How do you develop creative thinking?

-

Our job in this life is not to shape ourselves into some ideal we imagine we should be, but to find out who we truly are and to become it. That's one of the reasons why developing creative thinking skills is so important! These days, it's easier than ever to prevent your authentic self from being discovered. 

It’s CRUCIAL to develop creative thinking. I like to talk about life. In my opinion, we should take ownership of our lives and allow ourselves to be authentic. It's a blessing to be able to express ourselves fully with no regrets! Expressing ourselves means that we allow ourselves to get those creative juices flowing, right? That's why I think it is important to take the time to develop creative thinking. "But how, Wesley? How do I develop these amazing creative thinking skills?" Well, I think a great place to start, is to start asking “why”. 

Ask "why"

To develop creative thinking, asking the right questions is crucial. That's why, I believe you need to start with “why”! Some of you already have seen my video on the 1 problem-solving skill you will ever need, where I talk about asking the "right" questions. If you haven’t seen it yet, make sure you do. In this blog post I want to emphasize the importance of asking “why”. 

Asking "why" makes you able to see all the different sides of a situation. I don't know if you are familiar with the "5-why" principle? Children are doing this all the time! They just keep asking "why" but we, as being adults, can actually do the same thing! In business this is a highly valued principle because it helps you to get to the root cause of a certain problem or situation. It’s called “root-cause-analysis". As some of you know, I work in IT and root-cause-analysis is standard procedure. You should try it in your personal life as well. 

Asking "why" 5 times really puts your brain to work, and trust me, you will need to be pretty creative to answer all the 5 "why's". That's why this is a great exercise to help you develop creative thinking. It’s simple, but not easy. Start with a problem and ask why it occurs. Make sure that your answer is grounded and then ask it again. Continue doing this until you reach the root cause of the problem or situation. This is golden, ladies and gentlemen. 

Get in AND out of your comfort zone

The 2nd thing you could practice (and this might be something you’ve never heard of), is to get IN and OUT of your comfort zone on a regular base. I’m pretty sure that you’ve heard that you should go out of your comfort zone in order to grow and bla, bla bla. I must admit that I’m not a big fan of the comfort zone. I believe that it’s probably our biggest trap, and coming out of our comfort zone can be our biggest challenge. BUT, we can also USE our comfort zone to develop creative thinking and you might think now: “Wesley, what on EARTH’s name are you saying right now?”. Well, hear me out, okay? If you don't have a few minutes to hear me out, just go watch a cute cat video on YouTube! If you can't take the time and be disciplined enough to read this, then this is probably the reason why the comfort zone is still your favorite happy place... Which leads you to being unable to develop yourself like you really want to. So... that being said, hear me out :-) 

We gain new experiences by stepping out of our comfort zones, right? This can boost creativity and creative thinking, because: 

  • we learn something  
  • do something new that expands our perspective & provides new insights
  • it makes us think differently. 

But afterwards, I believe it’s good to get back IN your comfort zone to think about what happened. Journal about what you’ve learned or start a YouTube channel like me to share what’s helped you along your journey. Bottom line, start documenting stuff, writing things down. Talking about writing things down, a writer is a great example of explaining my point. Good writers are creative, right? They do research, go to places and interview people. They experience new things, and then they go back to their “happy place” (their comfort zone) to write it all down! They get creative like that :-). That’s why I believe that getting in and out of your comfort zone is a great way to develop creative thinking. 

Create DAILY

So, the third and last point I want to talk about in this video, is to create every single day. What better way is there to boost your creative thinking skills than creating daily? When you want to lose weight or become more fit, you also have to commit to it every single day. This works the same with developing creative thinking and I’m not telling you to change the world every day! I might be a complex individual, but I love simplicity. Doing a certain thing on a daily base will improve you significantly in that area. When you engage your creativity every day, it becomes easier, even if you thought you weren’t creative. Everything I mentioned in this blog post are things everyone can develop! Creativity matters, people. What would the world be without it? I think pretty boring! But ok. See you in the next one. Have a great day. Peace out!



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

That 1 Individual That Changed My Way Of Thinking And Training (and from MANY others)

-
Image
I remember that a year ago, one night I was just scrolling on YouTube, trying to find ways to work out as the gyms were closed because of the pandemic. I came across a channel from a U.S. marine called the Iron Wolf  and this man has changed my life.  I saw him doing insane amounts of push-ups, pull-ups military style burpees and other body weight exercises in his videos which literally blew my mind. Over a 1000 burpees or push-ups is very common for him. Rest is extremely limited to none and the tempo is very high. I seriously did not know that one could be capable of this - and it got me. But let us first talk about who is the Iron Wolf . Who is the Iron Wolf? "My name is Arthur Schwartz Berg and I'm a Russian immigrant. I came to the United States when I was 7 years old. My parents moved to Brooklyn New York after the fall of the Soviet Union, because like all immigrants they want to make a better life for themselves.  So, we came to Brooklyn New York and that's kind of
Read more

Da Vinci's Daily Routine: What Can We Learn?

-
Image
Leonardo da Vinci had a bizarre routine, but what can we learn from it? For the ones who don't know who Leonardo da Vinci is, he was a painter with master pieces like the Mona Lisa, he was an architect, inventor, a student of all kinds of scientific things and born on April 15 in the year 1452.  Every day he painted, created, invented, built and designed. There's so much to tell about this man, but today I want to zoom in on his daily routine. Sleep Routine So let's start with his sleep routine which was quite bizarre. It's said that he used a polyphasic sleep routine, which means he took short naps throughout the day instead of sleeping all night. Leonardo decided that he spent too much time on sleep and invented his own sleeping routine. Most of us are monophasic sleepers, which means sleeping several hours at a time. In Da Vinci's routine, he slept for 15 to 20 minutes every 4 hours of the day. This is quite extreme, because it comes down to a total of 2 hours ev
Read more

Taking it SLOW in a FAST-PACED society

-
Image
For a long time I lived my life as if I was in a constant hurry. I always had the feeling that I never had enough time. Quite funny, because I already had that feeling BEFORE I had children. Now that I do have children, I have a greater understanding of this feeling than EVER before! At this point in my life I realize that I had PLENTY of time before, but I just never saw that.  Not anymore experiencing pleasure At this point in my life I have my full-time job as a WMS support engineer (WMS stands for Warehouse Management System), I have a family to take care of and 4 pets (which includes 2 dogs and 2 cats), I have several hobbies like creating YouTube videos and playing video games (yes, I'm back at it every once in a while) and I exercise regularly (and with regularly I mean around 4-6 times a week), doing high repetition calisthenic exercises only, like for example military style burpees, push-ups and squats and several ab exercises. However, I realized something very recently. 
Read more