‘Develop Your Creative Side Part 1’ by Jenny Brockis published in Great Health Guide (April 2017). Do you ever wish you could tap into your creative side and expose your beautiful mind? Find out what stops us from discovering our creative side and overcome your creative ‘cants’ today. It’s never too late!
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MINDSET: Develop Your Creative Side Part 1
written by Jenny Brockis
When once asked, what he feared most in life, Ernest Hemingway answered, “A blank piece of paper.”Do you ever wish you could tap into your creative side and unleash your more beautiful mind? Were you ever told, as I was as a child, that you just weren’t cut out to be creative or artistic?
Part of the problem is that we’ve bought into the brain myth that we are either right brained or left brained and that determines whether you have even a modicum of creativity available to you or not. But here’s the thing, it is a myth. There is no right brain, left brain competition because when it comes to creativity, it involves whole brain thinking.
While the neuroscience of creativity is still young, the creative process is now understood to include many conscious and subconscious processes, different brain regions and networks and our emotions. In other words, it’s complex.
So what’s stopping us from discovering our creative side?
Apart from some limiting self-beliefs, fatigue, multitasking, mentally overwhelmed and insufficient down time, all contribute to our failure to take the time needed to incubate and percolate all those brilliant new ideas.
So, what is creativity?
Good question and just like asking six different doctors for their diagnosis of a particular problem, you’re likely to get six different answers.
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Let’s go with ‘the use of imagination or original ideas to create something’. Before getting too bogged down in answering, is there really anything that is truly an original idea? The purpose of our creativity, is to look at our world in new and novel ways, to find hidden patterns and make new connections between previously unrelated phenomena. It differs from innovation, which is the implementation of the creative process.
Can creativity be learned?
Yes, yes and yes! Your massively plastic brain is always ready and willing to help you unleash your creative side. Like the children’s books that allow them to reveal the hidden image by ‘joining the dots’, opening your mind to access your imagination will allow you to discover your creative talents.
Creativity requires our attention.
Having an interest in a subject leads us through our natural curiosity to seek out more information. This may require more focussed attention to study our chosen topic more deeply and to apply our metacognition, i.e. to think about our thinking. While it may feel counterintuitive to permit yourself to feel slightly bored, this is the perfect environment to stimulate your imagination. This is one place where boredom rules. Try allowing your mind to deliberately wander, to access thoughts buried in your subconscious and seek new patterns from other unrelated ideas.
The place to start is to choose the area of creativity you’d like to explore and set sail immediately. Like confidence, inspiration and creativity arrive through taking action and not being tied to waiting to be be perfect. Even Picasso started by first picking up a paintbrush. We derive great pleasure and satisfaction from our creative efforts big and small. The time to begin is now!
Author of this article:
Dr Jenny Brockis is a Medical Practitioner and specialises in the science of high performance thinking. Jenny’s approach to overcoming life’s challenges is based on practical neuroscience which enables people to understand their thoughts and actions leading to effective behavioral change. Jenny is the author of ‘Future Brain – the 12 Keys to Create Your High Performance Brain’ Contact her via website.
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