How to Be a "Creative Thinker"
Here are some tips to be followed to help you to be a creative plus a deep thinker and to discover the most mysterious organ of the body "the brain"!
Focus on something:
Concentrate all your thoughts on the task at hand.
"The sun's rays do not burn until brought to a focus."
- Alexander Graham Bell
Take your time: Or thoughts may take years to produce something worthwhile.
Do not think under pressure: People, who claim to work well under pressure produce solutions, grind out work, meet deadlines, but they don't necessarily create great thought. Doing and thinking don't happen at the same time.
Be ready for the opposition: A great thought will have enemies, at least opponents. Without opposition, the thinker cannot fully explore the weaknesses and potential consequences of his thought. A person who cannot withstand opposition to his thought is not totally committed to it.
Do not despair when a thought is rejected: Truly great thoughts often take longer to be fully appreciated than the thinker has years to live. The thought, the great thought, becomes the legacy of the thinker.
Thought lives on when facts have become history.
Tap your emotions and trust your instincts:
Our unconscious thoughts are like a trained autopilot. Based on their conclusions, the brain generates emotions. So don’t disregard that subtle feeling telling you to avoid the salmon special. Your personal supercomputer is trying to tell you something.
Consider alternative points of view. Professional poker players often use a simple trick when they suspect another player of bluffing: They think about how the player would act if he or she weren’t bluffing. The brain naturally filters the world to confirm what it already believes (which is why conservatives watch Fox News and liberals watch MSNBC). But this habit is limiting and dangerous; you could be fixating on the wrong answers.
Challenge your preferences: Like presumptive beliefs (see the above tip), your supposed likes and dislikes can limit your mind. I used to be a bit of an expensive-clothes snob. But then I did a test of clothes from different price ranges and discovered what scientists have since confirmed: There is no correlation between the price of a dress and how much it looks wonderful on you! By figuring out what you truly like-be it cheap clothes or fancy shoes- you can enjoy life, not to mention spend more wisely.
Take long showers: Studies show that moments of insight often arrive when you’re not aware that you’re thinking of the problem, such as during a warm shower or a long stroll. This is because insights are typically generated by a rush of high-frequency gamma-band neural activity in the brain’s right hemisphere, and a mind is better able to tune in to that hemisphere when it is stress-free.
Be prepared for ideas: Always keep a notebook with you just in case. Sometimes you will be just out somewhere and all of a sudden, a beautiful, profound idea will enter your thoughts in a split second. Jot the idea down. Even writing down a few key words will help you remember the main point of the idea. By combining these ideas together you will get a coherent piece of work.
Do something everyday: Do something everyday even if you think it is junk. Most of what I write starts off as junk, and then it becomes piles of junk. After moving the junk around to the right places and polishing it up a bit, the end product becomes a beautiful piece of junk. For example, learn a new word every day. Look at dictionary.com's "Word of the Day." Use the word several times during the day.
Appreciate the smallest things in life: All the things around us in the world have a certain significance to them that can add to our creativity. A small pebble that is rolled down an icy hill can accumulate into a giant snowball towards the end.
Do not be afraid: This fear can come from not being able to think of anything new and different. It can be from not knowing if others will like your work or from comparing your work to those of better people or from starting from scratch and not knowing how to start. All of these fears can stop us from taking action and destroy our confidence. But if you're always going to run away from your fears, nothing creative is ever going to come out of you.
Just have fun: Let go. Creativity is best expressed when you're free.. Also, creativity is supposed to be the farthest thing from the word, labor! Then you'll realize that the happier you are doing your work, the more ideas will come to you, and the better creative thinker you'll be, all without losing your mind.
Observe and ask questions: Watch the way in which others perform. Ask others how they solve problems. Approach from a different angle: Think of potential solutions as if you were a child. Do logic puzzles: Try crosswords, word finds or sudoku. These are free online. Understand something new: Watch movies, read or look at pieces of art in genres or styles that would normally be of no interest. Read more about them. Force yourself to approach problems in different ways: Perform tasks with your left hand that you would normally do with your right. This forms new neural pathways and diversifies your reasoning capacity. Do not set limits: Look at the absurd. The answer may go against convention. me up with the answer: Acknowledge the problem, then relax and do something else. Thoughts may eventually have some bearing on the solution. Master the technique: Perform a new technique until it is second nature.
Prepared By: Maha Ali
