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My Secret Fool-Proof Method To Becoming Creative |
Let me start by asking you a question:
“Do you think you are creative?”
If you already think or know that you are creative then that is fantastic! If you don’t think that you are creative then you will want to read this article, because I have good news for you. You are creative. Every single person in this world has great creativity locked inside them, and all you need to do is find a way to unlock that creativity. I know this because I did not used to think of myself as creative at all.
When I was younger, in fact throughout my entire school career, English was my least favorite subject. I did not enjoy writing essays at all and thought I was pretty bad at it because I could never come up with creative ideas and stories. This became a sort of self-fullfilling prophecy and it always resulted in me writing very average comprehensions and getting very average grades for English.
I was pretty good at learning things and at memorizing things, but I always had the belief that this was easy to do. Being creative and inventing things that had not been done before were always more difficult if not impossible to do. This was my limiting belief that I am only now starting to break away from. If you would have told me 5 years ago that I would be writing two 1000-word-plus articles per week to an audience of more than 1000 readers, I would have told you that it would not be possible. I would say that I was not creative enough or good enough to be able to write articles that so many people would find interesting. I’m not trying to say that I am a brilliant writer and that everyone loves my style and point-of-view. Not at all. I am very aware that I still have a lot of learning and improving to do with my articles and my writing. I do feel that I have made enormous progress with my creativity and I am happy with the journey that I am on.
How Am I So Creative?
On a regular basis I have readers and people I know in real life asking me how I am so creative. They ask me how I can come up with so many ideas for articles and never run out of ideas. They ask me how I can find the inspiration and motivation to write so much and work on all my projects.
The fact is, I still don’t think that I am very creative. I have broken away from the limiting belief that I have no creativity, because I believe that I do. However, I feel that I still have a long way to go before my level of creativity has reached its full potential.
To get to my current level of creativity has been a journey of about 18 months, from the time when I first started my blog. It started out very slowly, with me writing lots of articles that I now look back on and think are absolutely terrible. With every article I wrote I would notice some ways to do it better the next time. I would take reader feedback into consideration. I would read great bloggers’ articles and study their style of writing.
In all my time that I have spent blogging and writing, I have discovered a few simple but very effective ways that allow me to unleash my creativity as much as possible. While these ways alone won’t provide you with boatloads of ideas or ingenuity, the are certainly going to be very helpful to guide you to your full potential.
My Creativity ‘Secrets’
Here are a few ways that help enormously with the process of creativity. They are pretty much common sense, but if you didn’t think of them then these ways might make a big difference to you becoming more creative.
- Write Your Ideas Down As Soon As You Get Them
This is such a simple method to implement, yet I never used to do it. I believe that everyone gets fantastic ideas from time to time. However, when we do not write those ideas down, the chances are rather big that we will forget about those ideas and never implement or execute them.Have you ever been in your bed when you are half-asleep and you get the most insanely cool idea in the world, only to go to sleep and not be able to remember your idea the next morning? Yep, it’s happened to me, and not just while sleeping, but while working or driving or waiting for the bus. So, I started writing my ideas down as soon as I got them. On a piece of paper, on my desktop, on chewing gum wrappers or in my cell phone.
An additional benefit of writing your ideas down is that they are now out of your head. This removes the pressure of having to remember your idea and allows your brain to relax and come up with new ideas since there is now more room. I honestly come up with 2 or more ideas per day for articles, videos or other projects that I write down as soon as I get them. This way I always have something to write about or work on and I build up more ideas than I can implement. (Which is good because not all my ideas are so fantastic that I would want to share them with everyone)
- Get A Whiteboard
I used to think that it was pretty retarded to have a whiteboard in your room or your office. A few months ago I bought one and hung it up on the wall in my bedroom. I see it every morning when I wake up and every night before I go to bed. It allows me to make quick notes, write down important things I need to get done and write down some of my ideas when I get them. I am loving it and I think it makes a big difference in my creativity. As you can see I ran out of whiteboard space (too many ideas) so I started writing them down on A4 paper and sticking to the wall underneath my whiteboard.
Train Yourself To Be Creative
My personal opinion is that we are so trained to just follow a system that we do not learn how to be creative. Being creative in an environment that requires and rewards following a system is self-destructive. We learn that being creative is not something that is rewarded in school, college or many jobs and thus we oppress our creativity.( I say that creativity is not rewarded in schools in the sense that you are given a syllabus that needs to be done. If you love doing scientific experiments but those experiments are totally unrelated to your syllabus, you will fail the school year even though your experiments could have led to you making a life-changing discovery. Not many people want to risk failing the year, and thus they would rather forget their experiments and follow the syllabus system.)
After many years or even decades of oppressing our creativity, we have simply adopted the believe that we are not creative. Now is the time to change that belief, because you are creative. You just need to start training yourself into being creative and allow your mind to give you ideas. Over time, you will notice that creativity becomes easier and much more natural. You will start getting ideas on a daily basis and soon you will have more ideas than you can implement. Write all of those ideas down and filter out the bad ones.
Become Creative By Implementing These Steps:
- Start Writing Your Ideas Down
By writing your ideas down you train your mind to become an idea farm or a fountain of inspiration. You are allowing your inner artist and voice to speak up and your creativity that is always limited runs free. - Read More
The more you read, the more your learn and the more ideas you get. Not only do you learn about writing styles and what the good ways are to get people’s attention, you also learn about all sorts of methods, principles and facts that can give you fresh inspiration and ideas for your own projects - Research
Look at what others are doing, but do not neccessarily try to copy them. Be yourself and be unique, but if you are stuck feel free to combine some ideas from other successful people and blend it with your own style to come up with something totally cool and unique. - DO
Reading, researching and writing down your ideas down will only take you so far. You need to start doing i.e. take action. Take your ideas and implement them. If you want to be a writer, then start writing articles or stories. If you want to be a painter then get a canvas and start painting. If you want to be a musician then get an instrument and start making music. Whatever it is that you want to be good at and unleash your creativity upon, you need to start by physically doing that action. Do not be scared to fail or make mistakes because you will. Probably many times. But every time you take action and physically do the thing you want to become better at, you become better. One day you will wake up and being creative will just come naturally.
Every resource that you need to be creative is already inside you. If you start today or right now, you can over time train yourself to come up with amazing ideas and absolutely creative work. Let your inner artist shine!
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Hi Diggy. I used to think that creativity was a gift bestowed upon the likes of Mozart, Wilde, Tennyson, and the likes and learend that it is really another state of mind, one we can virtually switch on and off at will once trained.
The steps you have about getting creative is more of less the same steps I use to write my blog and products.
Great post.
P.S. – I’ve not forgotten about the video, I’ll get it over to you soon.
.-= Steven Aitchison´s last blog ..The Biggest Mistake that Self-Employed People Make =-.
Hey Steven!
I’m glad to hear you thought that way too, I had exactly the same! It is a state of mind and we can teach ourselves to become creative. When we open our minds up to the idea that we are creative, and we sit down and practice, creativity will start to become natural!
Thanks for stopping by!
Great stuff my man. I especially like the bit about writing stuff down. I’m actually reading a book right night called making ideas happen and it’s pretty interesting. We ALL get amazing ideas yet the fact of the matter is many people don’t act on them.
Your white board is a bit cluttered! Someone is thinking big
Hey Bud!
Yeah the secret of writing down your ideas is such a simple one but one of the most effective ways to be creative that I have found! My whiteboard is way too cluttered, too many ideas and not enough time to execute them all. I like it though, not running out of ideas anytime soon!
Couldn’t agree more with the writing things down, I drove from Vegas to LA today and had about 10 ideas that I had to pull over for (Each time!) and write down… Another thing that is spot on is reading… it is unbelievable how much reading other people’s thoughts and stories will get your own creativity pumping.
Hey Maren!
Haha, I have done similar things. It always seems to happen that you get ideas while driving! I see potential for some sort of hands free recording device for bloggers so that they can drive safely and still record their ideas
Your blog is doing pretty awesome, congrats! Hope it keeps growing fast!
Have an awesome day!
Hey Diggy, great article! Just discovering the world of blogging and loving upgrade reality. Quick question (might be a stupid one) but, how do I get my picture next to this comment?
.-= adam quean´s last blog ..My new lense =-.
Hey Adam,
I believe if you head over to Gravatar (http://en.gravatar.com/) and sign up there, you will be able to upload whichever picture you wish and it will be your universal image that will show on every wordpress blog comment you write. For the record, I think it is best to upload an image that is 80px.
I used this website (http://www.shrinkpictures.com/create-avatar/) to shrink my image to 80px before uploading.
.-= Jason´s last blog ..10 Incredible Things Reading Blogs Has Done For Me =-.
Hey Adam!
Thanks for stopping by and glad to hear that you like Upgradereality
Ahh, it’s simple! Go to http://www.gravatar.com and register with the email address you use to leave comments. Then just upload an avatar picture and you are done!
Cheers Jason (above) and Diggy! Probably seemed a pretty dumbass question but you know what they say, you don’t ask, you don’t get
.-= adamquean ´s last blog ..My new lense =-.
Diggy, your blogging gets better and better my friend.
Just to let you know I have just realised a free ebook which is the best of thelifething.com. Apologise for the shameless plug but it is the very best lessons I have learn’t in pursuing life design so is relevant.
Please don’t hate me Diggy, I love you lol.
.-= Jonny | thelifething.com´s last blog ..Free Ebook: How Teux Keep Small Puppies Alive =-.
Jonny!
You are a strange one!
Cool, I saw your ebook, still have to download it when I get some time to relax!
Cheers!
Hey Diggy,
Well put-together post. I used to be creative when I was younger, dabbled and loved art even though it was hard for me. I haven’t tapped much of that for 10 years now and hope to change that soon.
My blog is one way to set myself apart and I hope to leverage the internet to keep my sparks going. Speaking of Maren driving, I hope I get a few ideas with my next road trip to CA in June.
.-= Moon Hussain´s last blog ..Are You Embarrassed Of Saying “Passive Income” Out Loud? =-.
Hey Moon!
Thanks! You’ve given up being creative? Nooooo! You should never give that up!
You seem to be passionate about your blog, keep it up! Passion is a sure way to being creative. The fact that you love what you do allows the subject to be on your mind all day and this in turn provides many new ideas!
Cheers for stopping by
Hey Diggy,
I love the way you have broken this down. I’m in the same boat as you in that I rarely have trouble coming up with an endless stream of ideas. The most useful tip I think that you have given here that I use every single day is writing down ideas as soon as I have them. I have a list of of about 25 topics at any time. What’s great is I always have that list to refer back to.
I would add to this that writing (not publishing) every day is a great practice. That gets you into the flow of things.
Hey Srinivas!
Thank you!! It’s a good feeling having more ideas than you can write about. That way you can also weed out the bad ideas and produce only good content!
I’m sure that you get a lot of ideas while surfing!
Thanks for stopping by!
Hey Diggy,
Great and useful ideas. Fortunately, I already implement them. Then, I like to combine all those scattered ideas into one area near the whiteboard. I say ‘near’ because it doesn’t always end up in the same notebook
My only issue is that I’m such a bullet point person, I need to get into a creative flow to fill out my ideas and outlines…
Keeping at it
Hey Kim!!
Thank you! Glad to hear that you are already being creative! I think my next post should be something along the lines of “How to spread your creativity”. It is amazing being creative, but if hardly anyone knows about it, then I guess it is a bit of a waste
Thanks for stopping by!
Have a beautiful day!
The diversity of creativity is another important point that is missing here. Is writing software creative? To some it is, as there can be certain artistic qualities to code in how things line up or how some algorithm tackles a problem in a particular way.
I’m also reminded of “American Beauty” which is now over 10 years old, but had this scene involving a plastic bag blowing in the wind and the question posed of whether or not someone could see that as beautiful. Some people would see the beauty and some may scoff, but I enjoyed the movie as well as taking in that lesson.
I suppose another side to this is that in lots of different fields one can find creativity. Whether one wants to look in the arts, sports, sciences, or other fields, there is creativity to all of them in varying ways illustrating different forms of beauty. I’m probably getting close to repeating myself, but I think it is important for people to get that being creative doesn’t mean you have an English degree.
Hey Jb!
How are you doing?
Aha, you paid attention! I may not have mentioned it explicitly, but I think that being creative refers to anything. It is like art, which is not limited to painting or drawing. Creativity and art are the ability to make something out of nothing, to pioneer and come up with new ideas or solutions to problems, or to approach a same problem from an entirely different angle. Creativity comes in books, poetry, music, sculpture, engineering, construction, science, the medical field and whatever else you can think of!
Thanks for leaving a comment! I always appreciate it!
I’m still alive and trying to turn my dreams into reality. After all, why else should one dream?
Hey Diggy,
These were some great suggestions! I may have to use your white-board idea. I tend to accumulate sticky-notes and scraps of paper throughout the day, composed of all of my ideas.
The best suggestion you made was to take action. Everyone and anyone can have ideas, it’s the rare person that has the courage to take action on them, mess up, get better, and do it all again.
Take care,
Ben
Hi Diggy,
I love that whiteboard! I am shopping around for a whiteboard too so that I can jot down my ideas on it. Capturing our ideas down is important and it is not wise to depend on our memory. I find that my memory tends to fail me too often when I’m using it to capture down all my ideas.
Cheers,
Vincent
.-= Vincent´s last blog ..Are You Saving Pennies And Losing Dollars? – Save Money By Being Smart =-.
Hi Diggy,
Great advice.
I carry an ‘ideabook’ around with me always to write down inspiration.
Some other ideas I would suggest are to read magazines completely out of your interest areas. Diversity is important for creativity.
Another big one is to focus on extremes. Consider the polar opposites of every constraint. For example, if your product is too expensive, what if you increase the price ten times? Or what if you gave it away for free? Extreme thinking might be unrealistic but it often generates creative solutions to problems.
I can confirm that every piece of advice here is true. On Evernote, I have a note page titled “epiphanies”, where I’d instantly write down all of my flashes of insight. Nearly every one has led to a blog post.
My whiteboard has been instrumental for organization and getting my thoughts out. I’m glad I have it.
Doing is the most important part, though. Without doing, you’ll never be creative; you’ll just be a dabbler (per George Leonard’s Mastery).
Excellent post!
.-= Brett – DareToExpress.com´s last blog ..Being Naked and… Glowing. Now With 72% Identity! =-.
[...] My Secret Fool-Proof Method To Becoming Creative – Self Improvement [...]
I’ve gone through a huge leap in creativity in the last few months. A different type of creativity to writing. I’m actually a web designer by trade, but I still felt I actually lacked any creativity up until a few months ago. What made a huge difference for me, was accepting that I don’t work well working for others. As soon as I embraced being creative for myself, I saw this amazing shift. I was drawing sketches, like I had never done before, I was creating things that I never had the attention span to do prior to this, and then doing this, has made me grow in my creative ideas. So it’s not for everyone, but for me, realising that I am most creative when I have no rules and regulations to abide by is best for me
.-= Girlstartup´s last blog ..Some shots from footage =-.
Heya!
It’s amazing one you become aware of your creativity and just realize that massive shift!
Thanks for stopping by and leaving a comment, always appreciated!
[...] My Secret Fool-Proof Method To Becoming Creative by Diggy at Upgrade Reality [...]