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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:

1. 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.
2. 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
3. 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.
4. 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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