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Hello again, I didn’t get through all the techniques for enhancing creativity in my last article, How To Enhance Creativity: Why Lady Gaga Works & Brainstorming Doesn’t, so we’re picking up from where we left off and running with it!
Our unconscious mind is a vast resource of infinite wisdom and creative insight. In part one, I referred to some experiences of how my creativity was able to produce all kinds of useful and unique insights and information to help me with business decisions and choices related to my personal life. The trick is finding ways to tap into this resource.
There’s a really cool story told by Dr. Richard Wiseman, which is a great analogy for how our unconscious mind works and how to tap into it. It’s called listening to the quiet girl in the room.
Imagine you go into a room, there are two people in the room. One is very vivacious, chatty and loud, the other is very quiet and reserved. You ask these two characters for help with solving some problem, and the loud girl immediately bursts forth with a torrent of ideas and information, it may not be very useful, unique or interesting. The quiet girl on the other hand, doesn’t say anything, because she doesn’t get a chance to with her noisy counterpart monopolizing the spot light.
Dr. Wiseman says this is really how our conscious and unconscious mind operates. Our conscious mind is the noisy one; never shuts up, always prattling on with an endless run of thoughts and ideas, it may not be very useful, relevant or interesting. Our unconscious mind on the other hand, can have some extremely useful and unique insights to share, but we rarely hear from it over the chatter of our conscious mind. So how do we deal with this?
In my experience, doing various kinds of meditation has helped me immensely with quietening my overly busy mind. Moving meditation, like yoga, works well if you’re not someone who can sit still for long. If sitting still doesn’t drive you crazy then there are numerous types of still meditations available. I practiced Vipassana meditation for a number of years and I’ve never had such clarity of mind and creative insight as when I kept up this discipline. I’ve fallen off the wagon however and am well overdue for another stint of training! Dr. Wiseman cites another way to access our unconscious, and we’ll go back to the story to find out how.
So, this time when you go back into the room, you head the noisy girl off at the pass by asking her to do some kind of time consuming task which keeps her distracted. Then when she’s occupied, you ask the quiet girl again for help with your problem. Now that there is space for her to share her insights, she can tell you numerous innovative and unusual solutions to your problem.
This leads us to some other great ways to get your conscious mind out of the way to let your unconscious work on innovative problem solving.
Ap Dijksterhuis, a psychologist from University of Amsterdam conducted a series of experiments to test this theory. He would pose a problem or ask a question of the participants in the study. Then he would have them distract their conscious mind for a few (3) minutes with something else (you could use a crossword, a computer game, a word finder puzzle, anything that requires your undivided attention for a few minutes.) The study found that when people engaged their conscious mind and allowed their unconscious to work on the problem, they came up with almost twice as many creative and innovative ideas and solutions compared to when the conscious mind was involved. Pretty cool huh?
I don’t find this is one of my favorite techniques for getting in touch with my subconscious, but it’s definitely a very quick and effective technique to get in touch with your hidden wisdom and insights.
In the last article I mentioned awakening creativity through mental priming in relation to thinking of Lady Gaga, there is also another kind of mental priming mind available. When we work intensely on a problem for a while, we mentally prime our minds to immerse ourselves completely in the problem. Then we need to do something completely different. This could be going to a museum, an art gallery, watching a film or looking through magazines or books that are not related to the topic we’re working on. The idea is to allow our mind to perceive things from a different perspective and come up with new and innovative ideas and concepts as a result.
Changing our perspective in other ways enhances creativity as well. Using our imagination is key here. We can use our imagination to think about how a child or a friend or an artist or accountant might approach the problem we’re struggling with. Consciously activating our curiosity also helps awaken our creativity. Children are extremely curious, and they are also extremely creative. Curiosity is a key link to creativity as it drives us to question things and entertain novel ideas in relation to a problem.
I’ve discussed the benefits of play at length in other articles as a way to connect with our creativity. If we take 15 minutes break from the task we’re working on to play, it can re-energize us and bring fresh perspective to the problem. Dr. Wiseman has a few funny examples of play he recommends to help lighten things up. He says to try finding ways to put the words “cheese” & “pie” into our next meeting or telephone call. Maybe if you leave a comment at the end of this post, see if you can find a way to make these words fit into what you’re going to say.
Stress shuts down our creativity and innovation very quickly. When we feel worried, we become very focused and concentrated on trying to figure whatever it is we think will help us avoid any further pain or punishment from the stress related issue. This creates a type of risk-averse behavior in which we rely on established habits and routines and tend to see the world through tunnel vision.
The result is that we default more to linear, sequential thinking patterns as opposed to multidimensional, holistic thinking, which is the essence of creative thinking. In previous articles, I mentioned how exercise and spending time in quiet, natural settings is great for stress reduction. You may already have your own effective stress reduction techniques, it’s worth remembering that these are vital to enhancing your creativity and innovation, not to mention improving our overall health, well being and work performance.
Psychologists Ronald Freidman and Jens Forster discovered a quick technique to make people feel relaxed, and enhances creativity. Apparently, when we like something we pull it towards us, and when we dislike it, we instinctively push it away from us. This act of pulling towards us is associated with positive feeling and relaxation, and the act of pushing away is associated with negative feeling and tension.
Freidman and Forster found that by having participants place one hand under the table and pull it up towards them, they scored higher for creativity and innovation as it created that feeling of positivity and relaxation. They didn’t need to lift the table off the ground or anything, just place some upward pressure on the underside of the table as though pulling it towards them. Participants who placed their hands on the table-top and pushed down scored lower due to the feeling of tension and negativity. So we can always give this technique a try when we’re working at our desk and need to do some speedy relaxation and creative thinking.
This brings us to our final technique for enhancing creativity, and it’s one of my favorites. It’s called lying down on the job! Ha-ha! Can you believe there is scientific proof that lying down on the job is actually beneficial to innovation and creative thinking? Please God, someone post this up on their workplace notice board!
Darren Lipnicki and Don Byrne from Australian National University tested people’s creative problem solving both standing up or lying down. They found that participants solved problems 10% faster when lying down. The reason for this is not completely understood, but it’s possible that lying down decreases activity in a part of the brain called the locus coeruleus, and this appears to improve creative thinking. So next time the pressure is on to be innovative at work, just take five to lie down on the job and see what happens!
The studies in this post come from a fabulous book, 59 Seconds, by Professor Richard Wiseman. It’s a brilliant book and I highly recommend it. Once again, please leave any comments you have in regard to the ideas in this post – I challenge you to include the words “cheese” and “pie” in it! Thanks for reading, and here’s to your creative success.
Neroli Makim
Neroli Makim is an internationally acclaimed artist, author and speaker on Creativity and its relationship to personal fulfillment and professional success. She educates people about Creativity, what it is, why it’s important and how to access it within themselves. For more information, visit http://www.yourcreativesuccess.com/.
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