The Mental Picture Bringing your definition of creativity into focus
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If you want to build a company with creative agility and acreative culture, you have to know what creativity means. There areseveral ways to define it, but the most basic idea focuses on theact of bringing something new into existence. It can be a totallynew creation or a new combination of existing things and ideas.
Creativity is about generating--not reacting. Evaluating andjudging are reactive, and it's easy to stifle our creativity byjudging too quickly. To truly let loose and create, you have to letthe brain's associative processes do their work. Stay in thegenerative creative mode long enough to let one idea spark anotherand another. Even if something is initially unworkable, it couldlead you to the very thing that will work brilliantly.
Every creative act begins in the unknown. Try visualizingcreativity as the zone between the known and what is so far out itscares you. The creative zone begins one step over the line thatseparates the known and the unknown, the comfortable and theunfamiliar. It always takes some courage to make that first step.The zone ends when you get too far out--it's nearly impossibleto be creative when you're overly stressed.
Often when people think of creativity, they reduce it to a setof techniques. Techniques are used to bypass the usualpattern-making tendency of the brain and help us encounter ideas wewouldn't otherwise. They are very powerful, but they'reonly the beginning.
The ultimate goal of creative skill-building is adopting acreative stance, a way of being. When viewing the world with openand curious eyes, anything can spark a new idea. In this stance,you have what the Buddhists call "beginner's mind."You see everything as full of possibilities. It's verydifferent from a closed mind that knows exactly how things work andhow things should be. Every interaction between ourselves and theworld has the potential to spark our creativity. Our challenge isto learn how to evoke and use this natural talent we all have.
Juanita Weaveris a creativity consultant and coach.
