 Creative
thinking can be stimulated by two things; intensely
desired goals and pressing problems. Your creative
capacities need something to home in on and your job is to provide it.
1. A Continual Stimulus For Ideas
Intensely desired goals, clearly defined with
detailed plans for their accomplishment act as a continual stimulus for ideas to
achieve them.
To trigger your imagination, write out a clear
description of your ideal end result or goal.
Be clear about the goal, be flexible about the process. Think about it,
visualize it as realized over and over. Project your mind forward to the
picture of the realized goal and then look back to the present.
3. Define Your Goals Clearly
Think on paper.
Make a plan and then work on the plan, updating it, changing it, adding to
it as you think of new ways to work toward the goal. The more clearly defined
and
keenly desired your goals, the more of your natural creativity will be
released for goal attainment.
4. The Proper Approach To
Problems
The second stimulant to creativity is
pressing problems. The key to idea generation when you face a problem is to
approach the problem confidently, expectantly, with the attitude that there
exists a logical, practical solution just waiting to be found.
The most creative people have a relaxed attitude of
confident expectancy that causes their minds to function in original and
imaginative ways.
5. Diagnose Your Problems
Accurately
Define your problems clearly in writing. Accurate
diagnosis is half the cure. Sometimes you will find that you are dealing with a
"cluster problem," one that is made up of several smaller problems. Your job is
to sort them out and then go to work on each one separately.
In many cluster problems, there is a core issue
surrounded by a lot of symptoms. Creative thinking requires that you separate
the core issue, and then focus on resolving that before worrying about the
smaller problems.
Action
Exercises
Here are two things you can do to stimulate your
creativity.
-
Be absolutely clear about
your goal. Write it down and make a plan to achieve it. Think of
different ways you could accomplish it.
-
Define your problems clearly and then make a
list of
all the possible solutions to your problem.
Take action on at least one idea immediately.
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