What Makes You a Creative Person

Nearly every creative person I know has experienced the question, often asked by someone with a blank, slightly-confused look: why do you do that? Why do you take all those photos, or scribble notes everywhere, or make birthday cards by hand? Why do you knit, or make quilts, or paint with watercolors, or make sculpture from scrap? Why do you want to write a novel or make a film? Some people ask these questions out of innocent curiosity, because they’ve just never experienced such impulses. But from other people, the tone can be vaguely threatening — even menacing.It seems that what they’re really saying is: “What gives you the right? What makes you important enough to do that? Who do you think you are?

What is creativity? Why are creative people often different than others? And what makes you a creative person?

Creative Intelligence is the ability to think in new ways, to be original and where necessary stand apart from the crowd. Creativity is also an attitude: the ability to accept change and newness, a willingness to play with ideas and possibilities, a flexibility of outlook, the habit of enjoying the good, while looking for ways to improve it. We are socialized into accepting only a small number of permitted or normal things, like chocolate-covered strawberries, for example. The creative person realizes that there are other possibilities, like peanut butter and banana sandwiches, or chocolate-covered prunes.

Creative people work hard and continually to improve ideas and solutions, by making gradual alterations and refinements to their works. Contrary to the mythology surrounding creativity, very, very few works of creative excellence are produced with a single stroke of brilliance or in a frenzy of rapid activity. Much closer to the real truth are the stories of companies who had to take the invention away from the inventor in order to market it because the inventor would have kept on tweaking it and fiddling with it, always trying to make it a little better. The creative person knows that there is always room for improvement.

Creativity requires four things-

• Fluency - the speed and ease with which you can "rattle off" new and creative ideas.

• Flexibility - your ability to see things from different angles and from opposite points of view. To take old concepts and rearrange them in new ways and to reverse current ideas. It's also about using your senses i.e. what you see, hear, feel, touch, taste, smell in developing new thinking.

• Originality - being able to produce ideas that are unique, unusual and eccentric or different.

• Expand ideas - being able to build on, develop, embellish and elaborate upon thoughts and concepts.

We all have the ability to be creative by using our right brains but we are also good at blocking it by limiting our thinking and believing there is only one way to look at things, or sometimes we reject ideas outright because we can't see how they will work.

Random word, picture or object

When you are working on a problem, select a random word, picture or object from your office and write down a list of words that spring to mind as you reflect on it's purpose, colour, texture, shape, size, movement and surroundings. Now review what you have written down and see if it generates any new thoughts or ideas that might help with your problem.

Develop your senses

We make sense and communicate through our senses and the more we develop them the more we are able to associate and find connections between apparently unrelated things e.g. a frog and school bus - they both need water to keep them cool and they both have eyes! Add your own!

When you are outside see if you can spot 15 different colours and textures of green. And the next time you listen to a song see if you pick out the instruments and vocalists. You can give your taste buds a test by trying to guess the ingredients of a surprise meal. Close you eyes and imagine you were blind, can you find the things on your desk easily? Give your brain a challenge by wearing your watch on the other hand for just one day. You will be amazed at how it develops your sense of touch and feeling.