As the unique ability to work and produce fresh ideas, creativity requires a certain degree of independence and mental balance, the traits, and skills, the proper psychological level of inner security and genuine discovery, autonomy, and mastery.
Creativity is an innate ability to generate novel ideas. Being creative is simply about being different - think different, see things differently, and figure out the different ways to do things.
Creativity is both nature and nurtured. Creative people are inspired to think and work nearly every day on creating, they are not waiting for “Aha” moments, but proactively stimulating the new energy of fresh thinking, examine alternatives, and improve their creative maturity via continuous practices. Here are a few creative traits and practices.
Learn to forget (not use) what you have been "educated" in the past: Creativity is about connecting the dots, to trigger the chain of thoughts and come up with fresh ideas. Knowledge is an important ingredient of creativity because it enforces our cognitive ability to think innovatively. However, there is a paradox in creativity. On one side, creativity is largely an associative process based on knowledge and experience, from which creative concepts can emerge. On the other side, overloaded information, outdated knowledge, or old experience often stifles creativity. Conventional thinking even has a negative connotation about sticking to outdated concepts, traditions, cultures, or the old ways to do things. Outdated knowledge blocks creative thinking and adds a static little box to limit imagination and block the fountain of creativity.
A creative mind desperately needs to absorb the new knowledge across the disciplinary boundary. Sometimes you have to delearn, then relearn, and master the full learning cycle to develop creativity. Creative minds with cognitive differences usually involve some level of discomfort and interdisciplinary transcendence. They are good at bringing a fresh perspective to the table, asking thought-provoking questions, understanding things from different angles, and solving problems in different ways. They enjoy the freedom of thinking, imagining, metaphorical communicating, trying, learning, doing, failing, and improving, etc, and experience the full emotional cycle of innovation.
Start using the other half brain for innovating: Many people are used to applying linear thinking or “half brain” to deal with problems in many circumstances. They are either too spontaneous or over-analytical. However, to adapt to today’s over-complex, hyper-connected digital world, we need to train ourselves on how to engage the whole brain, to think creatively and critically, analytically and synthetically, optimistically and cautiously, intuitively and nonlinearly, learn to "think different," think positive, think fun, or think beyond your reach. The wholeness is important to create quality thoughts, capable of silencing the noise in the mind and thinking outside the conditioned mind without fear, maximizing our engagement with the broader and deeper aspects of our mind and our experience for sparkling great ideas and harness our creative mentality.
Creative thinking is a higher level of thinking because it often imposes a higher cognitive load as we think harder and consciously uses different kinds of thought methods such as association, perspective-shifting, or opposites reasoning, etc, to trigger creativity. Creativity is not just a simple"Aha" moment. The logic and creativity are not opposite, they are complementary. Creativity without logic is like the scattered flowers without landscape designing or the loose pieces of jewelry without a thread holding them together. Or put another way, often there are patterns or complex thought processes behind the magic of creativity. When all known avenues have been thought through, the logical mind will start the out-of-the-box thinking, put more thoughts into things and search for fresh ideas and widen the possibility of coming up with alternative solutions to solve thorny problems effortlessly.
Learn to trust and follow your gut feeling to capture insight: Intuition or being intuitive is when you have a gut feeling about something. Gut feeling isn't a random loose arrow. Intuition is the quality or ability to have such direct perception or quick insight to, sometimes, stimulate creativity. The intuitive mind has the strength and the willpower to follow the courageous heart, and thus, having a better chance to be creative. Intuition spots on when there isn’t an exact answer to the puzzle because you don’t have all the pieces. Gut feelings' works very well for highly creative, visionary people, in particular, people are able to and not afraid to leverage contrarian views for connecting wider dots to spark creativity.
A creative mind can follow the heart and ponder the creation of the fresh insight which feeds into the consciousness. Some people dwell within a state of consciousness which is in tune with what can only be imagined or is called imagination. The right dose of “gut feeling” supported by good logic enables us to capture the flash of ideas or unique insight. It's an internalized knowledge that has developed through theoretical knowledge, practical experience, and life experience that guides the gut feeling so that we intuitively know the right decision for innovating.
A creative person is the one who can provide a different perspective to look at the world, and creativity is realized in the process of interaction with others and the world. As the unique ability to work and produce fresh ideas, creativity requires a certain degree of independence and mental balance, the traits, and skills, the proper psychological level of inner security and genuine discovery, autonomy, and mastery.
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