10 Simple Ways to Boost Your Creativity
Most people claim not to be creative, but the good news is that it’s a skill that can always be developed and refined, no matter how you perceive yourself or believe you can’t come up with brilliant ideas. Here are 10 simple ways to boost your creativity to help you start exercising those creative skills.
Creativity is a mental process born from imagination and is one of our most important and useful skills. We were all born with it, and, like all human abilities, it can be developed and improved. If creativity is one of the most valued skills, why not act to increase it?
Do Something You’re Passionate About
To create great content or have good ideas, you don’t need to be an expert. It would be best if you were passionate about what you do.
If you are not interested in sports, it will be difficult for you to create original and quality content consistently, but if the subject you need ideas for brings a smile to your face and enjoy it, the flow of ideas will come through on its own.
Be Curious, Ask
Keep an attitude of interrogation in your routines. Ask yourself why things are happening and observe the world around you.
Asking useful questions is a skill that also needs to be practiced. It is important to learn to ask good questions that will allow you to get value from meetings.
Keep Your Eyes Open
You have to be aware of everything around you. You never know when a new idea will come along or something that will inspire you.
One characteristic of creative people is that they can visualize things from other angles and adopt different perspectives and ways of doing things.
And you can always carry a pen or pencil with you, so you can write down any ideas that come to mind.
Take a Break and Take a Walk
There’s no better way to keep your brain healthy than by exercising. You don’t have to run a marathon to positively change the structures of one of the most important organs in your body. You have to move it.
Research has shown that the simple act of walking can increase your creativity, and it doesn’t matter if it happens indoors or outdoors, so get moving!
Read More, and Try Fiction
Reading fiction opens your mind, allowing you to be more comfortable with ambiguity and minimizing your need to make quick and sometimes irrational decisions.
Reading is one of the best ways to gain knowledge and explore creativity. When you read, you gather other people’s experiences, perspectives, and ideas and apply them to your current situation.
Meditate
Meditation is an effective practice to enhance creativity.
You can practice meditation anywhere and at any time. You do not need to spend hours meditating and chanting mantras, just find 5 or 10 minutes a day to practice it.
Meditation helps our mind to discard irrelevant information and leaves it freer to exercise creativity. Mental clarity helps us to create new connections and reach different results.
Let Your Mind Wander
Have you ever wondered why your best ideas seem to come when you’re doing something meaningless, like taking a shower? You just have to let your mind wander.
The human mind is not meant to be continuously focused, so letting your mind wander during routine tasks on “autopilot” will inspire creative vision.
Change Your Environment
Everything around us affects our well-being. In this sense, many companies commission designs for creative offices, spaces that help workers to be more creative from differentiated and flexible environments.
Sometimes all that is needed is a change in the environment. If you work at home most of the time, go out, get some fresh air and go to the coffee shop to have a cup while you watch people pass by.
Participate in Discussions
Generating discussions lead to more and better ideas. It turns out that environments that encourage debate, like brainstorming, stimulate riskier, and more creative decision making.
Debates help to gain perspective in advocating for the same issue from different points of view.
Take a Vacation (even if it’s just for the weekend)
Taking a vacation allows you to recharge your batteries and reflect on how to get back to work with a fresh and more creative perspective on things.
A period elsewhere can be fruitful to get in touch with other realities and new ways of understanding the world that activate different perspectives in our thinking.
