Are You a Blocked Creative? Try These 10 Steps to Creative Emergence.

What is creativity anyway? University of Notre Dame Anthropologist Agustin Fuentes, author of The Creative Spark: How Imagination Made Humans Exceptional states, “Creativity is seeing the possibilities and trying to make those imaginings into reality.”

So, if we had it, but lost it, how can we get it back?

#1 Think Like Leonardo! Get Curious!

Da Vinci. A sixteenth century artist, was deemed a genius. “Part of what made Leonardo a genius, what set him apart from people who are merely extraordinarily smart, was creativity, the ability to apply imagination to intellect,” according to Walter Isaacson in “Learning From Leonardo.”

Da Vinci’s most distinguishing talent was his curiosity and he was curious about everything! He would wonder how a crocodile’s jaw work, how light is processed, what causes people to yawn, how does an aortic valve work, basically he was curious about anything and everything!

Art historian Anne Leader states, “One of Leonardo’s driving motivators was understanding how things worked. He was fascinated by process.”

He took his curiosity to the next level and started keeping vividly illustrated notebooks outlining all his ideas in detail and five hundred years later those notebooks still amaze and inspire us!

So, look around you! What amazes you? What inspires you? What would you change if you could? How would you change it? Ask a question! Ponder an answer! Don’t edit! Just imagine!

#2  Brainstorm and write it down!

How many ideas came to creators who wrote their imaginings down on a napkin while having coffee or lunch at a restaurant or riding a train from Moscow to Siberia!

In 1983, Tony Robbins hit rock bottom. He had to do something, so this is what he did. He didn’t have anything to write on so he used the back of a Russian map while traveling on a train from Moscow to Siberia.

“I wrote continuously for three hours brainstorming every possibility of what I could ever imagine doing, being, having, creating, experiencing, or contributing. The time line I gave myself for achieving these goals was any time from tomorrow to the next twenty years. I never stopped to think whether I could actually achieve these goals or not. I simply captured any possibility that inspired me, and wrote it down. Awaken the Giant Within, by Tony Robbins.

Oliver Sacks, a neurologist and best-selling author of “Awakenings,” written in 1973 and adapted into an Academy Award nominated film in 1990 starring Robin Williams and Robert De Niro started keeping journals when he was 14 years old so he could jot down ideas. He kept a journal by his bedside to write down his dreams at night. Sacks not only authored best-selling books, but he wrote hundreds of articles about neurological disorders, the history of science, natural history and nature. The New York Times called him a “poet laureate of contemporary medicine” and “one of the great clinical writers of the twentieth century.”

So, no matter how mundane your idea, write it down in a notebook or somewhere! Nothing is unimportant! Everything deserves to be written down and recorded!

#3   Sleep on it!

Paul McCartney said he came up with the melody for “Yesterday” in a dream.

 “I was living in a little flat at the top of a house and I had a piano by my bed. I woke up one morning with a tune in my head and I thought, “Hey, I don’t know this tune – or do I? It was like a jazz melody….I went to the piano and found the chords to it, made sure I remembered it and hawked it round to all my friends, asking what it was: ‘Do you know this? It’s a good little tune, but I couldn’t have written it because I dreamt it.” Beatles Anthology

Julie Taymor, the theater director and creative force behind The Lion King states, “A lot of my strangest ideas come from early morning sleep, and it’s really an incredible moment.”

“In the sleep state, the brain thinks much more visually and intuitively,” according to Harvard University psychologist Deirdre Barrett, author of “The Committee of Sleep.”

Apparently, when we’re asleep, our brains, just like a computer, have the ability to run multiple programs simultaneously. Barrett states, “Conscious awareness is able to focus on only one thing at a time, but problems go on getting processed under the radar.”

You might be trying all day to remember the name of a song, and suddenly, waking up refreshed from a night’s sleep the name comes to you! “When you sleep, the better answer has a chance to emerge,” according to Howard Nusbaumof the University of Chicago.

#4 Get out of town!

One of the outstanding traits of creatives is that they are able to take disparate concepts and weave them together in new and meaningful ways.

Opening yourself up to new experiences and mystery forces you to take a look at things in a new and different way. Creativity happens when you leave yourself open to new experiences.

 “It’s the drive for exploration and curiosity, and the constant temptation to get outside your comfort zone and embrace the unknown,” according to Dr. Scott Barry Kaufman, researcher, psychologist and co-author of “Wired to Create. Unraveling the Mysteries of the Creative Mind. “Be curious about anything and everything!”

 #5   Try creating a mandala to re-connect disparate pieces of your mind

What is a “mandala?” It’s a circle. In Sanskrit, “mandala” means circle and center. It’s also a Hindu and Buddhism symbol representing the universe. A mandala consists of concentric forms, suggestive of a passage between two dimensions.

A circle represents the idea of totality, wholeness, original perfection, the Self, and the infinite.

The circular design symbolizes the idea that life is never ending and everything is connected. The mandala is a vehicle for concentrating the mind so that it may pass beyond its usual boundaries.

The mandala concept was introduced to Westerners by Carl Jung, a Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who founded analytical psychology, who rediscovered the mandala as a therapeutic, integrative art form created by patients in search of their own individuation. According to Jung, centering, healing and growth define the parameters of the mandala process. “By focusing the individual’s energy, the spirit is able to heal itself, grow and expand beyond itself,” states Jung.

Jung continues, “I had to abandon the idea of the subordinate position of the ego. I saw that everything, all paths I had been following, all steps I had taken were leading back to a single point – namely to the mid-point. It became increasingly plain to me that the mandala is the centre. It is the exponent of all paths. I knew that in finding the mandala as an expression of the self I had attained what was for me the ultimate.”

How do you draw a mandala? Take a regular piece of white 8 1/2 x 11 piece of paper. Draw a circle that fits inside the page. (You can use a small paper plate or anything you can trace to make the circle). Buy some crayons or colored pencils or use pastels.

Now that you have your circle and colors in front of you, think about how you’ve feeling right now. Let the colors choose you by what you’re feeling. Do not think about creating art, just think about what you’re feeling and let the colors choose you and start drawing whatever it is that you’re feeling – then keep drawing until you feel you’ve nothing left to feel that you haven’t already expressed.

After you’ve completed your mandala, date it and put it a drawer. Don’t try to analyze it until a few weeks have passed. In a couple of weeks, you can look at your mandala and see what feelings you expressed through the lines and colors you chose. Lots of red could express anger or energy. Blue could express sadness or calmness, yellow – happiness.

So, what did you accomplish? Mandalas are a form of meditation and of centering your spirit. Once completed you should actually feel a sense of “wholeness,” as this centering exercise, brings all parts of you back together again!

#6 Read a book!

According to Adam Grant, a Wharton School of Business professor and author of Originals: How Nonconformists Move the World, “There’s a critical level of literacy that you need to reach in order to be creative in most fields, because if you don’t have the ability to read, it’s almost impossible to accumulate knowledge. For the most part, people get creative ideas from reading.”

One of my favorite books, short and full of wonderful illustrations is Jonathan Livingston Seagull, by Richard Bach. This book allows me to be a seagull having a human experience instead of a human having a seagull experience.

This book is so well written, I’m 100% on board! My imagination soars along with Jonathan’s realization that he can live to fly rather than fly to eat! “For this gull, though, it was not eating that mattered, but flight. More than anything else, Jonathan Livingston Seagull loved to fly!”

A book can take you anywhere and can be read from your favorite sofa! Pick up a book Like Jonathan Livingston Seagull and see to what heights your imagination can soar!

#7  Listen to music

A new study suggests, according to Jill Suttie, from greatergood.berkeley.edu “Listening to happy music promotes more divergent thinking – a key element of creativity.” The study “explores music as a source of creativity. Since music has been shown to improve cognition and enhance learning and memory in other studies, it makes sense that perhaps it has an impact on creative thinking, too.”

Suttie continues, “People may want to listen to happy music while they work – particularly if they need to come up with new ways of looking at a particular problem.” “Music listening may be useful to promote creative thinking in inexpensive and efficient ways in various scientific, educational and organizational settings when creative thinking is needed.”

So, find your favorite tunes and start listening!

 #8 Collaborate with friends

“We tend to think of creative geniuses as versions of Archimedes, sitting in his tub and crying ‘Eureka,’ but in many cases – and particularly in the world of the future – creative thinkers need to focus not just on the solo breakthroughs but also on fruitful collaborations,” states Sarah Begley in “How Parents Can Excite and Inspire,” The Science of Creativity, Time magazine.

Have you ever been completely stuck in a problem with nary a solution in sight? Ask a friend for help! It has happened to me –over-and-over again, help comes to me from unexpected sources! So, share your dilemma with a colleague, or just a friend. Seeing your problem from someone else’s perspective, might just be exactly the solution you’re looking for and the beginning of an unexpected collaboration!

#9    Take a “flight-of-fancy”

What exactly is a “flight of fancy” anyway and why should you consider taking one?

According to Google, “A flight-of-fancy” is “An unrealistic idea or fantastic notion. A pipe dream. The idiom uses flight in the sense of a soaring of the imagination, the usage going back to the 1600’s.”

You should consider taking a flight-of-fancy because you need to let your mind wander. “One apparent paradox is the tension between daydreaming and mindfulness, two apparently opposing forces that are both crucial to the creative process.” States Courtney Mifsud, in her article, “Seven Secrets to Unleashing Your Inner Genius,” The Science of Creativity, Time magazine.

According to Dr. Barry Kaufman, “A lot of daydreaming and mind-wandering – letting the mind go spontaneously where it want to go - is very conductive to ‘good’ thinking or at least it can be.”

Einstein states, “Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.”

So, stare out your window. Let your mind wander. Set no boundaries. Let your imagination soar!

#10  Bend it, break it and blend it!

In bending an idea, you take an existing idea, bend it or twist it into something new!

American inventor Edwin Land wanted to create non-glare windshields, so he used the not-new idea of polarization and came up with the new idea to reduce the size of the traditional six-inch crystals into sheets of glass where thousands of tiny crystals were embedded inside them. The glass was non-glare and transparent at the same time! Land had taken an idea and adjusted the size of the crystals to meet the need of the windshield.

 In breaking an idea, something old, or existing, is taken apart and re-assembled into something new.

The first cell phones worked like television and radio stations using existing single towers to transmit the signal widely in all directions, however because there was only one signal, only a few dozen people could make calls simultaneously or the system would overload.

Engineers at Bell Labs worked on a solution which divided up the coverage areas into single coverage areas, or “cells,” where each area had their own tower and the new “cell” phone was born!

Bell took existing technology, broke it down to its basics and re-assembled it into something new.

In blending an idea, the brain combines two ideas, or sources together to create something new.

In 1995, Volkswagen Motor Company launched a new model of the Polo car, named “Polo Harlequin.” 

“On April Fool’s Day, the car acquired a new attribute: each part of the car was painted a different color.

Originally intended as a joke coordinated with the PR Department who distributed multicolored posters to go with the launching, Volkswagen had no intentions of implementing a multi-color car launch.

To Volkswagen’s great surprise, the multi-color car idea captivated many customers and a great uproar arose the next day. Orders for this (nonexistent) car started piling up in the sales department and interest kept growing. The next step was obvious: the model was to be offered on the suddenly awakened market,” according to Jacob Goldenberg and David Mazursky in Creativity in Product Innovation. 

So, look up at the stars and wonder how the universe keeps expanding, get out your favorite notebook and write down your thoughts, try sleeping on the idea, leave town, try your hand at creating a mandala, read your favorite book, listen to your favorite songs, daydream about what your life could be and try bending, breaking or blending it! You’ll thank me later! 

Allison Miller-Constantino is an Orlando based artist who loves Nature and being outside. She's a 10-mile a day bicycle rider, ocean conservationist, writer/blogger, world-traveler and 1940's film-noir fan.

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