How to be Creative

Today I want to discuss with you How To Be Creative.  Creativity is not a privilege of human being, some animals or creatures also have it too – in order for them to survive.  We don’t need creativity to survive, but creativity will help us improve our life in various ways.

“Creativity is the power to connect the seemingly unconnected” – William Plomer.

Why do we need creativity?

Imagine if you are a housewife.  Your son doesn’t like to eat vegetables, but you know that vegetables are good for him.  How do you make him eat his veggies?  By telling him it is good for him wouldn’t do the trick; he won’t listen to you.

A creative way is to blend the vegetables with the meat he loves and make it into the shape of a dinosaur, car, plane or things that he like.  He will love to eat it.  You can also put in some sauce he likes and he wouldn’t know he is eating vegetables.

Imagine you are a job seeker.  You have sent out thousands of applications, but you got no response.  You tried door knocking on the companies that you want to work for, they didn’t want to know you.

You have to analyze the situation.  Is this unemployment happen in the area you live in?  Or you are just unlucky.  Use your imagination to come up with your own solution.  I know a lot of people who are unemploy never dream of starting their own business, they are scared.  Or they don’t even know it is an option.

I have an example for you and it was a real life story.  Tom was looking for a job for years and never been able to find anything, no one wanted to employ him. He has no special skill at all.  He was down to his last cents and he would have no money left tomorrow.  He was desperate.

Scenic Backroad, New Hampshire

He went to this flashy apartment not far from where he lives.  He was in the parking area and he saw a guy walking to his car.  He went up to this guy and asked him for money.  For one moment, the guy just looked at him and he didn’t answer.  Obviously, he was thinking if he should give him some money or not.  At that split seconds, Tom noticed that this guy’s car is a little bit dirty.

“Could you give me a few dollars if I clean your car?” he said quickly.

“Come back here at five, I will be home then,” said the guy as he entered his car and drove away.

Before five o’clock, Tom had his bucket and rags ready and he was waiting at the empty parking spot.  The guy came home and he passed Tom twenty dollars.  Tom spent more than an hours and he cleaned every spot on the car.

From then on, he went there every morning and clean this guy’s car.  He was doing such a good job, he got more and more business.  Nearly everyone who lives in the same apartment gave their cars to him to clean.  After some time there was more business than he can handle, he had to hire people to help him.

Creativity could make our jobs a little bit easier, our dinner a little bit tastier and our life a little bit happier.




How could we be more creative?

Business people have what they called a “brainstorm” session.  Which everyone in the meeting will come up with an idea, no matter how crazy the idea.  Then they will analyze all the ideas and choose the best one.

To be creative, you have to be playful.  Do not judge the idea when it first come up in your mind.  Let me give you an example and see how creative you are.  Let’s imagine you are Tom and you want to find a job.  Get a piece of paper and write down all the ideas that you can come up with.  I will give you 10 minutes.  Please complete this task before you continue reading this article!

 Score

Number of ideas:

  • 1 – 10   You don’t have any creativity.  Your life is rigid and you like routines.
  • 11 – 20 You are a little bit creative.  Someone who will do something spontaneous once a while.
  • 21 -30 You are quite creative.  Someone who could think outside the box, but there are still room for improvement.
  • over 30 Congratulations! You are a very creative person and a very good problem solver.  Someone who are fun to be with, but some of your ideas would seem crazy to others.

 

Cultivate your creativity

You can learn to be more creative.  Creativity is not skills that we are born with.

  1. Do more reading – when you read, you can pick up ideas from other people.  You have to find out if the ideas make sense first, then they become your ideas.
  2. Do exercises like the one I gave you.  When you do more of this kind of exercises, you will be able to remove the limiting belief you have and you will be more creative.
  3. Learn to relax your mind.  To relax your mind, you can learn meditation.  It is a very good tool for self-healing.
  4. Learn to relax your body.  Do more exercise.  When your body function well, your brain works better.

 

“Creative involves breaking out of established patterns in order to look at things in a different way.” – Edward de Bono.

Be creative and have fun!

Signing off

-MisterWailor


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