing things with fresh eyes. In George Kneller's view, "To think creatively, we must be able to look afresh at what we normally take for granted." This is why children can be such refreshing company, because they see connections that are lost on most adults. According to Henry David Thoreau, "It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see." Simple colours can mean quite different things in different cultures. White is often associated with weddings in the West, and with funerals in the East. Many Westerners have been conditioned to think of darkness in negative terms. By contrast, in Polynesian cultures darkness can symbolise incubation, fruitfulness and creation. At Giroma we often find that difficulties can lead to breakthroughs. For instance, our new property development syndicate grew out of our frustration with the current lack of bank lending.
- Move out of your comfort zone now and then. Erich Fromm wrote: "Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties." If you take just a few tiny steps down the road less travelled, you may be amazed by the possibilities that present themselves. As Tuli Kupferberg put it, "When patterns are broken, new worlds emerge." But beware of throwing all caution to the winds. If you abandon your comforts entirely you could start to panic - and that helps no one. The most fruitful area is the discomfort zone, in between comfort and panic. This is where many fresh insights and inventive solutions appear.
Alan Alda summed it up so neatly that we've decided to give him the last word. "You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition. What you'll discover will be wonderful. What you'll discover is yourself."