Creativity and the White Queen

'When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast." (The White Queen, Alice in Wonderland)

Using your imagination requires a little bit of madness, perfectly exemplified by Lewis Carroll's characters in Alice in Wonderland.  Not coincidentally, Carroll was a mathematician; sophisticated mathematics can create seemingly impossible scenarios, where 2 + 2 only equals 4 on alternate Tuesdays, for example. So he knew that believing impossible things was an indispensable creative skill.

The idea is to imagine what the world would be like if the impossible were actually possible.  In general it's best to treat this as a thought experiment--out of concern for my readers I wish to emphasize that you can't really sprout wings and fly.  On the other hand, you can use your creativity to find a workaround; inventing the airplane, for example, is a real-world way of sprouting wings and flying.

Here's a quick example of how you could use this as a creative exercise.  How could it be both cloudy and clear at the same time?  Come up with imaginary or realistic scenarios, it doesn't really matter.  The idea is to force your brain through the looking glass to a world where more things are possible.

3 ways to use creativity to be creative!

Say you've chosen a creative project, and moved along the path far enough to feel you're starting to get somewhere. Most of the time, an obstacle will arise. A time obstacle, a hitch in your plans, negative feedback from someone who really counts... something will come up.

Well, good news! There is an answer: more creativity. Each obstacle can be examined and framed as a creative challenge.  Not enough time? The creative challenge can be, "How can I make time for my project without sacrificing other things that are important?" If you think outside your normal patterns, there may be ways to shift your creativity time around to fit it in, or schedule a vacation break where you can focus 100% on your idea.

Here are three ways to use creativity to overcome obstacles:

• Redefine the obstacle as a creative challenge.  This is step one of the creative process: identification. How could you reframe "My mentor thinks this is a terrible idea!" as a creative challenge? Use your imagination here, just as you did when you first had your idea.

• Tap into your original motivation.  Your motivation--the reason you feel this is important--has carried you this far.  Go back to that place and sit with it until it fills you up again.  The creative energy you get from doing this should help you to restart your creative engines and find ways to get around barriers.

• Use your creativity to reshape your idea.  It's your motivation that matters, not the details of your idea.  If there's something about it that doesn't work, you can use that information to make it better!  J.K. Rowling has written about the number of characters she worked hard on who never made it into her books.  The ability to change your idea when you need to is a hallmark of successful creators.

Whatever you do, don't just give up because something's in the way.  The world of your creative imagination is rich and vast.  There is plenty of room to get around the obstacles.

3 ways that creativity helps overcome obstacles

Problem-solving is a skill, like any other, and a key component of problem-solving is creativity. Usually, solving a problem requires openness to new ideas and perspectives; if the old ones had worked, there wouldn't be a problem! 

Creativity uses the part of your brain that is open to new experiences and able to find new solutions.  So when you face a problem, you can tap into that part of your brain to make solving it much, much easier.  Here are three ways to use creativity in problem-solving:

1.  Examine your problem from the outside, using role-playing; in other words, pretend you are someone else. Maybe that new perspective will help you see your problem differently.  Use your imagination to make your role-playing very real; remember, you were a master at pretending when you were a child!

2.  Reframe the problem as a creative challenge.  A creative challenge is phrased in an open way that helps you look outside your normal frames of reference.  For example, if your problem is "we're under price pressure", the creative challenge might be something like, "what could we do to or say about our product to make it more valuable to our customers?"

3.  Roll back past choices to see if other roads could have been taken. If a problem is really difficult to solve, it may have started very early on.  Reexamining choices that have already been made is a great way to identify opportunities to start fresh.  Creativity comes into this process because you will need to imagine how changing a decision could have resulted in a different outcome--an act of imagination.

Engaging creativity in a problem-solving situation is a conscious choice.  When we're worried, we have a tendency to react with tired old patterns.  Instead, tell yourself that you are going to be open to new ideas.  You'll find that much more effective.