We hear numerous speak about creativity—however what is creativity, and why do we wish it? Although some individuals could dismiss creativity as one thing that issues solely artists, many facets of on a regular basis life enable us to make use of our creativity.

What’s creativity?

Creativity is the power to generate new, authentic concepts. It permits us to identify contemporary options to issues, assume exterior the field, think about new potentialities, and dream up new tales and new experiences to share.

Being artistic means residing in an environment of progress, which is without doubt one of the key parts of a cheerful life. We’re happier once we’re rising.

Individuals who train their creativity are usually extra productive, extra energetic, extra modern—and creativity makes us happier.

After all, artistic work may additionally result in emotions of frustration, insecurity, and discouragement! Being artistic typically means struggling to grasp new instruments, attempting and failing to realize an thought, and receiving criticism.

However the truth is, happiness doesn’t at all times make us really feel glad, and even when it’s not at all times simple, expressing our creativity is tremendously satisfying.

Why ought to we attempt to enhance our creativity?

We would need to enhance our creativity higher to have the ability to create one thing of curiosity, resembling…

• Writing a household vacation publication
• Designing our bodily self-presentation: outfits, tattoos, hair, make-up
• Selecting a fantasy-football workforce
• Throwing a celebration
• Dreaming up a brand new advertising and marketing technique
• Discovering a brand new strategy to interact a pupil, consumer, or buyer who’s shedding curiosity

Or we would need to enhance our creativity higher to have the ability to resolve an issue in an modern means, resembling…

• Determining how one can arrange all of the stuff that’s saved within the storage
• Re-thinking how one can schedule workforce conferences when some persons are working remotely whereas others are bodily current
• Planning the right household journey
• Settling a disagreement between two co-workers in a means that satisfies each of them
• Recognizing an effectivity that saves time and cash

As a result of creativity is so useful, we need to feed our creativity—however how?

If we’re searching for methods to spice up our creativity, right here’s one secret: Faucet in to our 5 senses.

Once I began work on my ebook Life in 5 Senses, I hoped that by tuning in to my 5 senses, I’d discover a new supply of power, love, luck, mindfulness—and creativity.

However I used to be unprepared for simply how sparked my creativity would get! I discovered that once I paid higher consideration to seeing, listening to, smelling, tasting, and touching, I ignited my creativeness and my need to create.

As Yoshida Kenkō wrote, “If we choose up a brush, we really feel like writing; if we maintain a musical instrument in our fingers, we want to play.”

By making direct contact with the world, as an alternative of staying caught in our heads or behind a display screen, we enhance our creativity. We attain the thoughts via the physique.

Why do vivid sensory experiences enhance creativity?

• They supply the mind with fodder for brand new concepts and connections that spark the creativeness
• They assist us feeling grounded within the current second, and so they additionally fire up previous recollections from the previous
• They ignite surprising associations that contribute to contemporary pondering
• They enhance our power and assist us to really feel refreshed, which then helps us to focus and work

How can we enhance creativity via our 5 senses?

• By utilizing partaking instruments
• By doing one thing novel, resembling happening an journey to a brand new place
• By having fun with a very intense sensory expertise
• By intentionally evoking recollections

How may we tie these methods to the 5 senses?

Luckily, it’s simple to spice up our creativity via our 5 senses with out spending numerous time, power, or cash.

We’ve all heard the same old solutions: pay shut consideration to your breath; relish a single sip of espresso; discover the colours of the sky. These are useful—however a bit acquainted. Take into account these:

Seeing

1. Create the sight environment that fireplace your creativeness—I would like order, area and room to work, however different individuals favor a profusion of piles, toys, and instruments
2. Use a colour printer as an alternative of black and white
3. Put a plant in your desk
4. Go exterior, and as you stroll across the neighborhood, go searching with the eyes of a vacationer. The daylight itself will make it easier to really feel extra alert and centered, and adopting the attitude of a vacationer will make it easier to see strange sights in a brand new means. Take a look at the bumper stickers on that automobile! Why is that canine carrying all these garments?
5. Go to a film in the course of the day
6. Wander round a museum, ebook retailer, division retailer, or huge drug retailer—pay shut consideration to belongings you normally overlook
7. Sit someplace with numerous foot site visitors, and pay shut consideration to the individuals as they stroll by—how do they act, how do they gown, how do they work together?
8. Shut your eyes, select a room out of your childhood house, and attempt to visualize it with as a lot element as doable

Listening to

9. Create the sound environment that fireplace your creativeness. Do you’re employed greatest with sounds of music, silence, or the busy hum of a espresso store?
10. Hearken to a style of music you’ve by no means listened to earlier than
11. Go to the Nostalgia Machine and take heed to a tune from the yr you graduated from highschool—what recollections does it evoke?
12. Flip off your smartphone notifications so your focus isn’t damaged by pings

Smelling

13. Determine a odor that you simply affiliate with creativity and convey it into your setting. For me, the smells of an previous paperback ebook, college paste, or a contemporary pack of printer paper make me really feel like writing.
14. In case you really feel caught, take a second and tune in to a robust odor resembling espresso, peanut butter, or Sharpies, or perhaps a dangerous odor, like rubbish or a uncared for fridge—a robust sensation will make it easier to really feel grounded in your physique
15. Go to a spot with a robust odor setting—a bakery, a restaurant, a bath-products store—and attempt to establish the totally different parts of the smells round you
16. Take a deep sniff of one thing that holds robust recollections. The odor of contemporary asphalt jogs my memory of highschool (from a summer time job), the odor of Tea Rose fragrance jogs my memory of faculty, the odor of child powder jogs my memory of my husband. Robust recollections hearth up associations that spark creativity.

Tasting

17. Recognize the style of a single almond, one olive, or one mouthful of apple. Actually discover the style, the feel, the mouthfeel
18. Strive a dish that you simply’ve by no means eaten earlier than; new experiences spark new associations
19. Invent a brand new sort of sandwich, pizza topping, or ice-cream taste
20. Eat together with your non-dominant hand—the additional effort will make it easier to take note of the bodily expertise and in addition shake up your ideas
21. Purchase your self a deal with that you simply at all times needed as a toddler however have been not often in a position to have—I used to be not often allowed to have delicate drinks
22. Style one thing that holds robust recollections. For me, Food plan Peach Snapple brings again floods of recollections from regulation college. These associations carry contemporary concepts.

Touching

23. Placing fascinating instruments in our fingers typically sparks our creativity—splurge on a instrument that can immediate you to play and experiment. I just lately received a gimbal for my smartphone and have been instructing myself to make use of it. So many potentialities!
24. Put up a whiteboard so you possibly can sketch your concepts as an alternative of typing them. My sister Elizabeth Craft is a Hollywood show-runner, and he or she retains an eight-foot whiteboard in her house workplace
25. Use a unique fashion of notepad
26. Use felt-tip pens in stunning colours as an alternative of the same old, boring black and blue
27. Preserve a fidget spinner, pop toy, remedy dough, or different contact instrument close by. Once you’re caught, exercise together with your fingers will help focus and stimulate your thoughts.
28. Go to an art-supply or office-supply retailer, craft retailer, ironmongery shop, gardening middle, cooking retailer, farmers market—anyplace the place you’ll see a lot of supplies and gear. Don’t fear about utilizing something; simply wander
29. Take a bathe
30. In a glass jar, gather all of the little toys, gimcracks, and goofy trinkets you possibly can spherical up. Once you want inspiration, dump out the objects and put them again within the jar, one after the other

Additionally, keep in mind that every of us is totally different. Pay shut consideration to what sort of sensory experiences spark your creativity.

For my ebook Life in 5 Senses, I made a decision to go to the Metropolitan Museum on daily basis for a yr—and I nonetheless haven’t stopped. This day by day behavior is ideal for me. It’s each structured and unstructured; it’s predictable but at all times novel; it will get me up on my ft and strolling (strolling can also be nice for creativity); it places me in an setting that’s vivid, intense, and sparks surprising associations.

The Met overwhelms my sense of sight, after all, but it surely additionally stimulates my senses of listening to, smelling, and touching, and once I cease for a cup of espresso, my sense of tasting as properly.

For me, visiting the Met boosts creativity. For another person, nevertheless, music could be a richer supply of creativity. Studying to play a brand new instrument, playing around with a harmonica, listening to new music or feeling nostalgic from music from the previous…these workout routines don’t enchantment to me, however others discover them enormously suggestive.