Creativity isn’t just something you are born with. You can develop creative confidence by creating a set of habits based on what you know about yourself. Creativity requires thought. You have to leave yourself space in the day for ideas to flow. Think of it as filling up your creative cup.
You can increase you creative ability by embracing certain traits.
Be always on. You need to always be looking, seeing, observing.
Be adventurous. Take risks. I don’t necessarily mean go cliff diving. It can even be try a different type of food. Or an outfit you’d normally never wear.
Get out of your rut. Read a different book. Try a new magazine. Take a new route home.
See things differently. Can something be used a different way?
Embrace fun. In one study it showed that 5-year-olds laugh 110 times each day. By age 45, we only laugh 11 times.
When you find new ideas or thoughts, you’ll also find that they energize you and give you the confidence to put them into action.
You have to take risks to be creative. You have to believe that what you are doing is not a waste of time. The penalty for failure is not greater than the penalty for doing nothing. If it is, then people will do nothing. You are investing time and energy in something that is worthwhile. Know the difference between productive down time and procrastinating. You’ve also got to finish ideas or projects to make room for other things. If not, you remain frustrated. It’s a balance.
The key element in an idea is the combination of unrelated items. It’s the ability to make new connections and combinations and see the relationship between the items.
One of the easiest ways to get the creative juices flowing is through having an idea file. I keep a file (and by file, I mean box) where I clip items that speak to me. Whether it’s a quote, an image, a project – doesn’t matter. I can go flip through it whenever I’m at a loss or need a color scheme. I also keep a list of ideas. Doesn’t matter if they are silly.It just keeps getting longer and when I read back through it, I generally find something that generates a spark.Build a curiosity reservoir. The more you experience, the more you can do. You collect experiences and pull from them like a kaleidoscope makes new images. Freud said, ” When inspiration doesn’t come to me, I do halfway to meet it.”