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For a brand to survive and thrive in a competitive marketplace, it must harness the power of creativity and innovation. When a brand stops innovating, it runs the risk of becoming mediocre, losing its unique appeal, and ceding market share to more imaginative competitors.
That being said, very few of us know how to cultivate this creativity within our brands and ourselves. Contrary to popular belief, creativity is not a rare talent bestowed upon a select few “artists.” Rather, it should be thought of as a skill that anyone can hone and develop, including you. All it takes is practice and a deeper understanding of how the brain and consciousness work.
As a meditation teacher and student of consciousness and leadership for over a decade, I have learned that cultivating a culture of creativity in companies and societies must start at the individual level. Creativity cannot be forced or bought with conventional logic or reason. Each of us has a role to play in cultivating creativity, and in this article I will explain how we can cultivate this skill for our business and personal growth.
Related: How Entrepreneurs Can Use Their Creativity to Innovate
What is creativity?
Creativity is the ability to generate or recognize ideas, patterns and possibilities that lead to new outcomes. Becoming more creative requires us to move away from logical, linear thinking and embrace the non-linear nature of our individual and collective consciousness.
To further illustrate this nonlinear nature of creativity, let’s explore the creative process in a linear sequence of four steps:
- Priming: We must first arm ourselves with the information, tools, skills and vision of the desired outcome we need to be creative.
- Free Association: Once you’re prepared, the next step is to let the ideas incubate and freely relate to each other. This can involve deliberately mulling over an idea, doing something completely unrelated, and then returning to your creative endeavor later. Embracing positive distractions is encouraged.
- Inspiration: If we are mentally prepared and in a state of mind where free association is possible, we will inevitably encounter a spark of inspiration – a novel idea that will get us the results we want.
- execution: Finally, test your idea. If it misses the mark, repeat steps 1 or 2 to refine your idea and your desired outcome.
As mentioned in step 3, finding that spark of inspiration depends on how well you prepare your mind with the information and tools you want to use to create, and on how you prepare yourself before you enter the creative process. How you prepare your mind typically depends on the individual creative endeavor. Therefore, in the remainder of this article, we assume that you are familiar with the external knowledge and tools required for your innovative vision. Furthermore, we explore the nonlinear dynamics of mental states and how to overcome the barriers that are often encountered on the path to creativity.
Related: How to be more creative in business
Our emotions are measured and evaluated
During my years of research on this subject, I came across the work of Dr. David R. Hawkins, who has spent decades testing and calibrating conscious experience. His discovery In a nutshell, he made the important discovery that our emotional experiences generate electrical energy within our bodies, and the power of that energy can be measured on a logarithmic scale.
Furthermore, our negative emotions were measured at the low end of the scale, and our positive emotions at the high end. Although our emotions may seem crazy and irrational, we can find hidden order in the chaos and work to optimize our lives to increase creativity and inspiration.
From force to flow
Unless we are living in poverty, sadness, inequality, or shame, we are usually the ones getting in the way. In a world where we are so busy trying to get things done that we often end up burned out, we forget that to be in tune with inspiration, we need to let go and let things unfold and settle. This hyperactive energy and the negativity that fuels it is so prevalent in today’s work culture that it gets in the way of being truly creative.
Below are four tips I share with my clients to help them move from “force” to “flow.”
- Embrace the Silence: Learn to be present with yourself without doing anything. Creativity has more to do with allowing your mind to emerge naturally than it does with being proactive.
- Understand why: Modern neuroscience shows that living with purpose activates the limbic system, which is responsible for action, decision-making, motivation, and emotion regulation and processing. Conversely, focusing on action interacts with the neocortex, which is responsible for rational thinking and analytical processing. Therefore, aligning with the mission behind your work is more effective than just working for the sake of work.
- Let go of your ego: If left unchecked, the ego drives us into states of survival. Guided by primitive emotions like greed, anxiety, anger, and pride, we create situations that perpetuate these states and block our access to true creativity in life. The key to detachment is understanding our limiting beliefs about ourselves and the world and replacing them with higher principles and values. I wrote the following article on how to do just that.
- useful: If your only purpose is to take from the world and not contribute to it, you will remain in survival mode, regardless of whether you have possessions or income. When we understand human nature and focus on bringing out the best in others, we naturally foster compassion, inspiration, and creativity in our personal lives and the world around us.
Related: What I Learned First-Hand from Pitching to 300 People Every Day for a Year
As I said before, creativity is a skill that anyone can master with deliberate practice and an open mind. You can unleash your full creative potential by aligning your emotions, understanding your purpose, and giving your mind the freedom to explore. I hope you can use these principles to spark innovation and achieve meaningful success in your personal and professional lives.