These commonalities include going with the flow (i.e. free-associating without judgement), mixing and matching (combining old ideas in new ways), re-framing (finding a new way to express a problem or finding a new context in which to view it), random stimulation (using random input to inspire your creative epiphanies), and establishing a creative environment.

For example, I was randomly inspired to create this new post by my psychology lecture today. In class, I spoke about how all of these techniques can be seen in action in many comedy improv games. This lead me to post many comedy improv videos on my course webpage that you can also find below:

Here is a comedy improv game called “Three-Headed Broadway Star”. Can you see how creative ideas are generated using the out-of-the-box techniques I listed above?

As you can see below, even “errors” are creative and lead to creative ideas. In fact, “errors” are often the easiest way of finding new insights and perceptions.

A large aspect of establishing an exploratory environment is creating an environment where everyone’s ideas are appreciated. Hence, one of the most important mantra’s in group creativity is “Accept. Agree. Add.” It’s important in all brainstorming sessions to encourage everyone’s input by building upon each others ideas, rather than refuting them. The key to idea generation in groups isn’t to find the “correct idea” but to find as many ideas as possible.

In class we discussed how criticism and judgement can halt creativity. In groups, instead of saying “Yes, and…” we often share ideas by saying “Yes, but…” which really means “You have a nice idea, but it is not as good as mine.” The problem with this is that it can discourage people from sharing ideas and can lead to conflict which halts the creative process. See the video below for an example:

Generating new ideas, whether by yourself or in a group, often requires that we give ourselves the freedom to consider all ideas that come to mind without fear of judgment and self-censorship. This is often hard to do since we become so conditioned to fear being “incorrect” or “wrong”.

However, in order to come up with a new way of looking at the world, we have to be willing to set this aside in order to consider all possibilities.

Courtesy of http://www.flickr.com/photos/27316384@N07

On a stormy Valentine’s night you are driving down the road in your two-seat car when you pass by a bus stop and see three people waiting for the bus.

An old, fragile lady.
A close friend who once saved you from impending death.
The romantic partner you have been dreaming about all of your life.

Knowing that there can only be one passenger in your car, whom would you choose?

Just like the stress of driving on a stormy day, our days are often filled with the stress of what we call “ordinary living.” This stress has conditioned us to react quickly – to perceive habitually – in order to lessen the burden of our cognitive faculties.

The result is that we often don’t see all the possibilities that are available to us when dealing with our everyday problems.

There are always other ways of approaching a problem. There are always choices in our lives that lay hidden. What may seem like a no win situation may in fact be a win-win, if we only knew found the right lens to view it.

For example, one approach to the above puzzle is to give your car keys to your good friend so that she/he could give the older lady safe passage, while you try to provide good company to your dream partner while you both wait for the bus.

Can you think of others?

Creative ideas can most easily occur when you are collaborating with others in the right environment.

Studies show that creativity in groups flourishes most when people are in an environment where they can feel safe and comfortable. Imagine trying to share an idea and having it shot down with by the sharp tongue of a fellow collaborator. How would that make you feel? If you’re like most, it would probably make you feel insecure and not too enthusiastic about sharing your next idea.

However, collaboration in the right environment allows for the intersection of various perspectives and ideas. It is at this intersection where creative gold may be found. Just think, can’t most creative ideas be viewed as the intersection of old ideas that were previously never associated with one another?

Coffee + ice = ice coffee

In a recent article in the Kentucky Herald-Leader, the vocal group Take 6 attributes collaboration with others as a key to their creativity and longevity.

We may all want to head the advice of a group that’s been around and thriving for over 30 years.

See for yourself in this clip, as the group collaborates with Michael McDonald on The Miracles hit, “Tracks of My Tears.”

Courtesy of 铁蛋骑士 (www.flickr.com/photos/knightfeg/)

Many associate the term closely with the loss of a job. From there it may even be associated with the loss of money, then loss of identity, then loss of meaning in your life. — Yikes! That’s heavy.

However, a layoff can also just mean taking a break. This just happens to be a very crucial phase of the creative process. If you’re struggling to find a creative idea or creative solution to your problem, the answer may be a mental layoff. Or, as I like to call it, a self-imposed “creative layoff.”

A creative layoff is the act of letting go of your struggle to find a solution, thereby allowing a creative solution to find its way to you.

When we are stressed our mind becomes fixated on certain perceptions. It is a biological response that enables us to react quickly to our environment. However, when you want to be innovative and come up with something new, you want access to multiple perceptions.

So stop fighting your problem. Don’t force your way through it. Learn to let it go.

Stop struggling with what you think you should be thinking about and place your attention elsewhere. Take a walk, take a bath, read the paper, listen to music. (In many psychological circles it’s referred to as diffused attention.)

Or, you can choose to stop thinking altogether.

No, I don’t mean knocking yourself unconscious. Take a nap or meditate. Many math solutions, inventions, business ideas, and new works of art were attained or inspired after a good night’s sleep.

You can also lose your conscious mind by falling into a trance while doing something creative like free drawing, drumming, or dancing. Bust out those glow sticks — have yourself a one-person rave in your living room (you know you want to).

Of course, the same advice also applies to dealing with an actual employment layoff. If you want to find several possibilities for dealing with the situation (rather than approach it the same way as you always have, and later finding yourself in similar employment circumstances) you may want to use an employment layoff as a call to wake up to new creative possibilities in your life. Maybe you can make a career change into a profession that’s more satisfying, enjoyable, and possibly more financially fruitful.

With whatever issue your brain is grappling with, if you’re feeling stuck, you may just need to take a creative layoff in order to attain the creative payoff.

It’s a cheesy phrase, but it’s memoriable, isn’t it?

Many of us grow up learning that it is bad to be wrong and incorrect. We are taught that mistakes are useless errors that should be minimized.

The result is that many people are unwilling to explore their own creativity because the fear of making a mistake is so ingrained in their psychology.

Creativity is about exploration and trying new things. By it’s very nature, creativity will lead us to come up with many ideas that don’t necessarily work. However, we are more likely to find creative ideas that do if we allow ourselves the freedom to cast a wide enough net.

Have you seen how many academic papers Einstein wrote that explored “incorrect” ideas? Have you looked at a sketch artist’s scratch pad to see all of the ideas that “didn’t work?”

Still don’t believe me? Ask Google.

I found this short video clip from my new favorite blog – The Stanford Technology Ventures Program blog. Check it out. You’ll find lots of great articles and videos on entrepreneurship and innovation.

When we can accept the inherent mystery of the world, it becomes vibrant and alive.

It is for this reason that in my talks I often emphasize how creative thinking enables people to enliven their world, since it enables people to access the multiplicity of perspectives inherent in every moment. It is also why I began my book by addressing this notion.

As children, we exercised our creative faculties to explore all sorts of fascinating ideas. Perhaps you conjured up bizarre stories, made interesting music that bothered the neighbors, or created deformed ashtrays out of clay. Or maybe, you were a clever entrepreneur selling street side lemonade. I still remember holding a raffle when I was just 10 years old—at my aunt’s wedding! What crazy 10-year-old tries to profi t from their aunt’s wedding?

Actually, as children, we always had a tendency to do things differently than adults—some of it good, some of it not so good. Nevertheless, the world was enchanted and mysterious—always full of possibilities.

But then, at some point in our lives, we began to think that we actually knew the world. Maybe, we didn’t say it out loud, but many of us began to behave as if we no longer needed our imaginations to fill in the blanks. We neglected our creative faculties in order to learn the way things are so that we could do things the way they are supposed to be done.

The world of possibilities became the world of the impossible. Rather than use our imagination to explore ideas, we began to use some form of rationality to avoid mistakes and failures by limiting our exploration. No more playing with mud because we might get dirty, people may look at us funny, or we might catch some funky mud disease that no one has ever heard of.

Consequently, for far too many of us, the world became less mysterious. It became un-enchanted and lifeless because we forgot how to make it come alive.

I was inspired to publish this post because of a wonderful TED lecture given by writer and producer J.J. Abrams, the creator of TV shows such Felicity, Alias, Lost, and The Fringe, as well as films such as the latest Star Trek. In the lecture, he describes the importance of a “mystery box” for enchanting an audience.

It is this spirit of mystery that we all have access to when we are able to realize that there are more ways to perceive every moment than we could ever imagine.

(Courtesy of Travis Isaacs)

Some of us can’t live without them.

Even in my book I write about how I used my cellphone to record the first draft of the outline of my manuscript.

As a user of one of these high-tech gizmos, I admit that I often find myself fully engaged in trying to keep up with my emails, facebook, phone messages, tweets, and the rest. But this type of continual “multi-tasking” may be harming my creativity.

At least that’s what some researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison are saying.

“You really can’t multi-task. The brain can’t multi-task,” said Joanne Cantor, the director of UW-Madison’s Center for Communication Research.

“You think you’re multi-tasking, but your brain is just switching back and forth – rapidly often, but every time that your brain switches back and forth, you lose time and you lose quality,” Cantor said.

Creative insights often come when we are using diffused attention and when our conscious mind isn’t constantly chattering with thoughts. In other words, we can be more prone to creative ideas when we are able to make room in our conscious awareness for them to be heard.

And it’s hard to make room for these ideas when we are constantly trying to jam new incoming information into our heads — which is what happens when I’m entranced by my handheld device.

“It’s really important to both focus for periods of time and then get away from that focus because you’re going to be more productive and more creative,” Cantor said

So, if you’re looking to live a more creative life, you may think twice the next time you catch yourself in a laptop or iphone trance. Or at the very least, take a few minutes and take a look at the sky instead.

You can’t read your email by staring at the clouds, but you’ll be better able to see creative ideas fall from the sky.

*This article was inspired by the following news story from wisn.com.

Courtesy of http://ncsu.edu/iei/

How can society enhance creative thinking and embrace new ideas?

Answering this question was the primary focus of the 25th annual Emerging Issues Forum that was held in Raleigh, North Carolina this past week. Though the forum is geared towards improving the lives of those who live in North Carolina, the discussion benefits us all.

Various speakers participated in the 2-day event including U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan, author Daniel Pink, and jazz singer Nnenna Freelon.

After reviewing some notes and news reports concerning the event, a few things caught my eye.

One, I noticed that I wasn’t invited.

Two, I noticed several notable ideas on encouraging creativity and creative ideation in our society.

Education

Many politicians talk about the need for creativity and innovation, and then make the conclusion that improved education in engineering and science is the answer.   Roger Martin, a professor at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management says otherwise. According to Martin, the key to creative thinking is the study of literature, history, and other liberal arts.

“We seem to be headed to a world where we’re ever-exalting analytic thinking over creativity,” Martin said. “If anyone here thinks we’re going to fend off the challenge from India and China by being more analytical, then I have one thing to say to you: Good luck.”

Accepting Failure

Often times our pursuit of creative endeavors, or our pursuing of a creative approach to problems, can be derailed by failures. However, according to author and speaker Tom Kelley, creativity means being willing to accept failure. This is a very good point considering that failure provides new information that we can use in our journey towards eventual success.

Jazz

Lastly, I noticed that jazz music seemed to play prominent role in the conference. For one, jazz vocalist Nnenna Freelon was a participant in the event. For another, CD’s were distributed at the conference that featured North Carolina jazz greats such as Thelonious Monk and John Coltrane.

It’s great to see that the need for creativity is being addressed and that various creative “voices” were invited to participate.

You can visit the event’s official website here: Emerging Issues Forum

Are you an active participant in creating the life you want? Or do you feel as if you are at the mercy of your life; living uninspired; living just to get by?

According to self-development consultant and author Melissa Casas, we all have the ability to manifest the lives we desire.

“Most people, myself included, have very little understanding of how powerful we actually are, and I mean that quite viscerally. We carry very powerful energy around us, and that energy is powerful vibration inside of us.”

But how do we tap into that creative energy?

“We’re putting that energy into motion with every thought, and our intuition – our ability to perceive inner guidance – is telling us if we’re creating in the direction of what we really want, or creating in the direction of what we don’t really want to experience. That information, that guidance, is there for us in every moment if we know how to read it,” says Melissa.

However, Melissa has a unique view of our intuition.

While many use intuition as a decision making mechanism – do what feels right, or do what your intuition tells you to do – Melissa learned over time that this view may be a bit simplistic, and that there is an important difference between asking “what should I do” versus “what do I want to do?”

“I (first) thought that the primary way of working with intuition was to listen to feelings, and I think that the way I was trying to use my intuition was to help me make decisions. I was very hesitant to make a lot of decisions in my life (big or small) without first asking myself the question ‘What should I do?’, and what I realize now that I didn’t realize then is that I was basically deferring my power of decision-making over to a place in myself that doesn’t even exist. The place from which intuition comes from is waiting for each of us to make the decision and then follow intuition on how to move in that direction.”

What are we deciding?

According to Melissa, it’s first up to us to decide what it is we want in life. However, what we should focus on is not just the form or specific content of the life we want — living on a yacht, having our own widget making company, or owning a Porsche. Instead, we need to be clear on how these things make us feel. We need to decide on what we want our lives to feel like.

After being clear on this, we can then follow our internal guidance to lead us there.

The problem, says Melissa, is that it’s often difficult to follow our intuition because it gets polluted by muddy thinking — thinking that is loaded up with judgments, assumptions, and old habits of thought that aren’t necessarily in our best interest.

She uses kitchen pipes as a metaphor to clarify this idea.

“Imagine two kitchen pipes. One is junked up with lots of old food and lots of gunk in it. The other is pristine and clean. If you pour beautiful clear water into each pipe, at the other end it’ll be apparent which water you’re going to want to drink.”

Intuition, in its true form, is the flow of pure information, just like pure clear water. It is our internal guidance, but a guidance that we can’t follow clearly if it is polluted by our muddy thinking.

“The biggest question people ask me is how do I know that’s really my intuition talking, or how do I know that’s inner guidance? You’re not going to know until you get a handle on what you’re thinking.”

Through her doctorate work at the California Institute of Integral Studies, Melissa has developed a communication method called 3-C Communication. It is a way of cultivating clean, clear, and caring communication with ourselves and with others so that we can harness the creative power of our mind and listen to our intuition.

Melissa’s advice for people?

“(to) cultivate awareness of what they’re feeling, and understand it for what it is, which is guidance in the moment. Whether you are using your very creative tool of your mind to think about what you want or to think about what you don’t want, you are creating either way, but your feelings will tell you every time what that creation is about to manifest into. We’ve become a world where, for multiple reasons, we’ve stopped listening to the feedback of our feelings, and when we stopped doing that, or at least numbed ourselves to that, we lost the ability to really understand how we’re using the extremely powerful tool of our minds.”

***

Checkout the podcast to hear the entire interview with Melissa Casas.

Also, for more information about Melissa, her coaching, her books, and her 3-C Communication method, visit her official website: www.MelissaCasas.com

Melissa is the author of the book “The Power of Small Change: How one new thought can change your life.” Her work in the field of self-development specializes in self-empowerment and inner communication. In particular, she is the originator of the 3-C Communication — a way for us to cultivate the clarity of mind needed to fully communicate with others and with our own internal intuition. It was a method born out of her post doctorate research and personal experience.

In this creative people radio interview, Melissa shares her own creative career changes starting from her undergraduate degree in philosophy, to her successful career in banking, to her current career in self development. She explains why listening to one’s feelings and intuition is important, but stresses that we also need to cultivate the clarity of thought necessary to truly understand what our intuition is saying. Melissa also speaks to the power positive emotions have in helping us create the life we were uniquely born to live.

To read more about Melissa, checkout this feature article on Intuition and Creative Living.

Or listen to the entire interview below. (If you liked this episode, you can subscribe to this podcast on itunes.)