8+ Ways To Train Yourself To Be Creative
February 27, 2023
by John Hoff @ eVentureBiz.com
A short time ago I received an email from a young entrepreneur asking me how he was suppose to compete in a marketplace where the competition was high and more established companies had big advertising bucks. I mentioned a few ideas to him but the one that concerned him the most was creativity. Give him numbers and he’ll work them, but tell him to come up with some creative idea, forget it.
He said he doesn’t have a creative bone in his body.
People who tell themselves that have already lost unless they decide to do something about it.
The development of a creative thought process is no different than learning martial arts. At first, someone shows you how to stand, execute proper body movement, and teaches you a Kata (a.k.a form - a set of movements that help develop your technique).
Once these techniques are learned you must practice them to become a good fighter. When fighting, it is taught that the best place for your mind to be is no where at all, called Mushin (means “no mind”). The point of Mushin is to blank out your mind so that you are in a state of “openness.” In other words, it allows you to simply react and not worry about what might happen when fighting.
To be creative, you have to first believe you are creative.
The same can be said when learning to be creative. You first learn what techniques help develop a creative thought process and then you have to practice them while keeping your mind open to endless possibilities no matter how ridiculous they may seem.
But how do you train your mind to become a well-oiled creative thinking machine?
Like the first sentence of this post says, you have to first believe you are a creative person. Following that you need to exercise your mind in various ways.
Let’s take a look at some creative mind-pumping ideas and activities that will help widen your mind’s creative eye.
I. Listen
Don’t Jump the Gun
It is important listen to everything and not judge or come to your own conclusion prematurely. This is vital if you are to create a product that wins in the eyes of your customers and employer. Remember, listening does not equal simply hearing.
Imagination is Power!
February 18, 2023
John Lennon entitled a song “Imagine.” Thoreau once said: “Go confidently in the direction of your dreams! Live the life you’ve imagined.” Neville once said: “Imagination is the very gateway of reality.”
Are you waking up to a new way of being? Can you feel something rumbling deep within you, calling out to live more creatively, successfully, joyfully? The fragmented ways of your old thinking cannot bridge the divide between mind and matter, body and soul, challenges and dreams. What if you build your finances, your business, your health, your relationships and your life around imagination and use your mental images, thoughts and feelings to attract the fulfillment of your dreams? By intentionally shifting into new states of consciousness you can change your blueprints of reality and affect your world. Imagination is power and you have it! Imagination creates reality.
Life is a banquet
Life is a banquet, so why are so many starving to death with unfulfilled desires? Laziness, complacency, no time, fear of the unknown – you name it and the excuses line up. It’s up to you to impress your subconscious mind with beneficial images of success. Doing this allows you to shift from undesirable patterns of being disempowered into habits that empower you.
Everything begins with a dream, a purpose or a goal. Being able to focus and concentrate in the midst of chaos gives you the winner’s advantage. You are a “focuser of energy.” Focus plus uplifted emotional moods are the keys to your success. Whatever you do, never lose focus!
Everybody Wants a Better Life
Everybody wants a better life, but if you do the same old things in the same old way you will get the same old results. If a farmer plants corn seeds, he gets corn; he doesn’t get tomatoes. If you focus on failure, poverty, or violent ideas how will you harvest (attract) success, wealth, or peace. If you want to change the results you are getting, you must change your images, because thought is creative. How to begin? First you must have a desire that is far greater than what you are currently experiencing.
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God Creates No Garbage
February 9, 2023
This is a Guest post from Blog Carnival participant, Edith Yeung. She is a powerhouse. Check out her blog.
What motivates you to get up every morning? What put a smile on your face before you go to bed at night? Why do you do what you do every day?
Imagine you are given a vault to open. Inside this vault lies the answer to your life’s purpose.
This is a big iron vault. If you force it open, you will damage what’s inside. The easy way is to find the key to the vault, but you have no idea where the key is…
Sometimes you may find keys which look like they could work, but when you try them with the vault, you only leave with disappointment and sadness.
You can’t wait to open the vault and find out your true purpose. You know the answer is inside and it is only one turn of the key away.
We are all here for a reason. For a purpose. We are here to serve. To dream. To fulfill a purpose that our creator has designed for us.
The key to understanding your purpose is to find the key to your vault.
Lots of people would pass you by and tell you what the right key is. But no one really knows except you.
The trick is that only you will be able to find the right key to your own vault. And, the only way to find out is to closely listen to your heart.
Trust your intuition. Not your mind. Not your intellect. And definitely not anyone else’s.
You can and you will find the right key. Once you find that key, it will be easy (like a breeze) to open what seem to be a complicated puzzle.
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10 Imaginitive Ways to Pump your Mind for Ideas
February 7, 2024
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Ever play with Tinkertoys as a kid? This toy where you had wheels with peg holes in it, and wood stems of various sizes in which you could create anything. Well, I ran across this book, Thinkertoys: A Handbook of Creative-Thinking Techniques
, by Michael Michalko, has inspired my creativity… I’m only about 28 pages into it!
He has ten ways to help drive your creative juices. I have paraphrased them for us to use.
1. Set an Idea Quota. - Give your mind a workout every day. Set yourself a n idea quota for a challenge you are working on, such as finve new ideas ever day for a week. you’ll find the first five are the hardest, but these will quickly trigger other ideas. The more ideas you come up with, the greater your chances of coming up with winner. Having an idea quota will force you to actively generate ideas and alternatives rather than waiting for them to occur to you.
2. Get Tone. - Fighter pilots say, “I’ve gone tone” when their radar locks onto a target. That’s the point at which the pilot and plane are totally focus on the target. “Getting tone” in everyday life means paying attention to what’s happening around you.
Ordinarily we do not make the fullest use of our ability to see. We move through life looking at a tremendous quantity of information, objects, and scenes, and yet we look but do not see. Paying attention to the world around you will help you develop the extraordinary capacity to look at mundane things and see the miraculous.
3. Don’t Be a Duke of Habit. - Stretch yourself and take a the road less traveled occasionally. Deliberately program changes into your daily life. Make a list of the things you do by habit. Try driving a different route to work. Change your sleeping hours, Read a different newspaper, Try different recipes. Take a bath instead of a shower. You would be surprised how your mind reacts to new things in this way.
4. Feed Your Head. - Leaders are Readers. So are creative people. Lets feed our heads full of amazing information, and have a larger database in which to pull ideas from. Read Magazines on varied subjects. Read Nonfiction. When reading them, practice thinking up solutions for any problems presented in the book, before they reveal it in the book. Think as you read, and take notes. Write in the margins of your book, write in a notebook the ideas you have captured from the book, highlight passages. Also, feel free to OUTLINE a book prior to your reading it, to help you know what you are going to learn. Also, maybe you could outline the book after you read it, without looking at the table of contents.
5. Do a Content Analysis. - Check things out! Do a scan of your junkmail before you throw it away, in fact, put all your junkmail in a big box for about a month, then scan it to see if there are any emerging trends or ideas to be gleamed from it. When you are on the road, scan local newspapers for interesting ideas. Observe popular culture and find out what people are interested in and why they are popular. Attend many business lectures and seminars as you can. Listen to different radio stations every week to get a variety of input.
6. Create a Brain Bank. - I love this idea. Collect and store ideas like a pack rat. Keep a container (coffee can, Tupperware, shoebox, etc) of ideas and idea starters. Begin collecting interesting ads, quotes, designs, pictures,questions, cartoons, doodles and words that might triggers ideas by association.
When looking for a new idea, shake up your BrainBank and pull out a couple ideas and free associate, you will be pleasantly surprised how this will help you.
7. Be a Travel Junkie. - When you are bored, GET UP AND GO SOMEWHERE! Go to a trade show, a quirky store, an antique shop, museum, or flea market… just go. And when you are there, walk around with an open mind and allow yourself to be DRAWN to something. Once there, use your mind to make a connection to something else in your life, and it may creatively help you solve some problem.
8. Capture your Thoughts. - Record your thoughts, Carry around a little moleskin in your back pocket. Scientists say that we can keep 5-9 ideas actively in our mind, then they float away. We remember some, and some are gone. By, keeping the notebook in your backpocket, you will capture the thought when it is there. Then you can review it, and perhaps your mind may be able to make a better connection with it later on.
9. Think Right. - Consciously work to make your thinking more fluent with your thinking. So, making descriptive lists as a way to capture thought fluency.
10. Keep an Idea Log. - Take a Moleskine or a Composition book, and divide it into sections that you want to captures ideas. Marketing ideas, Home Improvement Ideas, special projects, planning ideas, comedy skits, or whatever you wish to capture.
After you read the book, you may want to consider purchasing the accompanying Thinkpak: A Brainstorming Card Deck
which gives you additional exercises to help you tap into your creativity.
Hope this helps you!
Successfully,
Travis Wright
