Can you Learn to Be Creative?

Do you have to be born a creative person? Or will you suffer the fate of being dull and unimaginative for the rest of your life?

Can you learn to come up with great ideas or learn to create unique, original things like art, music, poetry or ingenious inventions?

What about creativity being something like making a lot out of a little?

These are all questions that I have thought about for a very long time. I never really thought of myself as being creative, and I see the same attitude with so many people. “I just can’t come up with good ideas” or “I can’t start my own business, I’m not creative enough”.

In my opinion, the lack of creativity comes from two things:

1-) Social Conditioning.

From the day we are born we start being taught what to do, how to live, what is right and what is wrong. We are trained to accept other people telling us what to do. We are trained to follow rules and systems, sometimes to the point of not even being explained WHY, but just being told that that is ‘the way things are’ and the way things have to be done.

In other words, we are hardly taught to think for ourselves. We are not truly taught how to play and be creative, and often free thinkers and creative people have to withstand a lot of judgment and criticism because they dare to be different and think outside the box.

2-) Self-limiting beliefs

Due to this social conditioning, we have no real experience with being creative, because our thought processes are so confined and restricted. When we do wander outside the box every now and then, and try to be creative, and it doesn’t work, or comes out horribly, we start to establish the belief that we are not creative. The more we try, and the more we mess up, the more we confirm our belief that we are not creative.

Once this self-limiting belief is in place, it is hard to break, and we often end up not even trying to do things that require creativity anymore.

There is hope:

I have experienced both these above points of social conditioning and self-limiting beliefs. English is not my first language (although I have been speaking it since I was 6 years old), and I was always a C+ student during school with my English classes.

As a result I came to believe that I was not good at writing, and therefore really did not enjoy doing it, and any literature related class.

It was only a year ago when I started Upgradereality, that I realised how much fun writing really is. I still don’t think of myself as a great writer, but people seem to enjoy my posts and writing style, and best of all, I LOVE writing these posts.

I really try hard to improve and make my work better, by reading lots of other great blogs and seeing how they do things, and by asking feedback from friends and readers on my own posts.

I get ideas for posts in the most random places, when I’m driving in my car, or in the grocery store or in the shower. I have learnt to write these ideas down as soon as I get them, to make sure that I do not forget about them, and this way I always have a couple of good ideas for new posts.

Of course, this is just one aspect that I am using as an example. Creativity applies to anything and everything, and yes it is possible to learn to be creative.

How to learn to be creative:

The first step to becoming creative is to remove the words “I am not creative” from your vocabulary. Seriously, do not say them or do not say them inside your head. They no longer exist.

Now you need to start looking what other people in your niche are doing. Look them up online, read books, watch television shows about them. The more you see what they are doing, the more you can get a feel for how they think, and how they come up with creative ideas.

Find a way or a place where you feel totally relaxed. This is important so you can let your mind come up with ideas. Write them down as you get them. For me a relaxing place is outside in nature where it is quiet and sunny, or when I take a long drive in my car by myself, or even when I to the gym with my iPod, or go jogging.

Try to jot down a few ideas every day. They may be dumb, or they may only seem dumb. Write them down anyway. It’s a gradual process. Expand on previous ideas from the week before.

Repeat the process of reading and observing what similar people are doing and how they are being creative, finding a relaxing place to write down your thoughts, and jotting down a few ideas every day until you start seeing the kind of results you are happy with. It may take a few weeks to a few months, but this is the training process you need to put your mind through to become creative.

Remember, looking at things from a different angle can also make a big difference to creativity. Question the way that everyone else is doing something in the same method, see if being different and doing it another way will produce something cool.

Can you learn to be creative?

Absolutely!

Diggy writes about self improvement at his blog Upgradereality.com. His goals are to motivate and inspire others to better themselves and follow their dreams and passions. If you enjoyed this post you can subscribe to his latest posts via RSS or Email.

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