How to spark creativity when you feel brain dead
By: Marva Carty
Tags: Inspiration, Burnout, Creativity Tips

“You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.” Maya Angelou

Photo by Ola Dapo on Pexels.com

With so many things pulling for our attention and weighing on our hearts at the moment, it can be hard to allow our minds the space to get our creative juices flowing. A lot of areas where we may have normally gained our inspiration; such as new experiences in travel, meeting people, taking the path less travelled, may not currently be available to us because of increased constraints and limitations of where we can go and what we can do.

The conventional usage of the word creativity usually implies ‘artistic creativity’ such as the visual arts, music, literature, design, film and video, TV and radio or crafts. Often you hear people say, “ I am not a creative person”. But we all create things as creating is simply the act of bringing something into being.

Did you execute a project at work this week, construct a spreadsheet or tweak a recipe for dinner? It might not seem significant but all of these fall under the more general kind of creativity, which we would normally refer to as ‘innovation’ or even ‘problem solving’. We can find this kind of creativity in every area of human endeavour. David Parrish explores the idea of these two themes of creativity “a-Creativity” for artistic creativity of all kinds; and “i-Creativity” for the wider version of creativity i.e. ingenuity in his article based on the TED talk “a-Creativity : i-Creativity”. As Elizabeth Gilbert, author of “Eat, Pray Love” says, “If you’re alive, you’re a creative person”.

So, what are some ways we can re-light the creative spark?

Try something new. Attempting to do something outside your comfort zone forces your brain to stretch itself in ways that it had not previously done, making you view things in a different light. It doesn’t have to be a magnum opus that will set the world alight. Maybe you do the same exercise class all the time, but you want to try weights. Or you might always have a cheese sandwich on a Monday but want to try putting some ham on it. Go wild, shake it up a bit and you might surprise yourself with the results a slightly new perspective brings. Talk it out with someone. Sometimes just explaining the challenge to someone else helps to clarify what is needed or whether we need to simply try a different tactic. I often find if you can explain something to someone outside the field in question and they can grasp the principles of what you are talking about, it shows that you have done a good job with clarifying the issue. Put it down for a while. Often a solution or a way forward only becomes apparent when we step back from the issue and then your “Eureka” moment can come like a bolt out of the blue. So, make sure you got a notebook or your Notes app handy to capture the inspiration when it does arrive, so you don’t miss it! Rest and rejuvenation. When I am mentally and physically exhausted, ideas rarely flow for me. My brain fogs over and tasks that would normally be simple suddenly appear Herculean. Many famous innovators and thinkers often tout the importance of sleep and even naps to accelerating their ideation process. You can take it one step further and adopt artist Salvador Dali’s micro nap hack where he sat upright in an armchair holding a metal key in his hand over a metal plate. Once he drifted off to sleep and the metal key fell into the plate with a loud clang, it was time to wake up! He claimed that these micro naps “revivified” his being. Observe the masters and find your tribe. Whether that is finding a formal mentor or just drawing inspiration from people who you may not know who may be further along in the journey than you are. Having a mentor who can simultaneously challenge and encourage you takes you outside of your own self-absorption and helps propel you forward to action and limits procrastination and self-doubt. In addition, finding like-minded communities of people working to a similar purpose does even more to support this. Whether it is joining an online forum or a local chapter of your particular interest, surrounding yourselves with people who are passionate or have expertise in whatever you want to improve will exponentially grow your inspiration and motivation accelerates your learning and process improvement.

The irony is that there is no one size fits all method to spark creativity. It all depends on what works for you and what technique resonates best with you. Once we unburden ourselves from our biases as to how the process should unfurl, we will find it reveals itself. If we look at how very young children learn and create, they don’t hesitate; they just try it and figure it out along the way, stumbling along and dusting off themselves to try again with no self-consciousness. As Steve Jobs pointed out, “Creativity is just connecting things.”

So go connect and see where the dots join. You might be surprised at what the picture reveals at the end.