Practicing THIS Is Vital To Your Success. Here Are Five Reasons Why.

Let's get one thing straight: creativity is not reserved solely for artists.  Everybody has some degree of creativity.  Sure, artists are bound to exercise creativity more often than others, but that doesn't mean they are the only ones who can do so.

Creativity is a mental muscle like our physical muscles.  When we exercise, it helps us get stronger.  When we neglect it, it experiences atrophy.  It's that simple.

There are countless instances where we exercise creativity without realizing it.  Rewriting sentences, rearranging the living room, and delivering more compelling presentations harness creativity to transform things from good to great.

Therefore, it’s up to us to find ways to recognize and use creativity more often. As this article explores, creativity doesn’t need to be flamboyant or awe-inspiring.  Little changes in our lives are valid applications of creativity.

Top Five Reasons

Here are the top five reasons why everybody should exercise creativity regularly, regardless of their gifts, skill sets, and professions:

1 – It Serves As Our Mental Gym

We all have thoughts and ideas that occupy our heads. The most important ideas will motivate us to make them a reality.

When we want to be in shape, we don't just wish for fitness. We get up, exercise, push ourselves, and rest.  Then, repeat with variations of exercises until we gradually see results.

Creativity is the mental equivalent of the physical gym. We must practice repeatedly to strengthen our creative muscles and abilities until we improve.  It’s unreasonable to believe that one creative session is enough to conjure, build, and polish our ideas.

When we devise new, innovative solutions, it is easier to do so when we have done the work ahead of time.

2 – Builds A Bank of Ideas

Music and the arts are not the only outputs for creativity.  Ideas are the easiest way to express our thoughts with unique twists and vantage points.

The beauty of creativity lies in its near-limitless potential.  However, we cannot generate millions of ideas and expect to remember them all.  This is where documentation becomes essential.

Depending on our skills and preferences, we can document our ideas on a notepad, digital notebook, or even an Excel spreadsheet. Our goal should not be to find the absolute best method but to find “a” method that works for us.

Begin by documenting one idea, then another, and continue this process. Soon, we will have built a bank of ideas to be stored, discarded, or continued.

Best of all, our bank of ideas can be combined to create unique twists.  Combination is the most common form of creativity.  Our ideas are ingredients in the stew pot; mixing them in the right proportions may yield flavorful results.

3 – Creativity Requires The Compound Effect

It's easy to believe that creativity automatically generates elegant solutions. However, extraordinary results emerge from years of hard work, refining, and determining what works for our target audience.

In Ed Catmull's book Creativity Inc., the high-level executive of Pixar admits that everything conceived starts as an ugly baby. In other words, the initial idea must be workshopped repeatedly until it becomes presentable.

Famous Pixar characters weren’t created in a day. Buzz Lightyear, Dash, and other beloved characters required new iterations and updates to become what we saw on the screen.  While it may seem odd to those who only see the results, the process is great news because it shows anyone can do it.

Our best ideas are unlikely to be the ones we initially jot down. Sure, they have potential, but they’re unlikely to be presentable. However, that's okay, as harnessing our creative juices to produce remarkable results requires time and effort.

In the beginning, aspiring creatives should have only one goal: practice.

Practice generating, refining, and grasping what the audience seeks from our ideas.  This process strengthens our creative muscles.  Once we clear the clutter from the attic, genuine ideas with tremendous potential will emerge.

4 – Recognize Your Own Creative Patterns / Biases

Despite our preconceived notions and perceptions of creativity, everyone has unique patterns and biases regarding how it works. In other words, pure, abstract creativity does not exist because all the dots are uniquely connected.

As a result, when we consider some of our favorite artists, we acknowledge that they each have unique creative methods. No single creative method is inherently better than another; everyone has their own approaches to what suits their style.

Analyzing our creativity biases makes it easier to identify our creative affinities.  As an example, I enjoy producing instrumental shorts that feature stingers at the end.  In other words, I repeat the final note of the passage after a rest, but in a different octave.  

Just because we recognize patterns in our creativity doesn't mean we are less creative. What’s important is that we realize how we approach creativity by the end of the day.  This awareness allows us to own our creativity, enabling us to challenge it later and explore new ways to be creative.

5 – Creativity Generates Happiness

This is one of the most critical points that is often overlooked.  Many underutilize their creativity because they believe it’s too big for them, which can lead to feeling stifled.

The purpose of being creative shouldn't be to indulge in an endless splurge all the time. Instead, it should focus on sharing ideas with our audience at a reasonable level. Once we achieve that level, we often experience greater satisfaction in our creativity than if we were to keep everything bottled up in our minds.

After a good workout, we experience the release of endorphins, which make us feel good about the hard work and pain endured in the gym. Similarly, mental workouts reward us when we devote our minds to bringing a project to life instead of binge-watching Netflix.

One final note: our intentions are just as important as our results. Engaging in creativity to become rich and famous may lead to failure and feelings of suffering.  However, if we pursue creativity to exercise our minds and explore our potential, we can discover many rewards, such as clarity, peace of mind, and new skills and abilities.

Build That Creative Muscle

The creative muscle lies within us.  Some may require a little dusting off to get back into creative shape.  The road might be much longer for others, but it is worth it.  The good news is that we all possess that initial potential.

When we were younger, our curiosity ran wild.  However, as we grew up, our creativity became stifled as we conformed to societal standards dictated by our teachers and employers.  Other events in life have further buried our creativity underneath layers of our minds.

The good news is that we all can dig ourselves out, and no one is unredeemable.  It all begins with a single step in the right direction.  Steps become yards, yards become miles, and miles become light years.  However, it is up to us to decide to go on that journey.  As we journey further, we will enjoy creative victories, big and small.

What are some ways you're going to explore your creativity? Share an idea below.