3 approaches to enable you to break down mental barriers and be more creative.
Innovation is all about finding new and better ways of doing things – and to do that, we need to release our creativity. It’s true that this comes naturally to some people, easily finding creative solutions where others struggle, but this is a skill that you can work on. That’s right: we can learn to be more creative.
A ground-breaking study led by Roger Beaty, a cognitive neuroscientist at Harvard, found that creative people simultaneously activate different areas of their brain which do not normally work together. Yet, it is possible to train the brain to do this and stimulate the generation of original ideas.
You’re probably thinking: well, how? It’s simple: identify those things which block your creativity. Our brains are used to following pre-established thinking patterns – we’ve acquired habits, and sometimes they can be the worst enemies of creativity.
Try these approaches and change your way of thinking:
“If you can dream it, you can do it”
Walt Disney
- For the dreamers: the Disney method
First, DREAM, give free rein to your imagination, sing, write, or draw: start up your ability to think divergently. Then, BE REALISTIC, by answering questions like: how can I use this? What do I need? And, finally, BE CRITICAL, and think about whether there’s something you’re missing, evaluate the idea you’ve had and identify possible weaknesses, always with a positive attitude.
“Any way of looking at a situation is only one of many different ways of looking at it”
Edward De Bon
- For those who don’t like to follow the crowd: lateral thinking
Look for solutions by using strategies that are out of the ordinary and ignore the typical logical way of thinking, as that will only take you to what you already know and what already exists.
Test yourself by thinking about the situation below:
You’re driving your car on a stormy night and you go past a bus stop. You see:
- An old man who looks very ill
- An old friend who once saved your life
- The man or woman of your dreams.
If you can only pick one of them up in your car, which one would it be? The man who looks like he may be dying, the friend so that you can pay back the favour, or the man or woman of your dreams, who you may never see again. Think about your answer.
An applicant for a job at a tech giant was asked this question and this was the answer they gave:
“I’d give my friend the car keys and I’d tell him to take the old man to the hospital and then I’d wait for the bus with the woman of my dreams”.
What was your answer?
“Think Different”
Steve Jobs
- For those who see the glass half full. Appreciative inquiry.
Place the emphasis on those things you are good at.
Test yourself again:
You run your own business, selling jam and chocolate, but chocolate is becoming less and less profitable. What can you do? What’s the first thing that comes into your head?
Maybe you’re thinking that you could carefully examine all those things you could improve on and look for mistakes and maybe many of the typical ideas for improving a business have occurred to you. A social media marketing campaign, a competition, hiring an influencer with a million followers, using TikTok, etc.
But if the jam section of your business is going well, then why not concentrate your efforts on the thing that’s working? That is what Netflix did, focusing all its efforts on streaming and producing its own content.
What will your approach be?
If you give yourself a chance to set your thought free, totally new ideas can occur to you.
Change the way you think.
