Motivating creativity

The biggest difference between people whose lives are filled with creativity and those who haven't done anything new since they learned to drive is motivation. Being creative--whether that means learning something new or completing a creative project--requires enough motivation to carve out time and energy.

If you want to stimulate your creative brain systems, you first must find a good enough reason.  When you were a child, it wasn't hard to find new things to learn, or time to play and imagine.  As an adult, we're tempted to stick close to our familiar patterns and habits as a way of conserving energy and time.

Motivation is the key to breaking through to your creative brain.  What do you really, really want? What really matters to you? What is so fun that you find yourself wishing you had more time for it? Your answer to those questions will tell you where to look for motivation.

The next question is: how can you take what you care most about and use that to identify a creative opportunity? That's the first step of the creative process, called "identification". Once you have your answer, you're on the path.