Think Creative

Everybody is creative!   If you think that you are not creative, you are terribly wrong. The mere fact that you are not using creativity in your every day life does not mean that you do not have it in you. Maybe your creativity needs some encouragement; maybe you need to learn a few techniques to unleash it; maybe you simply need to free some room in your life for creativity, some time that you can spend alone with your Creative Self and let creative things happen by themselves. To prove to you that you are creative, I will ask you a simple question: Have you ever been in a situation where you had to improvise in order to achieve something?  It does not matter whether your improvisation was a success or not. I am sure that your answer is:  Yes . If so, that means that you have it inside - the act of improvising is in fact the act of being creative. Not every painting is a master piece, therefore not every improvisation needs to be great. The important thing is that ...

Creativity is the process in which all you previous knowledge, emotions and personal experiences combine with the traditional ideas, rules and patterns to generate new and original ideas, possibilities and alternatives that bring value to yourself but more importantly, to other people. This value can be some help in solving practical problems, help in communication with others or it can have entertaining or spiritual purpose.  In fact, it is very difficult to find the precise definition of creativity because for the creative people 2+2 almost never equals 4. Every person is creative for himself/herself and every person will tell you his/her definition of creativity and why they find it valuable. I asked myself, why is creativity so important for me?  Here is why I am so attracted to Mademoiselle Creativity. Creativity is a way of expressing myself Throughout my life I have always felt strong need to engage in one or another artistic activity. There were periods when ...

Modern economy is based on discovering and creating of new needs, and on providing new products and services designed to meet those needs. Big companies have Research and Development departments which brainstorm ideas about how to create new values for their clients on daily basis. But great ideas are not born only in the minds of innovation experts; they are also born in the minds of many other employees working in the company. The problem is they are not always recognized, presented and appreciated.  At work we are  required to come up with new ideas  whenever there is some problem that needs to be solved. This is the situation where bosses are most open to various creative suggestions simply because they feel they are in trouble and are looking for a way out. If you are one of those who are creative and fast enough, you will have no problem to come forward and provide right solutions that will be easily recognized and accepted. But not everybody gets a chance to be a...

There are some talents that we never discover simply because we do not try certain things. I had never considered cooking a particularly interesting activity till the day I moved to live on my own and had no one to cook for me. Only then did I discover the fantastic world of spices, exotic oils and vinegars, seductive sauces and sweet creams that can brighten your day no matter how stressed out you might feel. I have never read any cook book, in fact, out of hundreds of books that I possess none of them has anything to do with cooking. I usually prepare my meals relying on common sense and recipes that I picked up watching TV or assisting my friends while they were cooking. As a child I used to spend lots of time with my granny helping her around the kitchen so I learned many recipes from her without actually being aware of it. I only realized it decades ago when I started to cook and somehow was able to prepare most of her favourite meals. Nowadays, whenever I am not sure how to prepa...

One of the most important characteristics of successful thinkers is their ability to focus. How many times has it happened to you that you spent some time and energy thinking about something and you ended up with a bunch of interesting ideas on all other problems except on the one that you had actually been required to think about? This will happen every time unless you manage to maintain a clear focus on the subject that you are thinking about. According to a famous expert on creative thinking  Dr Edward de Bono , there are two types of focuses: Area Focus and Purpose Focus. Area Focus  enables us to think broadly about some subject and generate all kinds of ideas connected to that subject. For example, let’s say that my Area Focus is this blog. In that case I will think about different topics that I could write about, ways to draw traffic to my blog, different design templates for my homepage, etc. Or, I could choose my backyard garden as an Area Focus for my thinking...

You have probably heard and read a lot about different  techniques that are supposed to improve your creative thinking  and inspire your imagination in the moments when you are facing a  creative block . But has anyone ever explained to you what is happening inside your brain in those precious moments when a new idea emerges in your creative mind? Can idea creation be explained by science? Are ideas created by certain chemical reactions in our brain or are they result of a divine inspiration that the universe is sending us? If creativity is a result of a physiological process in our brain, are there ways in which we can deliberately induce creation of ideas whenever we need them?  Lately I came cross a book that I had read a few years ago,  ’The Brain and Emotional Intelligence’ by Daniel Goleman  and I remembered having read there an interesting passage about the processes that are taking place in our brain whenever we are trying to think of new ideas....

In the normal course of events many men and women are born with remarkable talents; but occasionally, in a way that transcends nature, a single person is marvelously endowed by Heaven with beauty, grace and talent in such abundance that he leaves other men far behind, all his actions seem inspired and indeed everything he does clearly comes from God rather than from human skill. Everyone acknowledged that this was true of Leonardo da Vinci, an artist of outstanding physical beauty, who displayed infinite grace in everything that he did and who cultivated his genius so brilliantly that all problems he studied he solved with ease. Giorgio Vasari, in the enlarged edition of  Lives of the Artists , 1568, Ingenuity of Leonardo’s thoughts and work have fascinated his contemporaries and people throughout centuries. He was a true polymath,  a person whose expertise spans a significant number of different subject areas. In his notebook diaries that he was keeping during his entir...