Understanding + Honing your creative potential.

Today, career avenues for those with a creative bend of mind are innumerable. The list has expanded beyond traditional arts such as writing, dancing or theater, to encompass new and varied fields such as jewelery design, photography, industrial design and graphics design. This plethora of lucrative avenues makes it imperative for anyone who is looking into their career options, to examine their creative potential and consider methods of harnessing it.

Are you creative material?

You need to:
#Love to travel. There’s no better way of broadening your horizons and refreshing your outlook than travel. It exposes you to new people, customs, ideas and ways of living.
#Associate yourself with creative people. Look for people who are fun to talk to and have a keen sense of interest in life. #Be an individual who can stimulate your thought process is what you’re looking for.
#Interact with children. A child’s world is filled with fantasy, and yours can be too, if you interact with them. Try the association game. Playing with children will get you back in touch with your imagination.
#Love to read and write. But not all reading is good creative exercise. The key to using reading as a creative exercise is to read selectively and actively.
#Have a good sense of humor. Buy and read a few issues of magazines and have a go at writing some stories and cartoons. It will greatly enhance your powers of perception!

You should not:
#Be scared of trying out new things in life. Because ultimately art is nothing but seeing the same things in different ways.
Think in terms of “what will others say if I do it this way”.
#Work too hard. Surprised? Well it’s true, you need time away from a problem to be creative after periods of intense focus.

What can I do to enhance my creativity?

Improving your creativity is understanding and accepting the fact that you are a creative person, and that you can improve your creativity with practice and concentration, but first must come a basic belief in your ability to be creative.

To become more creative, you must nurture and learn to listen to your inner ‘voice’, your intuition. When involved in a pursuit requiring creative solutions, be open to a wide variety of possible solutions.

Don’t be afraid of failing within any given avenue of exploration; even a negative result from one line of questioning can lead to a new idea or possibility.

Study books on creative thinking techniques and put them into practice.

Keep a daily journal and record your thoughts, ideas, sketches, etc. as soon as you get them. Review your journal regularly and see what ideas can be developed.

Relax! Listen to music; indulge in sports to give your mind rest and time for the sub conscious to digest information. Develop an interest in a variety of different things, preferably well away from your normal sphere of interests. For example, read comic books or magazines you wouldn’t normally get. This keeps the brain busy with new things. It is a common trait of creative people that they are interested in a wide variety of subjects.

It really helps to think of creativity as a skill or set of skills. By practicing, one can get better at using them. So whenever you have a chance, try and do mundane things in novel ways- it will make them more entertaining and you will get more used to expressing your abilities.

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