Make your own creative dream world

Creativity, as one of the most complex cognitive functions, cannot be unambiguously defined or fully explored. Experts study it as a skill, ie human quality that is related to the individual abilities of an individual, and whose main feature is the production of something new, original and potentially useful to a larger number of people.

Creativity as a skill

Many people find that they have very limited creative abilities. Creativity can be described as innovative thinking that manifests itself through the creation of new ideas or new connections between existing ideas to create something new. However, experts emphasize that creativity is a skill that can be encouraged and improved over time. For this to happen, certain ventures must be undertaken that are too much for many.

Creativity requires changing your usual routine, stepping out of your comfort zone, and paying attention to the present moment. People often forget that after learning some new information, they need to allow the brain time to rest and distract from that content so that it can create new connections between them on its own and come up with something new.

Creativity is also related to an individual's personality traits, his way of thinking and strategies of self-regulation. But it evolves over time, and it requires effort and concrete steps in practice. The great cellist Pablo Casals continued to practice playing his instrument intensively in his 80s, and when asked in an interview why, he said he believed he was getting better. While this can be interpreted as a joke, there is a lot of truth.

How to develop creativity?

You wouldn’t believe it, but creativity is something that can be encouraged in both children and adults in several universal ways. How?

Game - set problems and find a solution

Studies that have tried to find out how much creativity is present in childhood and how it can be defined have found that imagination in children’s play is related to their creative thinking not only at that age, but predicts creative thinking for ten years ahead.

Adults can also play and do so in their work. Experts believe that the process of finding problems is the most important aspect of creativity. Namely, creativity is considered to come from insufficiently structured open problems that can be approached in a multitude of ways. Exploring all possible ways may seem like a waste of time in our productivity-obsessed culture that wants to capture every moment of our day, but if you want to be creative, give yourself time to play with the possibilities.

Change the perspectives from which you look at things around you

Psychologists have been developing tests of creative thinking for more than 70 years. Such tests generally ask people to think about as many answers as possible to an open-ended question, such as the use of a can, or what would happen if people became invisible when they wanted to. When the respondents are explained the instructions for solving, ie that it is necessary to find as many creative answers as possible, people tend to ask for and give as many creative answers as possible. This is also possible in everyday life.

When you find yourself in a life problem, try to approach it creatively and you will change the perspective of looking at the problem itself. To be more creative, challenge yourself to be more creative. There is another way, and that is to imagine that you are someone else or to imagine that you are in another time.

One scientific study was based on a group of students describing what they would do if school were canceled one day, and another group of students had to present themselves in the same situation, but as seven-year-olds. After taking their perspectives, participants were more original on the creative thinking test, and that perspective especially helped those who were more introverted and less spontaneous in everyday life.

Therefore, role-playing is encouraged in children's play from an early age, ie children often like to play "mom and dad" or simply imagine that they are actually in the role of their parents. You would not believe how much your children can tell you through such games and how much more open and honest they are with their feelings than when you ask them such things directly.

Dare to create something new

Creativity requires risk. The good news is that creative individuals are by nature quite fearless or prone to accepting risks. This is more appropriately described in theory as tolerating risk or embarrassing ambiguity that occurs when participating in open problems.

Remember that creativity is gradual, not sudden. People are gradually approaching solutions, and creative work is filled with hard work, doubts, risk, hesitation, and uncertainty. Big things don’t happen overnight. Give yourself time!