The widespread perception is that creativity is a characteristic of virtuous individuals, who have it from birth and which cannot be learned.
This is not true. Indeed, there are people who are born with features compatible with creative thinking more than others, in the absence of an environment that supports creativity, they might be less creative than people not born with this trait but who grew up in an environment that develops creative thinking, an environment where there are many stimuli for all senses.
One of the things that supports creative thinking is mental flexibility. The thing about mental flexibility is that those responsible for it, among others, are the parents.
When the parents give room to the children's negative feelings, including Sadness, anger, fear, without being angry with the child, rejecting him or making him feel guilty, the child feels more secure with feelings and can experience them in a calm enough way to allow him to control them when the situation asks him to.
When the child is denied the opportunity to feel safe when he experiences negative emotions, what happens to him is that he begins to ignore them and does not give them enough room in his life, and this creates within him mental rigidity and difficulty to be more flexible with other people, understanding them and changing perspective and point of view.
Mental flexibility is important because creativity requires the ability to adapt to new situations, to step into the shoes of others, with empathy, and as a result new and additional perspectives beyond the natural stands.
Mental flexibility allows branching thinking in which many solutions are given to one problem, while when flexibility is absent the number of solutions is limited.
The good news is that this is a trait that can be developed and worked on in all kinds of ways, starting with experimenting with new situations and sown to working on the physical flexibility of the body.
All creativity begins with imagination. Imagination is a trait that characterizes all human beings. Imagination involves a thought process in which things come to mind that are not perceived by the senses, the ability to experience the past, plan the future and mentally recognize structures and things that do not exist in reality.
When a person uses imagination and comes up with creative ideas without putting them into practice, this remains as a thought only. Creativity is the way in which thought becomes an initiating thought that develops the initial idea that arises in the imagination and adapts itself to the conditions that exist in reality itself according to the needs that arise, for resources and an environment.
Innovation is the part where creative development is implemented in practice into something tangible that can be used in the real world.
One of the things necessary for the creative process is risk-taking, the ability to deal with failure and discouragement, the ability to break conventions and do something new that we were not prepared for.
Doing that requires courage, self-confidence and flexibility.
These too are features that can be perfected and developed.
The creative process does not happen just like that in every field. Most creative people create within their specific field of expertise, where they have a lot of knowledge and practice.
Creativity is expressed in its best form when expressed in the areas of strength.
It is common to think that creativity is associated only with arts such as painting, design and poetry, but this belief is wrong.
In fact, creative thinking exists in every field of expertise of any kind, for example: Mathematics, engineering, management, medicine, teaching, sales and more...
Creativity is expressed in the area of expertise of the creative person.
One of the most important things in the creative process is the input of information at the visual (seeing) auditory (hearing), kinesthetic (feeling) and sensory (senses) levels.
In order for the brain to have a source to draw ideas from and bring them up in imagination, it is important that it be full of knowledge.
The process itself is done in the realm of the unconscious while dealing with daily activities without thinking about things.
The unconscious creates the new connections and contexts, connects all kinds of ideas and things that we do not previously recognize as connectible and which connection yields a new and original thing.
However, many times there is an inner resistance arising from emotional motives, and difficulty of the mind to come up with things during the creative process. There is something in the process itself that connects us to mental places from childhood that ask for attention and healing and the unconscious does not always cooperates due to the need to protect.
Furthermore, the creative process clears the mind of all irrelevant information to allow new information to be created in the brain. This clearing process is often manifested as depression or a period during which creativity is completely absent, as if the mind is empty of ideas.
As soon as one realizes that this is okay and a natural part of the creative process itself, he can let go and understand that the brain is currently in the process of simmering or incubating the idea, so the very release of pressure allows things to form in a faster and more efficient way.
When the break feels too big, there are all kinds of ways to help it break free, which one of them is to create the difficulty. The difficulty can be drawn, sang, danced, spoken, expressed in any possible way, while this in itself brings great relief.
In conclusion, in order to encourage the creative process it is important to develop mental and physical flexibility, to learn quality information that interests you and concerns your areas of enthusiasm and interest, to take risks, develop your ideas into something that can be implemented in reality, forgive yourself when you feel uncreative and discouraged, be optimistic and trust the unconscious to do the work without you, even while you’re doing your daily chores.