10 Blocks To Creativity (part II)

(sumber: kagak tahu)

6. Inadequate Sleep.

Inadequate sleep can hinder you in coming up with creative ideas the next day. Your physical body needs to feel good first before you can develop and explore your mental creative faculties.

In fact, it is said that many successful people have received their greatest revelations while in a dream-like state and transformed their own lives or even the world around them. One good example was Thomas Edison, who was awarded 1368 distinct patents and invented, including the incandescent light bulb, the phonograph, the film projector, and the first motion picture. Edison was known to have said, “Ideas come from space”. Edison purportedly took frequent naps in the afternoons and woke up with solutions to the most perplexing problems.

7. Lack of Priority.

If you do not attach any importance to being creative, guess what? You are not going to enjoy the benefits of being creative either. You will be like how you are now - dull and listless. Consider setting aside time for developing creativity. It will be a good idea to also start keeping an idea journal, to faciliate this process.

8. Stubborness.

A refusal to let go of your existing beliefs and thoughts can limit you in thinking of new possibilities. The more you identify yourself with specific values, meanings, beliefs and symbols, the more you will stifle creativity. On the other hand, the more you focus on how values, meanings, beliefs and symbols are formed and interrelated, the more you can explore creativity.

9. Poverty Thinking.

You tend to associate those in the creative arts as poor and struggling. Hence, you may feel that it is not important to explore creativity since it cannot help you pay your bills. Why bother to waste time developing right brain thinking when you can rely adequately on your left brain to feed you?

10. Inappropriate Comparisons.

If you think that only special, talented people are creative and that geniuses are born and not made, then you may have no wish to develop your creative abilities. You protest that you can barely draw, sing or dance. You are definite that you are tone-deaf or color-blind. You consider people like Shakespeare, Picasso and Mozart as “gifted”.

(Sur comments: see again The Multiple Intelligence. Those people are gifted in Verbal/ Linguist, Visual and Musical; but perhaps lacks in Analytical/ logical side.)

Here is an exciting piece of information for you: When researchers examined outstanding performances in the arts, mathematics and sports, to determine if “the widespread belief that to reach high levels of ability, a person must possess an innate potential called talent”, they discovered the opposite. It is also important to highlight, for instance, that Mozart trained for 16 years before he produced a masterpiece.

While it is true that it is best to develop your innate abilities, the strict definitions of creativity to areas in arts, should not apply. Creativity is also an essential part of innovation and invention and is important in almost every profession. It can be explored, developed and trained in many ways.