5 Ways to Awaken your Creative and Innovative Side
All human beings have a creative side. The brain is fundamentally just that: creativity. We are born with enormous potential to invent and imagine. However, if we do not have enough stimuli, creativity wanes. The same thing happens with other skills: if we don’t exercise them, they end up stagnating.
However, no matter how many cobwebs form, we never lose the ability to create. Sometimes we just need better conditions to restart our creative side. We also may need some tactics that help design new ways of seeing and doing.
Next we will show you five ideas for being more creative. These are simple actions that help you to see things from another point of view and allow your imagination and your ingenuity to lead you to innovate.
1. Understand the stages of creative thinking
According to the researcher Graham Wallas, the creative process goes through four stages: preparation, incubation, illumination, and verification. Preparation is the moment in which you formulate a problem or question and think intensely about it. In incubation, you collect information and, unconsciously, actively analyze it.
Illumination is when you start to have spontaneous responses. Finally, verification allows us to evaluate the ideas that emerged and prove their validity or effectiveness. If you understand the process and let each stage flow, surely your creative side will also flow more naturally.
2. Walking awakens your creative side
Doing this is ideal, especially for those moments when you feel blocked or confused about what direction to take. There’s nothing better than going for a walk. Sometimes even a short walk makes a difference.
Walking oxygenates the brain and helps it work better. Several studies suggest that it also activates the production of hormones that enhance your creative side. Likewise, during a walk, there is a greater stimulation of the right side of the brain, responsible for creativity.
3. Frequent breaks unleash creativity
There are numerous studies that support the idea that breaks are even more important for the result of an effort than the work itself. When you perform the same activity for many hours, there is a point at which mechanical thinking begins to operate more than creative thinking.
A break is not only necessary to “reset” your brain, but also strengthens your physical health. These breaks give your mind an opportunity to reorganize the information. When you sit down to work again, you are more productive and immediately notice that your mind works more fluently.
4. Diversify knowledge
We are in a time of hyperspecialization. This is positive in that it allows us to go very deep in specific fields. At the same time, this inertia also increases the risk of limiting perspectives on topics and making thinking more technical.
It is much more profitable to diversify knowledge. That is, to venture into fields different from those you usually work in. You would be surprised at the number of answers that great researchers have found when they cross the boundaries of their formal fields.
5. Combine chaos with method
To achieve accurate results it is necessary to apply a method. This allows you to sort through your thoughts and aim for defined objectives. This way, you lessen the probability of becoming scattered, and you can avoid overlooking elements or relevant aspects. Having a method is necessary, but it also inhibits creative processes if there is too much.
Answers and new paths appear in apparent disorder. Chaos stimulates your creative side, but if you stay in it, you run the risk of not getting anywhere. The ideal, then, is to alternate method and chaos.
Creativity is a skill that we can apply to all parts of life. Both intellectually and in hands-on tasks. In addition, creativity allows you to get even more out of your skills. It is worthwhile applying these simple ideas to stimulate your creativity.