Stimulants for Creative Thinking Part 2

Creativity is essential to success today. That sounds obvious but it’s amazing how many people feel they just aren’t creative. Everybody is creative and has the spark within them. It just needs to be fanned and stimulated. Creative thinking has been behind the world’s greatest breakthroughs. Einstein came up with his theory of relativity by imagining what it would be like to ride a beam of light. Walt Disney was sitting at an amusement park and wondered what a clean park, great for families of all ages would look like. Disneyland was born. That’s creative thinking.

The last post looked at two stimulants for creativity: Be ready not to be Ready, and Let go of what’s going away. This post will look at two more.

Be a Deviant. In school you were always told to sit down and keep in place. Any unexpected outbursts was punished and the “naughtiest” kids were the ones always in detention. We were taught to play by the rules and keep in line. You were often told to color inside the lines and told bears aren’t purple.

Think of lego, the plastic building blocks that have entertained generations of children. It use to be you would just receive the blocks and were left to your own devices to build what was in you head. Now a days, you get your lego blocks along with a multipage guidebook telling you exactly what you need to do to build the ship or plane or whatever. Imagination gave way to instruction. Yet, it is coloring outside the lines and not playing by the rules that often lead to major breakthroughs. It is throwing away the instruction manual and venturing beyond the step by step. To be a deviant means venturing outside your comfort zone and the way things are.

Cultivate serendipity. Children operate with a natural curiosity and playfulness toward the world. What happened to that child in us? It’s been educated out of us and laid dormant so long we no longer believe we are creative anymore. But it’s arousing that inner child so that world looks new and fresh again that opens up possibilities in our lives. Think of a young child. You swoosh them up in the air and the next thing they say is, “Again”. They say it over and over again until your tired and give up. Think of God. He is eternally playful. He says to the sun rise and set. He says to the daisy bloom in the spring. He says to them to do it again and again. We are sub creators of the creator God but we often have outgrown even him.

Spend your days open to the daily presentations that occur all the time all around you. Your inner child that use to be so enraptured by the littlest things can be so again. That child never left. It only went hiding behind rules and regulations and monotony.

Activating your creative spirit takes coloring outside the lines in unstructured play. Be a child and play with the finger paints

What are some ways you can bring out that inner child? Respond Here>