Be More Creative - Let Your Creativity Come Out To Play! (By Dan Goodwin)

Creative play is a concept that's virtually alien to many of us who strive to be more creative. When we create, we get hung up on choosing the best idea to start developing, planning each part of a new creative project in great detail, and not letting a project be finished until every aspect is "perfect".

All of our focus is geared towards creating some ideal outcome, a perfect final product that we can be proud of.

Now of course we want to create the best we're capable of, that's an honourable ambition in anything we create.

But often it's getting caught up in too much detail, and expecting to be able to plan ahead perfectly, that's the very thing that's most limiting and damaging to our free flow of creativity.

So what's the alternative? Surely we need to plan to some extent? Surely we need to start with an idea and an aim?

All creating begins somewhere, with some idea or concept. But that doesn't have to be an idea that's already fully realised in your mind before you even begin creating. Sometimes the idea comes, sometimes the BEST ideas come, in the midst of just creating.

How do you "just create"?

Try taking a few materials, giving yourself some edges to work within and just create. For example, take a blank canvas, a tube of blue paint and a tube of white paint and start a new project with the aim simply to explore the many shades that can be produced by mixing the two on the canvas.

As you experiment - as you create with an attitude of play, not product, then ideas will naturally form.

In painting, you'll find a particular shade you really love, or a collision of two colours that incite a particular emotion. In writing, you'll discover new rhythms of rhyming when you dare to break away and play. In dancing you'll find variations of known moves that make the dance all the more personal and unique to your own style.

With all of these, it only can happen when you create with the attitude of experimentation and play.

Would you rather experiment, create 5 new projects, and through those discover a couple of exciting new techniques you'd never tried before? Or create 5 "safe" projects, just like the previous 5 you created, with a tried, tested and predictable approach that always gives the same predictable outcome?

Carl Jung said: "The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with objects it loves."

Isn't it time you gave your creative mind the opportunities to play with what IT loves? The potential benefits are huge, so forget about the end creative "product" and start to play!

Want to learn more about how to increase YOUR creativity? It's easy: just sign up to "Create Create!" - Creativity Coach Dan Goodwin's free twice monthly ezine - today, and get your free copy of the "Explode Your Creativity!" Action Workbook. Head on over now to http://www.CoachCreative.com

Lacking Creative Ideas? How To Provide A Safe Harbour For Endless Creative Ideas(By Dan Goodwin)

Do you feel you have enough good ideas for your creative projects? Or is a lack of ideas one of the major reasons you feel you're not able to be more creative?

Well, you're not alone, in fact it's one of the biggest issues creative people struggle with, not having enough ideas to develop.

Ideas are the starting point for all creativity. Without an initial spark of an idea, there IS no creativity. So ideas are obviously fundamentally important to us as creative people.

There's a popular misconception about not having enough ideas though. The problem isn't actually that you don't HAVE enough ideas. It's that you don't CAPTURE enough ideas.

Imagine your creative mind is a harbour at the edge of the ocean. All day and all night, ships sail by looking for a safe place to dock, somewhere their passengers can rest and replenish themselves.

These ships are like creative ideas, constantly flowing by, waiting for somewhere to dock and settle in.

What many of us do with these ideas is the equivalent of having our harbour closed off, with a huge sign saying: "Sail on my friends, you're not welcome here..."

So the ships sail on, and find somewhere safe and welcoming to dock. The ideas pass before you've even seen them up close, and you're left once again complaining that you never have any good ideas.

But what if instead you had a sign on your harbour saying "All welcome here, sail in and rejuvenate yourselves in our wonderful welcoming town..."?

It would make quite a difference to those passing ships don't you think?

What you would then do is welcome each ship in, and all the diversity and richness of its crew and passengers, to brighten and enhance your harbour town.

You'd welcome in each new idea like a long lost friend, give it a bed and a hot meal, make it comfortable and treat it as if it were a king.

What would then also happen is your reputation as a welcoming harbour would spread to other ships. You'd be known far and wide as a safe and caring place to dock. The more ideas you welcome in and collect, the more ideas are attracted to you. Quite simply, the more ideas you have, the more ideas you have!

So think about how you currently welcome and capture (or don't capture) ideas. Do you have an ideas journal or sketchbook you carry with you to note down ideas as they come? Are you open to new ideas in every situation and different set of surroundings you find yourself in? Or do you go around with your harbour closed then complain of no ideas?

The secret to having more ideas than you'll ever need is simple:

Become more open to the ideas that are in everything all around you, and capture them as they appear, before they sail by, never to be seen again.

Want to learn more about how to be more creative? Get your FREE copy of Creativity Coach Dan Goodwin's powerful and practical "Explode Your Creativity!" Action Workbook when you sign up to the FREE twice monthly ezine "Create Create!". Visit the website now: http://www.CoachCreative.com

Your Creativity Quotient - How To Boost It (By Steven Gillman)

We don't have a precisely-numbered measure of your "creativity quotient," yet, like we have for your intelligence quotient, or "IQ." But tests which do try to measure your creative ability generally look at three criteria. These are the quantity of your ideas, their originality, and the possible usefulness or "quality" of those ideas. With that in mind, here are some techniques for doing better in all three areas.

Creativity Through Quantity

More ideas means a higher probability of a few good ideas. This has been shown in both research and most of personal experiences. How, then, do we generate more ideas?

Start by practicing. If you had to write down as many uses as you could in ten minutes for a piece of string (a common creativity exercise), you might get a dozen ideas the first time you try. Do it a few times, though (with different items), and you'll soon find that you are coming up with twice as many ideas. This is especially true if you do this with others. Their ideas will get you thinking in new ways.

You can also learn one or more of the many specific techniques for generating ideas. They include mentally combining concepts to create new ones, tearing apart things and processes to change the components, challenging premises and more. If you want instructions in how to use these special methods, they can usually be found online by searching "problem solving techniques," or "creativity techniques."

A Higher Creativity Quotient Means More Original Ideas

Existing ideas have likely been tried. What is new, then, can more likely add value to what is already here. New to you may not be new to the world, of course. I am regularly dreaming up of new inventions which I later find already existed somewhere. But you have to start with what is original to you.

Do a creativity exercise like the one mentioned above, where you try to find as many uses as you can for some common object. Then show your ideas to someone else. If they don't laugh at some of them, or if you are not embarrassed by a few of them, they are not crazy enough. To have more original ideas you need to lower your inhibitions and let the thoughts flow.

It isn't that a silly or outrageous idea is inherently useful. In fact, most of them will not be of any direct value. For example, who would really want to use chewing gum as a defensive weapon, as one gentleman wrote down during a brainstorming exercise? The image of him throwing a sticky wad of gum at an attacker is just ridiculous. But upon reflection, it occurred to me that gooey balls with transponders in them could be thrown at fleeing suspects or their vehicles. These would stick to anything and be trackable with a device the police would have. This is where the primary value of crazy and original ideas is - they lead to better ideas.

Again, the first thing to do to improve the originality of your ideas, is to practice. Write down all the craziest uses you can think of for a dollar bill or a tree branch. Then see if by working with the associations created, you can work with one of these ideas until it is something possibly useful. Try asking crazy questions too. The more you let yourself be original, the easier it gets.

Having More Useful Ideas

Of course, one of the biggest reasons to boost your creativity quotient is to have more useful, perhaps even profitable ideas. Concentrating on the first two components above will help get you there. To really boost the quality of your ideas, though, work in areas that actually mean something to you, and where you can actually apply what you think of. It may be fun to think of new flying machines or ways to cure world hunger, and it's good mental exercise, but if you are not in a position to do something with those ideas, you will not be as good at testing them or refining them into something truly useful. Start closer to home.

For example, look at the problems you actually can do something about around the house or in your life, and exercise your creativity on these. Think of a new way to organize the garage, for example, or find a new and creative way to get the kids to clean their rooms. By actually putting your ideas into action you tell your mind that this is more than just mental exercise, that it is important to real life. This gets your unconscious mind working overtime on new ideas. It is a sure way to boost your creativity quotient.

Copyright Steve Gillman. For a Creativity Test, and to get the Brain Power Newsletter and other free gifts, visit: http://www.IncreaseBrainPower.com

Seven Things That Might Surprise You About Creativity(By Gregg Fraley)

Here are seven things that just might surprise you about creativity:

1. Pushing for More ideas Increases Odds of Thinking of a Quality Idea. People often seen brainstorming as inefficient, but in order to get to a breakthrough idea you have to push through the obvious, top of mind, and frankly bad ideas. When you get through all that you are at the jumping off place for truly creative solutions. Studies show that the more ideas you generate the more likely it is you'll find an innovative one.

2. Creativity can be taught. Creativity is a way of thinking, and you can change the way you think. So, you can train yourself to be more divergent and more imaginative. Creativity is more than self-expression and artistic talent it includes problem solving and decision making, and we all have capacity for those things. People with this creative thinking training consistently outperform people without it.

3. Out-of-the-Box Ideas are not always what you want. Out of the box ideas can be amazing and they are so game changing it's become a cliche to try and seek them. People and organizations forget that they can also be high risk, expensive, and difficult to implement. There is a time and place for very big or different ideas, and there is a time and place for incremental improvement. Small, easy to implement, "a little bit better" ideas often have big results. World class manufacturing requires continuous refinement for example, and refinement ideas, and lots of them, are exactly what you need.

4. You can brainstorm alone. Brainstorming, or Ideation as it is sometimes now called, is thought of a group activity. Most people don't even attempt to brainstorm alone, but it can be very effective. With the right frame of mind - no self-editing allowed - you can get into a flow of idea listing that will work well towards finding solutions. The key is separating divergent thinking (listing) from convergent thinking (selecting) - diverge first, then go back and critically review.

5. Creativity is not just about spontaneous thinking. Creativity - you just do it right? Artists come up with brilliant ideas and off they go. If they don't come, well, they have to visit their muse to rekindle their creative fire. Well, it may seem that creativity is always spontaneous, but actually, creativity can be done deliberately and in a step-by-step structured process. Even artists have methods. If you understand the basics of creative process you can focus your creative thinking towards specific challenges. Then, when spontaneous ideas occur you can better use them, and push them through your idea factory. When you mention the concept of structured creativity to people it sounds like a paradox - how can it be structured and spontaneously creative? Well, it can. Much like a piano player who has spent years internalizing melodies and then is able to spontaneously improvise on the spot, we can train ourselves to direct our creative thinking in more effective, more structured ways. Once a creative problem solving process is internalized you can have more appropriate spontaneous ideas within it.

6. Creativity is measurable. The myth is that creativity cannot be measured - it's too mysterious and elusive for that. Not so, assessments have been developed that can determine your creative thinking tendencies and preferences. One is the KAI (Kirton Adaptor-Innovator Index) that puts you on a scale of high Adaptor through high Innovator. Adaptors think "better" while Innovators think "different". Your creative style preference is essentially set by the time you are about 12 years old. Both styles (and all those points in between on the bell curve) are creative, they are just creative in different ways. Common myth has the Innovators as creative and Adaptors as not, again, not so, Adaptors have an essential and important kind of creativity. The field of modern Archeology for example was essentially invented by a high level adaptor, Howard Carter, the discoverer of King's Tut's tomb.

7. Only a select few of us are truly creative. About half of us think we are "Not Creative." In fact, every human being alive with their faculties intact has creative capacity. It does not require a high IQ and it does not require artistic talent to be creative. If you can think of ideas to solve your problems, like most people do every day, then you are creative. And since creativity can be improved with training one can become more and more creative over time. Creativity is, quite simply, a choice.

Gregg Fraley is a recognized expert on creativity and innovation. He speaks internationally and consults with many Fortune 500 companies on new product development. Co-host of the Innovise Guys, a leading podcast on innovation and improvisation, he is also the author of Jack's Notebook. To find out more about Gregg's consulting or speaking services, visit http://www.greggfraley.com

How To Be More Creative With A Magic 3 Letter Word( By Dan Goodwin)

As someone creative, it's natural to ask a lot of questions. Curiosity and the desire for knowledge are hallmarks of the active creative mind, and asking the right kinds of questions leads to great inspiration and discovery, and fuels your creativity no end.

Questions can also be very powerful in STOPPING you from being more creative though, if you ask the wrong ones. A closed question or one embedded with doubts or negativity will lead you into a loop of frustration, inactivity and eventually complete creative block.

What are these kinds of questions to avoid? And how can we turn them around with just one magic word?

The closed questions we're talking about here include ones like:

Can I be more creative?

Can I create in new mediums?

Can I overcome my creative blocks?

Can I be consistently creative?

Can I develop my talents and experiences as a creative artist?

Now on the surface these don't seem overtly negative. And they're not. But the way they're asked all prompt a "Yes" or "No" answer. They're closed, in that sense.

More often than not, you'll likely answer "No". Even if you say "Yes", then where does it get you? It doesn't actually move you anywhere. It's like saying "Do I have the ability to do things I'm not currently doing?". Of course the answers is always "Yes", but it doesn't get you doing them.

Here's where you pull out your magic word! There are 3 simple letters that when added to the questions above instantly give you motivation and momentum to move your creative life forward.

The 3 letters? H.O.W.

Put "How" at the beginning of these questions and what do they become?

How can I be more creative?

How can I create in new mediums?

How can I overcome my creative blocks?

How can I be consistently creative?

How can I develop my talents and experiences as a creative artist?

By asking "How", you make the question into a presupposition. You make the assumption that you CAN do these things, and move straight to working out how. When you just ask your mind a "Can I" question, it'll answer in a split second "Yes" or "No". End of answer.

But when you ask "How can I..." then your mind instantly switches into creative mode and comes up with ideas and solutions. You can't switch it off, being creative is what your mind does naturally. You've just got to ask the right questions to give it permission to get creative!

So, how can you use the power of "How" to help you move forward in your creative life? (oh, there it is again!).

Feel free to use the example questions above and add any of your own to come up with a stream of ideas to get you creating. Then pick one and take action today!

I invite you to take the next positive step towards being more creative today by downloading your free copy of the powerful and practical "Explode Your Creativity!" Action Workbook at http://www.CoachCreative.com.

From Creativity Coach Dan Goodwin

Get Creative! (By Carolyn Cordon)

I'm a poet and writer, and I love cooking because it allows me another expression of my creativity. Too much of one thing and the balance gets blotted out, with inedible results sometimes. Yucky and wasteful (that's why I have dogs - so my cooking experiments are never wasted, no matter how bad they turn out!). If you get the balance right, though, Yummerlicious!

There are thousands of other ways to explore your inner creativity. People who claim 'not to have a creative bone in their body', just haven't found the correct avenue to explore. I've always said in the past I'm hopeless at art-type things, but once I rekindled my interest in poetry (and allowed it to flower into my passion), then I realized I was creative. My poetry is my most creative outlet, and my most loved outlet for creativity. But I've followed up on other interests too, and discovered I am creative in other ways as well.

Crochet, which my maternal grandmother introduced me to in my early years (when I was perhaps ten or eleven years old), has not been a huge interest until quite recently. Last year I gave it another go, nothing difficult, just a rug/blanket, but I was so happy with the result, I have decided that making a rug is what I am going to do every year, at least once, starting in late summer, early autumn, and aiming at having new rug to keep me warm every winter.

As it stands, my son currently has two of my creative artworks on his bed, along with his quilt, and I am happy he is kept warm by my very own work. The thought of it keeps me warm as the reality of it keeps him warm.

The rugs I've created are full of errors, but they are also stories. With the first one, I sourced the yarn from a lot of different places. A dear friend of mine is a talented textiles craftswoman, and she gave me quite a few of her own yarn - from her own sheep, and spun by her. Now that Ally has learned to shear sheep, she can do the whole lot - breed the sheep and raise it, shear the sheep, spin the yarn and dye it if she wants colored wool.

Ally has other talents too, she is a poet, and she is a marvelous illustrator. I am privileged to have her as my friend. Ally has lots of ideas on what I could do with my work, and whilst I don't always follow her ideas, they certainly get my creative juices going. Every time I look at the blankets on my son's bed, I remember where the yarn came from, so as I work I am making stories.

I am also a little bit creative with my excuses to not do housework. When I die, no-one will say - that Carolyn, she sure kept a tidy house. I'm hoping people will remember me for my listening skills and empathy, and for my sense of humor. That's another area to explore creativity, as all comedians know, being funny can be hard work, But when it's working Woohoo! It's fantastic.I find it hard to find the creativity in dusting or vacuuming, but one day I may discover it and finally have a tidy house! I don't think so.

So I encourage everyone out there, particularly those who 'don't think they're creative' to give something a go, let loose and let the creative juices free rein for a change. Whether it's cookery, poetry, or crochet, feel free to experiment, make some mistakes and create something wonderful.

Carolyn Cordon
dreamer, dog breeder, poet, writer
http://holkschter.bigblog.com.au
http://puppysmum.blogspot.com
http://sallyodgers.com/digit.htm