Creativity vs. regret

If I can be simplistic for a moment, there are two human brains packed into each of our heads: one that is extroverted, exploratory, and uncritical, and another that is introverted, analytic, and very critical indeed.  The balance between those two brains is what let us first learn to build a fire, and next gain the caution to keep it from burning us out of the cave.  We absolutely need both of our brains.

I've pointed out before that when you are being creative, your creative mind has to be free to explore without too much critical input.  You must turn down the volume on the introverted, critical brain.  But we're not talking about 100% turning off your inner critic.  Your past learning, ability to analyze, and even negative internal feedback like fear of failure may sometimes be useful in pushing your creative project forward in useful directions.  It's just that the primary impulse must come from your extroverted, exploratory brain.

However, one critical impluse you must downplay is regret.  Regret is a vast, internal judgment that some activity or exploration was a waste of time, or some opportunity was passed over when it would have been useful. Regret saps the life out of creativity because it tells you things are somehow over, gone, wasted.  As long as you draw breath, that is not true.  Even failure is experience of our astonishing world. 

Besides, there's no future in wishing the past had been different.  In fact, creativity can help you overcome the corrosive emotion of regret.  Look underneath any regret that pops up and use what you find there to identify a creative challenge.  If you wish something were different, start from there, and don't let the emotion of regret tell you there's no point.  The point is for you to have an amazing life.  So keep creating!

Exercising creativity muscles

Activating your creative brain requires practice, especially if it's been sitting in the attic of your life, gathering dust. Luckily, creativity is so fundamental and human that some simple exercises can get you revved up and ready to move forward with a project that really motivates you.

Remember what your creative brain does: it reaches out into the world, perceives it, strives to understand and integrate what it learns, and then plans how to use that information. What it doesn't do is take ordinary things for granted.

So here are a few exercises you can easily do for a few minutes in your spare time. 

1.  Take a pencil (or something else you look at without really seeing) and come up with six questions about the pencil itself. They can't be anything you already know the answer to!

2. Choose a very different name for yourself. Figure out what Other Name would dress/speak/do. Why does the name make such a big difference?

3. Pick any two objects in front of you. How could you make a new thing by combining them?

You get the idea: mix things up!  You can make up your own exercises, or do them with someone else. Smile while you do them, and you will create a positive feedback loop that encourages your brain to spend more time being creative.

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.

 

Creativity is a learnable skill

There are many myths about creativity, inspired by the lives of extraordinary persistent creators like Mozart, DaVinci, Van Gogh, or Einstein. Absent-minded, obsessed, naive, unable to explain their inspiration, stumbling into brilliance... these cliches all suggest that creativity is not for the likes of ordinary mortals like us.

And they are all nonsense.  Where Mozart was naive, DaVinci was able to operate in the labyrinthine world of the Medicis.  Where VanGogh was obsessed and half-mad, Einstein was a balanced, open, admirably sane man.  Personality has nothing to do with creativity.

Instead, creativity is a set of traits and skills. The traits (such as perceptiveness and wilfullness) can be nurtured.  The skills (such as intuitive exploration of an idea) can be learned. It's true that some people have specific talents, such as for music or mathematics, which pave their way to a creative career.  But all people, in all walks of life, could learn to be even more creative if they knew how.

Creativity adds richness to our lives; it is the antidote to boredom as well as the engine of civilization. Everything around you, from a pencil to the buttons on your computer, was invented by someone, somewhere. Creativity taught you to walk and speak, and it could also teach you to live better than you ever imagined.

Learn and practice the traits and skills of creativity, and you will be rewarded!  For more, visit http://www.activelycreative.com/.

Poker and creativity

Know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em...

That's true in the creative process just as in poker.  But there are some differences. Poker is a game of chance, with definite, learnable odds. Over a longer period of time, the human dynamics of the poker table can also be learned. (There are just so many ways a person can bluff you.)  In poker, experience is your best guide: if you've sat at hundreds of poker tables, you read the situation better than if you're still wet behind the ears.  

Yet, when it comes to creativity, experience can (and usually does) blind you to new possibilities. You should only "fold 'em" after you've thoroughly incubated an idea, looking for buried treasure in tangents and confusion, if at that point it turns out that your idea doesn't merit further work. Don't turn to the past for guidance until you're well along the path of exploration.

In creativity, the only experience that counts is the experience of being creative. Learning and practicing the creative process will teach you to postpone decisions about what to hold and what to fold until you've developed rich insights.  Then and only then will you apply your expertise to flight-test your idea and see if it's going to work. 

And if it doesn't? Don't just walk away from the table.  Turn the problems with your idea into creative fodder.  Go back to your tangents and confusion, to your discarded insights.  Keep playing!  Sooner or later, you're going to walk away with the jackpot.

Creative insight starts with clarity

One of the obstacles creative people face is confusion--about evidence (is this meaningful?), priorities (what's important/unimportant?) and the process itself (where should I start?). Creativity needs a sense of free flowing motion, and confusion can bog it down in indecision.

Even worse, areas of confusion are often papered over with habitual workarounds that cut off creative opportunities before they begin. For example, maybe the team always adheres to a certain process, even if it's not very productive.  Or maybe we rely on assumptions instead of questioning them. If you don't even know you're confused, you can't gain clarity.

Large or small insights are the fuel of creative energy, and clarity is crucial to insight. I actually define insight as "extraordinary clarity that illuminates something that was hidden".

To gain clarity, widen your field of perception:

• Stop staring at what confuses you, and shift your focus to similar or related situtions.  Study them--what is like, unlike, relevant to you?  Use this information to discover missing areas in your understanding. Each time you fill in something you didn't see before, that's an insight.

• Use more senses. If you've been reading or surfing alot, shift to audio or kinetic inputs (and vice versa). For example, if you're looking for a new business idea, take a tour of new businesses in your area and let the ambiance sink in.  If you're trying to come up with a design, try listening to a new piece of music that fits the mood. By engaging more parts of your brain, you may be able to loosen up your imagination and make intuitive leaps.

• Create an inner world for your idea.  Children are great at this, and you can be too. If you are conflicted, for example, create imaginative characters and let them argue both sides of the conflict, while "you" interrogate them to support their positions. Role play the problem; imagine your idea in action and watch what goes right and wrong. By engaging your imagination instead of your anxiety, you may uncover an insight about what is confusing you.

Don't accept confusion or decide it's okay to look the other way.  Because here's the secret: confusion may be the mask that hides your next brilliant creative insight.

Smiling helps you overcome creative obstacles

I love this science! For many years, I have known that when I am facing a frightening or stressful situation, forcing a smile helps me to relax. What science has discovered is that smiling also has specific effects on the way your brain deals with errors.

A very thorough (and completely humorless) study involving people holding pens in their mouths in various positions showed that those who held the pen in a "smile" position had very different responses to making mistakes.  Basically, they didn't care much.  They felt good, happy, at peace with the world.  They were high on dopamine, the reward system of the brain.

Is unconcern about errors a good thing? It is when you're facing a creative hurdle. One of the difficulties of creativity is tolerating the risk of failure.  Your brain's danger alerts may lead you to quit before you solve a problem if (as is likely) the path to a solution involves makng mistakes before you reach your goal.

Inhibition around making mistakes is important when you're driving, taking a test, or balancing your checkbook.  So don't knock it.  But when you're free-associating, opening your mind to intuition, or playing with an idea, errors don't matter.  In that early phase of the creative process (the "open phase"), all ideas are equal. Making judgements comes later, during the "closed" phase. Then, error detection is very helpful.  Feel free to frown, purse your lips, or be stone-faced.

When you're coming up with ideas, though, force a smile.  It doesn't matter how you're really feeling, the smile will clear the way for your brain's creative capacity.  You can say the letter "e", or hold a pencil in the right position between your teeth, whatever works for you (that should make you giggle).  Just smile!