1. Direct Experience is better than Filtered Experience
If you’re unsure of what the difference is, direct experience is when we interact with something, such as another person or nature, without the influence of culture or media. Filtered experience is just the opposite. When you drown yourself in what’s going on with others and submerge yourself with the dramatizations the media sometimes has, you can have a very distorted view and opinion of what’s going on around you. Direct experience allows you to look at everything through your own lens.
2. Throw away self-censorship
Rejecting the ideas of others is somewhat common. But when you’re rejecting, denying, silencing, and shutting your own ideas down completely, that is a total crime against your creativity. Actually, it’s an act of mindlessness. By self-censoring, you shut down your imagination, and the long-term effects will eventually kill off your curiosity and creativity completely. The society in which we live teaches us to self-censor both directly and indirectly. If you feel that you’ve inherited self-censorship, identify it as a problem and be consciously aware of it so you’re able to get yourself back to a place where your ideas and creativity come to you with ease.
3. Stop telling stories about your past
Sometimes it’s difficult to not talk about our pasts. Over and over, we tell people stories from long ago, and doing that can keep us in the same place. We’ve made mistakes and learned from them so that we can become better people and smarter people. When you stop telling others, and more importantly, yourself, stories from the past that are ultimately holding you back, you can start using those energies to work towards a better future.
4. You don’t need to explain yourself
There are times when we find that we are trying to explain ourselves and our actions to others. When you feel this starting to happen, flip the script, in a sense. Your intuition is powerful, so use it. When you find yourself holding on to choices that are no longer serving you, let them go. Once you do, creativity will find its way back to you.
5. More restrictions allow for more creativity
By putting limitations on yourself, you’ll force yourself to think outside the box, and this could ignite some new ideas. People usually believe that when you have more freedom, you will be more creative. As surprising as it may be, that isn’t so. When you place some constraints on yourself, you will begin to look for unconventional ways to get around those limitations. This is when creativity will truly flourish.
6. Quantity over quality
You will typically hear that just the opposite is true, and most times, it is. It’s an age-old lesson. However, sometimes, quantity should take priority over quality, because in the end, it leads to higher quality. If you seek quantity over quality, you will get both. Let me give you a quick example. John Lennon didn’t like the sound of his own voice. Could you just imagine if he had never released any music to the world until he loved his voice? When you’re able to produce more than one thing at once, you’ll be less likely to be disappointed if something flops and doesn’t work out. Diversity is the insurance of the mind!
7. Don’t be afraid to get stuck
That overwhelming feeling that you’re stuck can really make things difficult. The brain is one of the parts of our bodies that we know the least about. It works in very mysterious ways. When you’re stuck, step away from the thing that is draining you mentally and find other projects to distract you. When you are actively ignoring something, your subconscious will create room for your ideas to grow. We all wonder, on occasion, what we can do differently to spark some creativity in our lives. Just remember that you’re human and that these things happen to the best of us. Try doing the above things when your creativity cup feels almost empty. Photo credit courtesy of GettyImages.com
