Tap the Creative Inside You
Imagination is the source of creativity. It's a place where
unlimited possibilities reside. It's where pure energy lives.
People are innately imaginative and creative. However, most
people are simply not conscious of their imaginative and
creative selves.
Creativity is the cognitive process of developing a novel idea
or concept.
Teresa M. Amabile, a creativity expert, argues that creativity
is not a quality of a person. Rather, it is a quality of ideas,
behaviors or products.
According to her, creativity has 3 basic ingredients:
1. Domain-Relevant Skills - These are skills associated with
expertise in a relevant field (e.g., artistic ability, technical
ability, talent, etc.).
2. Creativity-Relevant Skills - These skills include a cognitive
style or method of thinking oriented towards exploring new
directions, approaches that can be used to generate new ideas,
and a work style conducive to developing creative ideas.
3. Task Motivation - Recent evidence suggests that a genuine
interest in a task for its own sake, rather than for achieving
external rewards such as money, enhances creativity.
So how can you develop your creativity? Here are 2 ways:
1. Provocative Operation, coined by Edward de Bono - This
involves disrupting your thought patterns. It works with the
premise that the more you are used to something, the less
stimulating it is for your thinking.
Application: Insert "interruptions" into your day. This can be
writing in a different room or area, reading magazines you
wouldn't normally read, tuning in to a different radio or
television station, cooking and eating something different.
2. Forced Analogy - This method forces you to compare a concept,
idea or problem with something else that it has little or
nothing in common with. The results are new insights.
Application: Compare an emotion (e.g., elation, excitement,
anxiety) with a tangible object (e.g., pen, chair, door). How is
anxiety like a door?
When you need to tap the creative inside you, use these 2
techniques. Tap into your imagination and you enable yourself to
create new things, come up with ideas you have never thought of
before. Tap into your imagination and you awaken your
creativity.
Copyright (c) 2003-2004 Shery Ma Belle Arrieta-Russ