Unleash Your Creativity to Change Your Life

If you want to change your life, learn how to unleash your creativity.  So says Dan Perini,  author of Rhyming with Orange:  A Workbook for Unleashing Your Creative Potential to Change Your Life and World.

Perini is also the world’s first professor of creativity at Cornerstone University in Grand Rapids, Michigan (one of my alma maters).

So how does creativity help you change your life?  Perini says “Creativity teaches you how to think. So when you come across any problem, you know how to solve it.”

And in today’s world, with a million choices and voices around us, people need to know how to think, choose for themselves, solve problems, and create opportunities.  The more creative we are, the better we’re able to handle those situations, according to Perini.

How do you become a creative person when you feel as though you do not have a creative bone in your body? How do you generate ideas when you cannot come up with a single one? How do you resist fear, perfectionism, and self-doubt to complete a creative endeavor?

Rhyming with Orange answers those questions and more in this easy-to-read, interactive book that will encourage you to develop dozens of creative habits leading to countless creative endeavors that will change your life and the world.

Tips on How to Boost Your Creativity

Here are some tips to help you unleash your creativity, from Dan Perini’s book, Rhyming with Orange:

1. Capture all your ideas – Keep an idea notebook, or use your computer to make a list of all your ideas.  Otherwise, you’ll lose them forever.  Then review your list from time to time and decide which ones you might want to act on. (This is idea notebook or list is similar to my master dream list.)
2. Slay your time vampires – Time slips away so quickly if we don’t stay on top of it.  Identify the things that steal your time, and eliminate them.
3. Learn the habits of other creative people and imitate them – You don’t have to become a clone of someone else, but we can learn a lot from other successful and creative people, and adapt some of their habits for our use.
4. Design your environment to inspire you to do extraordinary things. Set up your work space or home with things that will inspire you to be creative.  You might include fun stuff like Play-Doh, Lego, Dr. Suess books, lava lamps, paper and colored pencils or crayons, etc.
5. Allow yourself to be messy. Many times, we don’t get started on a project because we want it to be perfect…and so we end up never starting at all.  So don’t worry how pretty things look at the beginning. Just get started, and you can make changes, edit, or clean it up later.
6. Plan time to be creative.  Make an appointment with yourself every day to think of new ideas or solutions to problems.
7. Figure out your “idea-friendly time” – When are you the most creative?  When is your mind the most open to new ideas?  For some, it is morning.  For others, it might be late at night.  And of course, for others, it is sometime in between!
8. Create your failure resume – Make a list of all the things you’ve tried that didn’t work. Why focus on your failures?  Because if we don’t think about and analyze our failures, we can’t fully learn from them.  And, by identifying the things that don’t work, we often discover more new ways of doing things.

I used to think I was not a creative person because I’m not a musician or artist.  But over the years, I’ve become a writer (which requires creativity) and I’ve gained a greater appreciation for art and music. I really want to unleash the creativity in my life and in the lives of my children, to help equip them to handle any situation they face in life and achieve their goals and dreams.

What about you?  Are you a creative person?  Do you see the value of unleashing your creativity to help you change your life and world?

Recommended Reading:

• The connection between creativity and personal development
• How to reach your full potential
• 9 reasons why you’ll never achieve your dreams