Boost Your Creativity - Quick Tips - The Candid Coaching Series

The brain is such a complex creation that scientists are still investigating its full potential to this day. One of the theme that is quite studied is the concept of cognitive flexibility and the impact it has on people's ability to think 'out of the box', so to speak.

If one is born and bred to have a more dominating left brain, does it mean that this person can never be creative? I used to think that this was the case and would label myself as a nerdy analytical person with no scope for creativity. This changed when I did a course on unleashing the creative mind which visits principles from the book 'The Magician's Way'. For me, it boils down to the power of the mind, our focus and embracing how much inner power we have to act in favour of what we love. Who defines the boundaries of what we can do and who decided that the label we put on ourself is true?

Studies done around the concept of cognitive bias and cognitive flexibility have shown that one may be born a certain way but the brain can be trained to expand its ways of functioning. There are multiple exercises and games that you will see on applications and coaching programmes that assist you with such type of training. One such application that I have once tried is 'Luminosity'.

Over and above such type of trainings, here are some simple and quick practices/tips that you can also apply to enhance creativity in your personal and professional life:

1. Take breaks. Not only is it good to take mental breaks to enhance your productivity, it also allows your mind to wander and come up with out of the box ideas! How many of you experienced going to sleep with unfinished work and waking up the next day with a solution to your problem?
2. Be willing to step outside your comfort zone. A lot of us are more comfortable relying predominantly on the logical/rational thinking patterns and it is necessary to sometimes embrace your artistic/creative side to really unleash your creativity! Have hobbies that you love. For example: travel the world, take up dancing classes, etc. Dare to step into that unknown world where your horizon of opportunities will expand.
3. Have Fun. The more one is passionate, curious and interested about what they are doing, the more they are willing to stretch their minds and level up! Use and embody the word fun in your brainstorming, problem solving or planning sessions and see the shift in energy in the room. People light up and are more engaged when it is fun. For example; have some fun intro music to your meetings or have a specially set-up room for idea generation. This may sound crazy but I have seen corporates adopt such strategies successfully in their agile transformation journeys.
4. Be Inspired. Read books, watch podcasts, videos, attend conferences, seminars, special interest groups. Most importantly, surround yourself with an environment that inspires you to create. Your environment and what you make of it is critical to creativity. A beautiful nature landscape, a vision board, a vintage coffee shop. The people in that environment also plays a key role in your ability to create. Some like to create in their own quiet space first whilst others like to be around people. Go ahead and experiment what works best for you.

If you want to learn more on this topic of creativity, please check out the in-depth articles from the Scientific American Mind and Harvard Business School journals.