Kindling the fire of creativity

KS Someswara explores researches done on creativity and discerns that creativity can be practised.

Every one of us has our own interest while accomplishing our work. Sometimes, the creative attitude will enhance the quality of work we do. This may be routine official chore or anything related to our family or to the society. Here are some of the time tested principles to inculcate the creative attitude which is inhibited within ourselves. Following are suggestions made by many researchers on human mind and activity:

Absorb Brainset

In this state of mind one will be getting innumerable information from his/her surrounding without filtration. The inputs may be unusual sights, sounds and many more. These are useful while compounding the data. An open mind and interest in seeking new things is preferred.

Slant of Light

To become more aware of the environment and to enhance one’s ability to perceive the world around these exercises are helpful.

Take a stop watch/timer and set the same for five minutes. Look around the area you are in for visuals. sounds and other things. Observe with curiosity and do not come to judgment. Look for patterns of colour and light, view edges and angles of objects or wall. Even movement of people, insect is also part of your observation. Likewise, keep your ears open to tonal qualities of voices and sound, rhythm of music and other incidental noises occur around. (Barking of dog, raindrops on rooftop etc.). Sense the texture of the floor you are sitting on. Its temperature, humidity around. Also feel the odour of flowers, food etc. This should be continued till the timer rings. Frequent performance of this activity will condition us to become attracted to what is new around us. This will enhance the inhibition to a sensory world.

Connect Brainset

Here one should retain their focus so that we can see the connection between very different types of objects or concepts. This process of so-called divergent thinking helps generate multiple solutions to a problem rather than a single solution. The more ideas you can get for a difficult conundrum, the more likely one of them will work. This enables you to think out of the box and generate more insight.

Novel Solutions

To improve your ability to mentally connect, set the timer for three minutes and write down all the uses from a soup can that you can imagine. Next three minutes, jot down all the edible things that you can think of and lastly think of new uses for household objects such as paper clip, gum tube etc and consider the consequences of other strange changes to human body.

Here consider a scenario which bothers you often. This may be as common as the tantrums of children in doing their routine. Set the timer for three minutes and write down as many ways as you think the problem can be solved without judging the quality of the solutions. Later filter out silly ideas and keep only the realistic ones which you can perform. Such exercises done frequently, give divergent ways to solve a practical problem in your life.

Reason Brainset

By working on information stored in your memory, try to solve a problem. Many people perform this concept called ‘mental gymnastics’ whenever they are setting a goal, devising a plan or making a decision. For a more smooth performance of reasoning machinery follow the process noted below:
*Recognise your problem like negative notion, stress, anxiety, depression etc

*Decide exactly what it is and causes

*Set a goal for solving and make it realistic

*Brainstorm solutions using connect brainset

*Evaluate the solutions

*Choose the best and make a plan to implement the same

*Assess the success  

Thought Stopper

To be able to think logically, you may need to train your brain to block out all thoughts that are disturbing and distracting. Do this by writing on a paper ‘thought stopper’, ‘I need to stop think them’ or ‘mentally walk away’ and ‘these thoughts won’t help’.

Envision Brainset

Think visually the images and manipulate them in your mind’s eye to see new patterns and similarities between disparate concepts. This will enhance your ability to visualize anything and everything. Stand a few feet away from an object. Hold a pencil far out from your body and trace the outlines of the object in the air starting from outer edges to its inner contours. After two minutes close your eyes and try to envision the object.

To hone your mind’s eye in a way that helps you, imagine hypothecation. Set the timer for five minutes and pick an article from a magazine and change the key aspect of the story in a ‘what if ‘scenario.

Transform Brainset

Strong emotions and vulnerability can motivate people to escape from bad mood. Expose it by thinking about what you are feeling and why? Many creative people have used their negative emotions such as anxiety and depression as a subject matter for their work of art or for other creative pieces. Use your bad mood to create music or art or writing etc. To better understand this, describe your feelings by writing down the same as an outsider. Explore and describe physical sensation like the feeling of tense or painful or the feeling of difficulty to concentrate. This idea will help you to think and completely describe your feelings. If this exercise is performed once a week one can gain insight into their feeling and hone the ability to express oneself and develop the emotional intelligence, which will inturn enhance the creativity.

Difficult Choices

To improve one’s ability to make decisions and weed out alternatives, list out your favorite things which you possess in two columns as ‘To keep’ and ‘Throw away’. Set the timer for two minutes and delete the unwanted. This activity will enable you to make rapid judgment about the value of things you own.

Evaluate Brainset

Be a critique of yourself. Judge the idea and product you have created. Be sure that they are well-suited to the purpose. Impersonally examine your work and reject what you do not want. Take out only the best possible. It is like picking the rubies from the rubbles.

Stream Brainset

In this mindset, you achieve what psychologists call a state of ‘flow’ in which you are completely absorbed in the creative process.

One critical condition for achieving the ‘flow’ is motivation. To motivate oneself, find a task that is the right level of difficulty. A job that is too hard will frustrate and worry a person. There are ways to adjust the level of challenges. A boring task can be boosted by appreciating the work that is being done and setting a time to complete the same. Some very difficult tasks may need postponement until one feels one has the expertise to do the same.

Remember, creativity is certainly ingrained deep within the layers of our mind, but it is up to us to bring them out.