THE CREATIVE LIFESTYLE

Hi Guys,

I know what you’re going to say, ‘why did you miss Monday inspiration?’ Funny thing is, one of my younger sisters sent me a message this morning that gave me some major guilt trip. She was like ‘don’t you do that your blog thing on Mondays?’ after I answered her and told her my reason, she then asked if I had told my readers sorry and I said I would do that on my next post. So here goes… I’m sorry for missing the Monday inspiration, I can’t promise that it won’t happen again though but just forgive me this one time. *wink wink*

Alrighty, moving on…

I noticed that in recent times, creativity has been affiliated with art, music, dance and those other things that relate to performance so to speak, but do you know that creativity is so much more than that? As a matter of fact, creativity centers on how you’re able to discover new ideas, how you can proffer solutions to lingering problems and most importantly, how original you are.

Psychologists are of the opinion that there are three (3) processes involved in creativity; Incubation, Illumination and Translation. Incubation occurs when information is being gathered from different sources. At this point, inspiration is drawn from anything and everything and once this happens, the brain is subconsciously trying to put them all together into a cohesive whole to form an idea. Then comes the illumination stage, here the idea suddenly comes. It could be when you are doing the most random things or when you’re having your quiet time, the important thing is that you feel fulfilled at this point. We then move to the translation stage where all the action goes down. Nice theory, but how can you really make creativity your lifestyle? Here’s what I think…

ü  Ask questions

Ever heard that a closed mouth is a closed destiny? Probably. If you want to be creative, you need to learn to ask questions that will give you insights to new ideas. These days, Google can answer just about anything so why not ask Google if you’re too shy to ask someone. You need to keep an open mind if you want to live a creative lifestyle. Ask people questions on how they were able to achieve their goals and then sit down and look for a more innovative way to achieve your own goal.

“Curiosity about life in all of its aspects, I think is still the secret of great creative people”- Leo Burnett

ü  Look for inspiration

Inspiration is a very important part of creativity and it’s up to you to find inspiration from everywhere possible. One thing is that when this inspiration comes, don’t be afraid to put it into action remember that the greatest barrier to creativity is self-doubt. Believing in yourself is also a major key in the creativity lifestyle. Many times, the small voice in your head will tell you that the idea is stupid and wont work, it’s now up to you to disregard such thoughts no matter how convincing it might be.

ü  Get out of your comfort zone

Following the same pattern will only give you the same results. It gets monotonous and boring even for you not to talk of every other person. It’s very easy for us to relax in our comfort zone instead of putting ourselves out there; it’s like our safe haven so what’s the point of taking the risk? Just have it at the back of your mind that great things never came from comfort zones, so try something new and you’ll see how much better you’ll feel (I should also take this advice myself…lol)

ü  Create when you’re in a strong, powerful and emotional mood

Study has shown that creativity increased when both positive and negative emotions were running high. Now as much as I wont tell you to wait until you’re in a bad mood to create, we all know that sometimes, these emotions help us to create some great things. I mean look at Adele’s album 21 that basically talked about heartbreaks and those really emotional stuffs, that album earned her six (6) Grammy awards in 2012 including the award for the album of the year in one night! Don’t get me wrong, again I’m not telling you to put yourself in a bad mood but whenever you’re feeling really emotional, sit down and channel that energy into something, you never know who the next Grammy winner might be.

ü  Give yourself credit

Honestly, we all know that great ideas are not easy to come by which is why we make mistakes. Now making a mistake is not a bad thing, so you don’t have to beat yourself up over a little glitch in your plan. It’s bad enough that the society judges us regularly with the decisions we make everyday, it is now up to us to tell ourselves that whatever mistakes we make do not define us and that we can rise above them. Love yourself, you’re all you have.

ü  Finally…just do it

Enough of the diddle daddle, it’s time to start living creatively so don’t overthink it, just do it.

 P.s - I passed my exams...yaay! I'm so happy...once again thanks for your good wishes.

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                                               XOXO