Living a Creative Life

Creativity is a tricky word. Consultants peddle it, brands promise it, and we all strive for it, often without really knowing quite what “it” really is. Put simply, there’s a lot of snake oil around creativity. We’re all creative souls already, we just need to figure out how to harness inspiration and unleash the creative spirit within. Here, are best pieces of advice for living a meaningfully creative life.

1. If you’re alive, you’re a creative person.

How many times have you heard someone say, “I don’t have a creative bone in my body?” It’s like somebody handed that person that placard to wear when they were nine, and they’ve been wearing it around their neck ever since. But rather than challenging them on that, because then they’ll dig in their heels, I ask them to take the word “creative” out of the sentence and replace it with the word “curious,” just to see how ridiculous it sounds. If you can just release yourself from the anxiety and burden that might be associated with the word “creativity,” because you’ve fallen for the myth that it only belongs to the special, the tormented and the professional, and you insert the word “curious,” you’ll see, in fact, that you are an enormously creative person, because all creativity begins with curiosity. And once you tap into your curiosity and allow yourself permission to follow it wherever it takes you, you will find very quickly that you are living a much more creative life than you were last year.

2. You’re not a genius, you have a genius.

The magical thinking that I use to engage with creativity is this idea that inspiration does not come from me, it comes to me. And the reason I choose to believe that is because one, that’s what it feels like, and two, that’s how pretty much every human being before the Age of Enlightenment described inspiration. Even really rational, scientific people will say, “And then this idea came to me.” They’ll use that language, even though if you were to push them on it they would then deny it and would tell you what part of their cerebral cortex it actually came from. In other words, they would disenchant it, and they would make it really boring rather than kind of Hogwarts-y, and I prefer to keep it Hogwarts-y because I feel like the only realm in our lives where it’s safe and actually beneficial to have magical thinking is in the realm of creativity.

3. Make something, do something, do anything.

If you have a creative mind, it’s a little bit like owning a border collie. You have to give it something to do or it will find something to do, and you will not like the thing it finds to do. So if you go to work and you leave your border collie unattended and unexercised in your apartment, you’re going to come home and find out that that border collie gave itself a job, and the job that it gave itself was probably to empty all of the stuffing out of your couch or to take every single piece of toilet paper off the roll, because it needs a job. A creative mind is exactly the same. My experience with having a creative mind is that if I don’t give it a task, a ball to chase, a stick to run after, some ducks to herd, I don’t know, something, it will turn on itself. It’s really important for my mental health that I keep this dog running. So give your dog a job, and don’t worry about whether the outcome is magnificent or eternal, whether it changes people’s lives, whether it changes the world, whether it changes you, whether it’s original, whether it’s groundbreaking, whether it’s marketable. Just give the dog a job, and you’ll have a much happier life, regardless of how it turns out.

Excuses Our Brains Create That Keep Us From Success

Our mind is our greatest asset but sometimes… it seems like it’s our own worst enemy.

 Lastly, I have been glued with what happens to human cognitive and how the brains stop people from achieving their goals and dreams in life. The human brain is so lazy when it’s time to take action that it will outright deceive us in order to postpone it.

Picture this. You’re on your way to your workplace. You’re pumped. You have all your goals and dreams unfolding right before your eyes… and you know that once you get to your computer, you’ll work like crazy. But once you get to work, you end up doing anything else BUT work.

You start reading your emails. Then, a colleague invites you to grab a cup of coffee. 20 minutes later, when you’re ready to do some actual work, you find yourself doing some minor tasks. There’s plenty of time to do the hard stuff later, right?

Here’s what happened. When you were in your comfort zone, your brain KNEW he didn’t have an immediate action to take. But once it did, all enthusiasm was gone and you ended up going back to your daily routine.

Your brain found good EXCUSES to feed you, killing the initial state of flow which you were in and derailing you from your path to success. But once I expose them, you’ll be able to spot them in real time as they occur and replace them with ACTION. Here they are.

Are You Making Excuses or Thinking Clearly

Organizations and entrepreneurs are looking for ways to encourage more innovative thinking. But, according to John Assaraf of The Secret and MyNeuroGym.com, thinking is the problem--the process of thinking actually "by definition cancels out the neural process of creativity," effectively killing innovation. Here he sheds light on the brain processing required for greater innovation as well as the secrets to encouraging and invoking innovation.

"Creativity, imagination and innovation are a part of a neural process that occurs in some of the newest evolutionary structures of the brain," he says. "Creativity is a whole-brain phenomenon that takes a totally different level of complexity."

Begin with the prefrontal cortex, which Assaraf calls the "Einstein Brain: the CEO; Executive Director; the GPS system--the part of the brain where you can think of all the possibilities and then activate the occipital part of the brain to imagine an outcome." This brain process allows us to disconnect the frontal lobe "thinking" portion and tap into our intuition and imagination, which "Einstein believed to be more powerful than knowledge."

Assaraf defines intuition as "what you know before you think." So what are the secrets to intuiting versus thinking?

1. Stop thinking and let it go.

When you are in the shower, sometimes you get a "spark of genius when your brain radio is open to accepting external frequencies." Getting into a free-flowing, mind-wandering state allows the mind to go into a semiconscious daydream where you can access a field of information and patterns outside the regular neural network.

Only 40 to 50 brain waves are active at any given time and lists and busy lives keep the mind too crowded. Purposeful activation of the intuitive frequency requires "mindful stillness." Slowing down, sitting quietly, and being present help bring on a relaxed state to give your creativity a chance to rise above the noise.

2. Speed your way to innovation.

Comedians and musicians familiar with the concept of improvisation are capable of being in "a state of flow, turning off an over-thinking brain, and turning on the creative flow." For those who went to art school, gesture drawing is the equivalent, forcing the capture of just the essence of what's important. Any exercise that uses speed works to tap into what you know before you think, getting the "thinker out of the way." If you don't have time to think, you can't overdesign or overthink, and you can ignite the innovation process.

3. Practice the creative flow.

Innovative imagining is natural for kids. It is schooling that forces a young child to turn on the developing left prefrontal cortex and focus, disrupting the imagination process. Although not scientifically proved, it is believed that the majority of our creative neurons shut off by the age of 30, so "we have to work harder to disinhibit thinking brain and turn on the flow of intuition." Through meditative practices and other mind-stilling brain exercises, like MyNeuroGym's Innercise, brain retraining can occur, "forming new connections and growing new brain cells."

Trying to think innovative uses the state of the familiar within the brain and cannot possibly achieve creative, truly innovative solutions. Flow into intuiting your way to innovation instead.

The Brain is An Excuse Making Machine

                                     

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Contrary to popular belief, your brain is not always working for you. You are not one, pure mind. You are a hive of conflicting impulses, and one of the loudest is called fear.

All research into brains has shown that people tend to decide what to do with their emotions first and make up the reasons why afterwards. If you’re afraid of something, your subconscious can always whip up a plausible excuse: it’s too hard; you don’t have the experience; there’s a re-run of Big Brother Africa tonight.

Have you ever argued with someone who would never change their mind, even when all facts were against them? They’re not using logic to find answers, they’re using logic to justify the answer they already have. Our brains do that hundred of times a day.

Understand this: excuses exist to make you feel better. They can fool others. They can dodge blame. They can even become a badge of honour (“if only it wasn’t for my NEPA/wife/addiction to Nollywood Movies on Dstv“). But excuses exist only to numb your pain. They never help you get shit done.

You ask how to know if you’re making excuses or have a real reason not to try being an entrepreneur. Here’s a handy rule of thumb:

So first ask yourself—do you really want this? I mean, I ‘want’ a perfect body, but I’m not willing to put in 6 hours a day for the next year to get there. If you’re not willing to make appropriate sacrifices for something, you don’t want it badly enough. That’s ok. Accept it and find another calling.

If you do want something, your mission is to plough through any excuses. They should be but a frail leaf in the path of a barreling freight train.

Here’s one trick—every time you hear an excuse, reply to it with “yes—and?”

“It is very difficult.” Yes, and?
“I am too young or too old to go for it.” Yes, and?
“I don’t know how.” Yes, and?

The point is: an excuse is not enough. Any fool can invent a thousand excuses for anything. Many do.

NOW LET’S BULLDOZE YOUR EXCUSES