Above all, being creative means that you think! A. DEVELOP INTELLECTUAL HABITS

Being creative means looking for inspiration even in the most mundane places. This means that you ask simple questions, without criticizing.

Being creative is knowing how to find the similarities and differences between two completely random ideas. Foremost, being creative means thinking!

A. Develop intellectual habits.

Here are some intellectual habits to foster creativity in your life:

1. The imagination exercise: observing children in imaginative play reveals a source of natural creativity. When engaged, in pretend play, children embrace multiple perspectives and playfully manipulate emotions and ideas.

As an adult, cultivating a childlike sense of play can revolutionize the way we work. Hybrid forms of work and play can provide the most optimal context for learning and creativity, for both children and adults.

Play and intrinsic joy are intertwined, creating a synergy that naturally leads to greater inspiration, effort, and creative growth.

2. Passion: passion often stems from an experience or relationship that has moved us in some way and can be a source of inspiration. It's often emotional fuel that launches us down a creative path, but that's just the beginning.

People who achieve their long-term creative dreams balance their enthusiasm for the future with realistic strategies to get closer to their goals with the help of inspiration and hard work.

When someone advises you to « follow your passion, » be careful: besides being one of the most common clichés, it's not very helpful advice. You must seek a passion in harmony with your authentic « self » and compatible with your other activities.

The passion to prove yourself to others is unlikely to translate into creativity because it relies on you avoiding challenges that would otherwise lead to your growth.

So, while you should be open to what inspires you, don't blindly follow passion. Make sure it really resonates with you and your skills.

3. Daydream: creative people know, despite what their parents and teachers may have told them, that daydreaming is anything but a waste of time.

Reverie exposed that mind-wandering offers very personal rewards, including creative incubation, self-awareness, future planning, reflection on the meaning of one's experiences, and even compassion.

As idle as it may seem, the act of mind wandering is often anything but senseless. This can lead to improvements in creative thinking.

So, the next time you're hard at work on a creative project or task that requires intense focus, try taking a five-minute daydream break every hour.

Try engaging in a simple activity that will get your mind wandering, like walking, doodling, or cleaning, and see how it affects your ideas and the way you think.

4. Solitude: the symbolism « room of one's own » is a basic need for many creative people.

For example, the work habits of countless artists have demonstrated that solitary thinking time truly nurtures the creative spirit.

It is important to take time for solitude, to give yourself space to reflect, to establish new relationships and to find meaning.

Unfortunately, loneliness is vastly undervalued in society, leading many people to avoid spending time alone.

We tend to view alone time as wasted time or an indication of an antisocial or melancholy personality.

But the ability to appreciate and productively use our own companionship can stimulate creativity by helping us tap into our thoughts and our own inner world. So, don't avoid it, embrace it!

5. Intuition: intuition arises from unconscious or spontaneous information processing and plays an important role in how we think, reason, create and behave socially. Intuition is part of the cerebral system.

Thus, the brain system helps us assimilate new information into our existing knowledge structures and helps us recognize complex

patterns and make unconventional connections that lead to more original ideas and solutions.

This generation of creative ideas, along with a greater role in exploring and playing with these ideas, will determine their possible uses.

6. Open to experiment: the willingness to cognitively explore one's inner and outer worlds is the trait of a stronger, more coherent personality that predicts creative success.

This openness can be intellectual and characterized by a search for truth and a willingness to engage in ideas marked by a desire to explore fantasy and art and to experience this beauty emotionally or affectively, characterized by exploring the depths of human emotion.

So, whether you want to boost your creativity, try a new creative outlet or an entirely different medium, take a new route home from work, or seek out a new group of people with different interests or values that you could learn from.

Being open to new experiences can help increase your integrative complexity and ability to recognize new patterns and find connections between seemingly unrelated pieces of information.

7. Full consciousness: while the ability to observe the present moment without distraction or judgment is a vital skill for anyone seeking joy and fulfillment in life, it is especially important for creative thinkers.

Mindfulness as an activity and as a personality trait provides numerous cognitive and psychological benefits such as improved task concentration and sustained attention, empathy and compassion, introspection, self-regulation, memory improved and improved learning, as well as positive affect and emotional well-being. Many of them are central to creativity.

However, for optimal cognitive flexibility and creativity, it is best to achieve a balance between mindfulness and mind wandering.

Some forms of mindfulness can actually work against creativity.

More specifically, those encouraging the letting go of the thought in itself rather than accepting the thoughts more openly.

Interestingly, free meditation, which emphasizes listening to one's subjective experience, has been shown to increase both activation and functional connectivity of the imaginary network.

So, try practicing a non-directive form of meditation and allow the mind to wander constructively while stimulating attention.

8. Sensitivity: if we think of creativity as a way of « connecting the dots » in some way, then sensitive people, those with heightened sensitivity to their environment and also heightened sensory experience, such as sound, lighting and perfume, experience a world where there are both more points and more possibilities of connection.

Sensitivity can be both a blessing and a curse leading to greater intensity of experience as well as emotional overwhelm. So, rather than trying to toughen yourself up, you might want to harness your sensitivity through artistic expression.

9. Transform adversity into advantage: experiences of loss, struggle, pain, and defeat can be powerful catalysts for personal growth, creativity, and profound transformation.

It is often through suffering that we learn compassion, through loss that we learn to understand, and through overcoming struggles that we discover our strength and beauty.

Adverse events can force us to re-examine our beliefs and life plans, and therein lies their power and creative potential.

After experiencing adversity, the mind actively dismantles old belief systems that no longer hold and create new structures of meaning and identity.

To make sense of difficult experiences, try expressive writing, which research shows can alleviate symptoms of post-traumatic stress and depression, while improving certain cognitive functions, such as working memory, part of short-term memory, which concerns immediate conscious perceptual and linguistic processing.

Interestingly, overwhelmingly positive events, especially those that evoke feelings of admiration, wonder, inspiration, and connection to something bigger than yourself, can also encourage creativity.

Positive emotions strengthen a person's psychological resources, expand attention, inspire new thoughts and behaviors, and stimulate creative thinking.

So, if you're looking for a creative boost, look to all of life's significant moments, good and bad, as potential sources of inspiration and motivation.

10. Thinking otherwise: creative people are united by their reluctance to respect ways of thinking and conforming to decorum.

By choosing to do things differently, they accept the possibility of uncertainty and failure, but it is precisely this risk that opens up the possibility of true innovation.

The secret to creative greatness seems to be doing things differently, even when it means failing. Especially during the idea generation phases, trial and error is key to innovation.

Remember, the more ideas creators generate, the more likely they are to produce a masterpiece eventually.

Doing things differently means you'll likely do things wrong or make mistakes, so expect that and don't let caution get in the way of creativity.

Will following all these paths to creativity mean that you will become a creative genius?

Not necessarily. But, when the artist is alive in a person, whatever his type of work, he becomes an inventive, searching, daring and expressive creature.

If we learn to embrace our own messy, creative selves, we give other permission to do the same.

We help create a more welcoming world for the creative spirit and enable us to find a greater connection with others and with ourselves in the process.