Creativity is a skill that needs to be practiced, and like any other skill it can be mastered over time. The key to being creative is to understand how your brain works and be open to letting go of some conventional beliefs about creativity.
Imagination is one of the most fundamental traits of being creative. It’s the ability to look at the world around you and imagine alternative options of things that already exist. This can be anything from a new outfit you might wear to work, a presentation you’re working on or even a dinner you’re making.
This is a good thing and a common theme with creative people. Creatives are open to their emotions and they often draw inspiration from the pain that they experience. Inventors who are working on creating a new machine might feel pain when it doesn’t work, or writers can be hurt by reading bad writing. This is part of the reason why creatives are so sensitive and vulnerable, but it’s also why they are able to get such great enjoyment out of their craft.
Creatives are also very resilient when it comes to failure. They’re very good at learning from mistakes and don’t take them too personally, so they keep pushing on even when their ideas don’t succeed at first. This is part of what makes creatives so successful, and it’s a trait that all people can learn to develop over time.
Lastly, creatives are very flexible and adept at switching between different modes of thinking. They’re able to move from cognitive and emotional, deliberate and spontaneous, and can activate and deactivate these brain networks that normally tend to conflict with each other. This allows them to see connections between disparate ideas and come up with the kinds of solutions that most other people aren’t able to.
Being able to juggle all of these seemingly contradictory ideas is something that we can all learn to do a little bit better in order to be more creative. It might help to start by taking an inventory of your own thinking habits and seeing how you compare to the creative people that you know.
Do you find that you are more inclined to think logically about a problem? Do you often think about a different way to do something? Do you have an insatiable curiosity about the world around you and want to explore why things are the way they are? These are all signs that you may be a creative person.
The next step is to identify what you are most passionate about and try to do that with as much of your creativity as possible. If you have a passion for painting or playing the violin, that’s where your creativity will likely shine the brightest. But, try to incorporate a variety of ways to hone your creative skills so that you can keep your brain fed with new ideas and have a diverse portfolio of creations.