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