Often, ideas appear spontaneously, but sometimes creativity needs some help on the way.
A creative idea should be new, original and useful. An already existing product can be improved through small changes and adaptations. But creating a whole new product is much more difficult and requires more creative approaches.
In most cases, concepts from two or more completely different areas are combined into something new and useful. Not infrequently, the inspiration for this comes from something you have seen in nature or around you.
In the overflow of information competing for your attention and thoughts, its more important than ever to find the sources enabling you to listen to your own inner true voice.
We have come to a point in history where knowledge has never been as easily accessible as now. Through the Internet’s search engines, all human knowledge is literally available at our fingertips. But at the same time, it has never been more difficult than now to think for ourselves.
Meditation and mindfulness, as practiced in Buddhism is based on four simple principles that can be understood in five minutes, but which require a lifetime of practice to explore.
Everyone who has been in the London Underground has probably seen the platform signs “Mind the gap”. What we may not often think of is the short gap between the external stimuli that reaches us and how we react to them. It is in this short gap in time from thought to action that we have the opportunity to make important choices.
There are often simple solutions to most problems if you have the ability to think differently.
I recently came across this thought-provoking story on the power of lateral thinking, i.e. thinking outside the proverbial box. Russi Mody, the legendary Chairman of Tata Steel from 1984-1993, was once holding a weekly meeting with Tata Steel staff when a worker took up a niggling issue.
Continue reading “The story about the clean and the dirty toilets”
Our habits are deeply rooted within us and they are difficult to break, but there are ways to acquire new and better habits.
Everyone who has ever had a goal (e.g. completing an amateur bike race) quickly realises that only a general desire to accomplish something is not enough. Carrying out such a project, not least if you start as an untrained couch potato, requires willpower, stamina to overcome adversity and perseverance to continue exercising despite aching muscles and an enticing TV sofa.
Perhaps the greatest threat to our creativity is our fragmented time. In today’s working life, it is hard to have one hour of undisturbed time that can be devoted to exactly what you want.
Think about where you were when you last got a good idea or solved a problem. Maybe you were taking a shower, or walking in the forest, or picking shells on the beach. But most likely you were not at work.
Your brain functions so that it constantly stores new impressions. When you struggle with a problem to be solved, the brain needs time to process the problem and relate it to all the information it has already stored.
Continue reading “Seven tips how to get more time for yourself!”
We often hear that creativity comes from the right brain, but this is a myth. To create, we need to use both our brain hemispheres and have a good interplay between them.
As most people know, our fantastic brain is divided into two brain hemispheres with dominance for different functions. These are in intense contact with each other and the constant interaction between them makes us into the complex beings we are with intellect, thoughts, feelings and a fantastic ability to create and to perceive all the nuances of the world.
Continue reading “Does the creativity come from the right brain?”
It is close at hand to want to find that one revolutionary idea without having to be burdened by a number of mediocre or vile ideas. Unfortunately, it is very seldom it works that way.
All experience shows that there is a direct link between quantity and quality. The more ideas, the more good ideas. It’s a bit like Darwin’s evolution theory. The more ideas generated, the greater the statistical probability that someone is viable enough to survive.
You can also consider the ideas as seeds. The more seeds you sow, the greater the likelihood that you will ripe a good harvest. If an idea of ten is worth moving forward with, then it goes without saying that you get a richer material to work with if you have 100 ideas than 20.
Continue reading “Creative quantity leads to creative quality”
Motivation is the driving force behind all our actions, from going up when the alarm clock rings in the morning to climbing Mount Everest.
Motivation is our desire to do things or to achieve results. Motivation is what makes us act, whether it is to eat a sandwich to still the hunger or to read the morning paper to know what is happening in the world. Motivation is the deciding factor in achieving your goals – and research shows that we can influence both our motivation and our self-control.
Have you ever been absorbed so completely by an activity that you ended up in a positive state where you completely lost the sense of time? Then you’ve probably been in “flow”. This state of total presence is accessible to everyone.
One of the most powerful state of minds we can experience is when we work on the peak of our abilities and everything works. Everything just flows in a state as its foremost explorer, the Hungarian-American psychologist Mihály Csikszentmihályi (pronounced: Mihaj Tsjiksentmihaji), has described as “getting into flow”.
Creativity boost 