¿Por qué creatividad Y Blogging son un partido realizado en el cielo

The aim of this article is to help you (and me) understand how our time in the blogosphere helps us access our creativity and fine tune our creative gifts. It’s also aimed at inspiring you to keep going, to keep reaching for those things you set out to achieve, and to remind you why it’s worth it.

When we start out as bloggers, we may have many reasons for doing so, but did you ever stop to consider that among the primary reasons is finding your unique form of creativity and expressing your creative genius? For many of us, this probably doesn’t cross our minds, however, blogging is a brilliant vehicle for finding this stuff out.

So, here we are, setting out to make our mark in the world of blogging. How do we start? Where do we start? To the best of my knowledge, Yaro always says to write about whatever you really like, whatever floats your boat.

That sets the scene for our first act of creativity. When we find the thing that makes us tick, we find our authentic voice or our “element”. This is one of the greatest gifts we can ever give ourselves in life.

Our element, or our unique form of creativity, defines who we are. This gives us a level of self-awareness and self-assurance that most of the world is lacking because they’ve never gone looking for it. Being in touch with our truth or our authenticity is so powerful because in many ways, we’re unshakable in this place. It’s a place of inner knowing where we feel sure about who we are and what we’re doing. As bloggers, we have to find it, our success or failure depends on it. Who ever imagined blogging could give us this gift of finding our own creative genius? Brilliant!

As many of us may have experienced, there can be a few false starts along the way. Rock star blogger, Alborz Fallah, stumbled along scribbling about a few different things until he hit upon the thing that launched him with significant impact into the blogosphere. That’s all part of finding out who we are and fine tuning our creative gifts. If we knew exactly what we were doing to begin with, there would be no lessons to be learned, and no joy in finding our inner genius.

So, we’ve rattled around for a while and slowly but surely uncovered whatever it is that makes us tick, then we begin to share our wisdom. This in itself is a very powerful act of creativity and the benefits of doing so are almost immeasurable. To name a few of the big ones, in expressing our creativity, we find our tribe and we find our place within that tribe, and we may even find our gifts of leadership in creating our own tribe. When we blog, we share our wisdom/creativity. When we blog, we find our tribe and our place in our tribe, or we create our own.

When we express our creativity, we literally send out signals to the rest of the world about who we are, and other people who share similar interests and vibe about the same things will be drawn to you and your creative expression. Then the power of one becomes the power of many, and this opens the floodgates for even greater connection, communication and creativity within the group. Our creativity is the thing that builds our tribe or connects us with an already established tribe and helps us find our place in the world.

An extraordinary thing about blogging is that we generally become the Creator of a tribe. Yes, that’s right, Creator, with  a capital “C”! Blogging is a highly creative act, and in doing so, we literally become creators, in myriad ways. It’s possible that whatever your unique creative expression is doesn’t have a defined group of people gathered to connect, communicate and co-create about this “thing” yet. By finding your authentic form of creativity and sharing this with others, you may become a leader for a group the world doesn’t even know it is missing. That’s one of the hallmarks of creativity, bringing to the world things it doesn’t even know it’s missing.

How about that? Now we’ve stumbled upon leadership amongst the many brilliant reasons to pursue blogging. Leaders are inspiring and highly creative individuals, that’s what makes them leaders, and that brings us to our next ramble.

When we find our unique form of creativity, and share our wisdom within an established tribe, or create our own tribe, we inspire others to do the same. By showing others what is possible through our own actions, we make it real for them. I generally like to think of inspiration as an inside job, that it comes from within. But there are always exceptions and it can also come from others. We’re inspired when we see others reach the goals they set for themselves. Inspiration comes from seeing another person expressing their creativity (in whatever form that may be) and reminds us that we have those same creative abilities. If they can do it, we can do it.

Two great examples of this in my life are Gideon Shalwick and Kerwin Rae. I’ve thanked both these men in my book for showing me by their own example, that if I say I’m going to do something, then act on it, my dreams are within reach. I know this is possible because I met Kerwin and Gideon when they were audience members in seminars and conferences that I was kicking around in a few years ago. Both of them have gone onto create their own vibrant and animated tribes, become leaders in their area of expertise, and create extraordinary businesses that give them the kind of life style they intended for themselves and their loved ones.

This seems like a stupid title, given that I’m in the process of writing words, but bear with me! Sir Ken Robinson is recognized as a world renowned expert on creativity, I’m a ridiculously massive fan of his work. He says, “creativity involves doing something, it’s a process, not an event.” Both of these men were similar to me when we first met, with big dreams and strong self-awareness. But they also had an unshakable focus on creating the lives they wanted. Both of them showed me by example that following your dreams and making them a reality is a completely reasonable thing to expect from life if you follow through with action. They did it, then why can’t I? Of course I can! If they did it, so can I.

There was no major difference between our creative abilities then, and there isn’t now. We’re all born highly creative, and we share an equal portion of creative power, but we need to be able to tap into our “element” and do the work, and it’s going to be a lot of “work”. But if we’re in our element/zone, it never feels like something we do begrudgingly, we love it and couldn’t think of anything we’d rather do. (Now I’m getting a bit off topic, but Dr.Mani wrote a great article for Entrepreneur’s Journey on this last week.)

The only difference in Kerwin and Gideon was they found their “element” sooner, shared their wisdom, and created their tribes whilst I was still kicking around figuring it out. It sure made me snap to attention when I saw how they had accomplished the things we had talked about a few years previously. I realized, I’d better stop tire kicking and do something if I want results! These are perfect examples of inspiration from others who have expressed their creativity and made stuff happen in their lives.

As most of us know, Gideon found his unique form of creative expression through blogging. (Rock on Rapid Video Blogging;) This has made it possible for him continue to express his creativity on even greater levels as the influence of his work extends further into the world.

Another bonus of expressing our creativity and becoming an inspirational leader is that we have incredible power to incite action and create movements! Who wouldn’t love to be known for inciting action and creating movements? Those things are cool!

Just look at the example cited above about Kerwin and Gideon. These guys didn’t just inspire me to get off my behind, they incited me to take action and begin creating my own movement. In their businesses they incite action in the lives of those who are drawn to engage in the activity of their tribe. Gideon and Kerwin create movements in the way their tribes are collectively engaged in activities that are designed by the tribe and the leader to take them to a place they collectively want to go. That is an intensely powerful form of creativity in action and it gets me freakin’ exciiiiiiiiited!!!!

In blogging, we can see clearly how this plays out for us. When we find our unique form of creativity and express it, we join or attract a tribe. We may have to spend some time finding whatever it is that makes us tick and also connects us with others.

The more authentically we express our creativity, the stronger our influence in our group and the more opportunities we get to express this creativity.

The more we finely tune our unique form of creativity and build upon our wealth of self-knowledge and experience, we naturally find ourselves in a position of leadership. Our Leadership role means we can inspire others to express their unique form of creativity, and incite them to take action, and if we do this on a large scale, then we have created a movement!

Yaro is doing this right now with the changes he’s making to Entrepreneur’s Journey. He’s created a strong group with shared goals (entrepreneurship, blogging and internet marketing) and we collectively take action to reach those goals. By allowing myself and other writers on his blog, he’s taken on another level of leadership where he creates a space for others to express their creativity. Big ups to Yaro for taking it to another level and stepping into Inspirational Leadership on a whole new platform! As creators, it can be very difficult to let go of your creation and allow it transform into a new expression of creativity.

If we can’t let this happen, there’s always going to be a limit to how much our creative expression can grow, because part of being a creative genius is inspiring others to express their creativity. If we refuse to share our creative gifts through Inspirational Leadership, our creative ability can be stunted and weaken it’s power to influence others. Sure, we might still experience some level of creative satisfaction, but we’ll get nowhere near expressing our true creative potential, which always wants to go further and to take it to the next level.

So, how cool is that? Finding your creative genius, expressing your creative genius, awakening your leadership potential, inspiring others, inciting action and creating movements. And all this can come from blogging! Was this something clearly laid out in your list of “why I’m going to be an amazing blogger?” Possibly not, but it’s worth adding now if it isn’t there already. And please note, the first thing on the list, the foundation for the whole equation is in your unique form of creative expression. None of the rest happens without knowing who you are and what your unique form of creative genius is.

Many of you will have completed my creative character survey to find out where your creative gifts lie. I’ve done some more work on it since the initial launch. Now when you find out an aspect of your creative character in the results, it also tells you how this plays out in your life and what kind of roles are suited to this creative element. This is a work in progress, as I’m constantly learning new things to add to the survey results! For those who might be curious, you can do so by clicking here: Your Creative Success Quiz.

Many thanks for reading this article, please leave any comments at the end as I’d love to hear any insights you may have about your own experiences.

Cheers, Neroli.

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/.

Cómo mejorar la creatividad parte 2: Desbloquear los secretos del inconsciente

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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/.

Cómo mejorar la creatividad: Por qué no Lady Gaga obras & ideas

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Greetings fellow Entrepreneurs, this week’s article is all about techniques, one thing I’m not usually very focused on. I love exploring and understanding why we do things and how we work, but my articles have been somewhat lacking in techniques.

One of the reasons for the way I write is that if we don’t have a deep understanding of how we work and why something is important, it doesn’t matter how many techniques we learn, we won’t apply them anyway. But this week, that’s all we’re doing – a big dump of as many creativity enhancement activities as I can squish into this article. So anyone feeling a need for more exercises to boost creativity can revel in the plethora of options available.

Numerous studies have been done to prove or disprove the effectiveness of brainstorming. It turns out, getting people together in groups for brainstorming sessions is not the most effective way to enhance creative thinking and innovation. Brian Mullen from the University of Kent analyzed 20 studies of brainstorming, in the vast majority of experiments, participants working on their own produced higher quantity and quality of ideas than groups.

The primary reason for this is a phenomenon called “social loafing” (for some reason, the sound of social loafing makes me giggle internally as it conjures up funny images of people “slothing” around in groups). What this means is when we work on our own, success or failure is entirely due to our own abilities and hard work. In groups, there is a diffusion of responsibility, so success or failure is not something that can come back to the individual. Because there will be no personal punishment or personal praise/ reward, members of groups slacken off compared to when the onus is on them individually to perform. Interesting conclusion huh?

So rather than getting a bunch of people together to brainstorm, it’s best to get us to work on coming up with as many ideas and concepts as we can individually. If it is a group project, of course then bring people together afterwards to discuss the findings. This leads to the next interesting and very useful aspect of enhancing creativity in a group dynamic.

Studies have shown that playing musical chairs in a group dynamic will lift the creativity and innovation of members rather than everyone sitting in the same place next to the same people. Charlan Nemeth and Margaret Ormiston from the University of California conducted a study in which participants were asked to change seats during the problem solving tasks. They observed a significant rise in creativity and innovation as a result, compared to the groups that were allowed to remain in the same seating formation.

These findings were supported by research done by Hoon-Seok Choi and Leigh Thompson. They found that even in groups of three, adding one new person to the group dynamic caused a rise in creative thinking. So if you do have a team working creatively on a group project, it seems like the best plan of action is to get everyone started working on their own. Then when the group comes together, have everyone switch chairs and shuffle around the group dynamic to keep the creativity and innovation flowing at optimum levels.

This is one of my favorite techniques to enhance creativity. In my book, I spoke about how I often need to spend time in nature to de-stress and awaken my creativity. I found out after writing this, there is scientific evidence that proves this is an effective way to enhance creativity. I think it’s cool how we instinctively know things to help us in our lives, if we just trust ourselves enough to follow it.

Japanese psychologists Seiji Shibata and Naoto Suzuki carried out controlled experiments in office environments in which they placed a green, leafy pot plant in front of or to the side of a person’s workspace. The tests showed that having the plants nearby and within the range of vision consistently increased creativity and innovation of the participants.

Again, this research was supported by experiments done by Robert Ulrich from Texas A&M University. When flowers and plants were added to an office environment, his tests showed a 15% increase in ideas from males, and females came up with more flexible solutions to problems posed. If plants can’t be kept in the office environment, then being able to see plants and trees out of office windows can have a similar positive effect. So if you need to get some creative juice flowing, perhaps look at going green and getting some plants in your work environment.

Apparently, fake plants, or pictures of plants on the wall or on screen savers doesn’t have the same effect, so don’t try to fake it (there is an entire body of extremely interesting research as to why real plants are so beneficial to our emotional and psychological state, but that’s another article altogether, and quite off topic). However, it does lead me to the next creativity enhancement technique.

The color green is associated with positivity and relaxation, it’s also been found to increase creativity and innovation. Andrew Elliot from University of Rochester found that the color green caused triple the success rate in solving anagrams (an anagram is a type of word play, the result of rearranging the letters of a word or phrase to produce a new word or phrase, using all the original letters exactly once).

Affecting creativity through using the color green is helpful because in the absence of plants, we can come up with plenty of other ways to incorporate green in our workspace. For example, green clothes or green office supplies or equipment.

This makes me wonder why having pictures of plants or fake ones wouldn’t be somehow beneficial as the color green is still going to be working it’s magic, even if the physical and emotional benefits are missing from having a real plant present. A living plant will always be the best option, but sometimes it might not be possible (I find fake plants quite weird and depressing though, so that wouldn’t work for me).

Another side note on how our creativity taps into useful insights and instincts in our lives. When I was designing my website, I chose green as a predominant color throughout. I had no idea about the effects of green on creativity, or our psychological or emotional state when I made this choice. I just liked it and followed my intuition. I consistently find my creativity is very accurate when it comes to presenting me with the perfect solution to my problems, if I just follow my creative instincts!

Guess what? I’ve found myself near the end of the article and there’s a crazy amount of techniques still to be shared! I’d better move on as to why thinking of Lady Gaga can improve creativity and innovation seeing as I put it in my heading. As for all the other techniques, we’ll continue this little foray into enhancing creativity next week.

So…Lady Gaga! Now there’s a lass who inspires an incredible amount of response to her style of creative expression. Whether you like it or not, she certainly knows how to get noticed for her creativity. But how can she help us enhance our creativity? It has to do with mental priming.

Psychologists Ap Dijksterhuis and Ad van Knippenburg from the University of Nijmegen did some experiments in which they found people would get the answers to questions correct almost 20% more of the time if they thought about someone they considered intelligent, like a university professor. The same technique works for enhancing creativity.

Psychologist Jens Forster from University of Bremen did tests in which participants were asked to think about the lifestyle and appearance of a typical punk (anarchic and radical). In the tests on creativity, those who focused on the punks scored significantly higher than those who thought about someone we don’t immediately equate with creativity, like an accountant.

Lady Gaga is a perfect example of someone on our radar these days whose personal style and creative expression is definitely on the radical side, whether you find it anarchic or not is for you to decide. So thinking of Lady Gaga in some of her mad outfits would be a great way to mentally prime yourself for a few minutes when preparing to tackle problems that require creativity and innovation.

Just a quick note in regard to mental priming, it has been shown to backfire if we think of someone we consider a creative genius, that is someone whose creative gifts are beyond the scope of most people. So thinking about Leonardo da Vinci or Michelangelo would actually cause us to shut down rather than awaken our creativity.

It’s related to us unconsciously comparing ourselves with these creatives and feeling disheartened and discouraged by the comparison. So whatever you do, when applying this technique, don’t overdo it! If you think Lady Gaga is a genius, better pick someone a little more low key…maybe Lil’ Kim…HA-HA! I’m going to have leave now, I’m making bad jokes!

I will be back next week with some more fabulous techniques for enhancing creativity. A lot of the studies in this post comes from a fabulous book, 59 Seconds, by Professor Richard Wiseman. It’s a brilliant book if anyone’s looking for a good read. Once again, please leave any comments you have in regard to the ideas in this post. 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/.