Business Corner

Don’t feel you have a creative bone in your body? Even full time artists have their moments. Don’t paint yourself into a corner just paint yourself into a creative mindset. Creativity is a big part of everyday life. It’s just different for many situations. You may have this revelation planning a dinner party to impress someone important. A rather large creative leap could be needed to get the results you want.

What does it take to move the creativity required to produce an artwork for instance into a business workplace situation? You don’t need to be an artist to know we are all inherently creative. Imagine having the ability to think squarely on the feet as an abstracted painting emerges from a blank canvas. It is like nothing else you will try in your lifetime and very rewarding. Its the same process we use in all problem solving and involves mastering techniques and rules to the point that a higher level of functioning allows you to safely and creatively change them to suit the purpose.

How do you tap into this higher level? It is simple if you can accept the premise that the brain is working on four levels of consciousness, with the conscious mind being the here and now we experience all the time. The level below is the subconscious where memory is stored and below that the unconscious mind operates and runs the body at a cellular level. It is the top level, the super conscious mind, that allows creativity to happen at the highest level. Working from here is about having the awareness to trust the mind to give you answers, to wait on them being forthcoming as you ask focused questions.  Read more... (513 words, estimated 2:03 mins reading time)

As content creators, we are faced with the constant challenge to create on demand. Let’s face it, we all have days that we don’t want to get out of bed, let alone create the newest marketing masterpiece for an important campaign. Here are 5 tips to keep you from creative burnout.

(1) CHANGE UP YOUR ROUTINE

We are all creatures of habit. We drive to work the same way everyday, we park in the same area of the parking lot, we order the same item on the menu, we listen to the same music. Like it or not, our humanistic side craves stability and frequency as much as it craves creative expression. You need to interrupt your stagnant pattern. You need to try to do something different. Try to drive to work a different way. Listen to music you would not normally listen to. Change the channel to something you have never seen. It will give you a new perspective.

(2) CHANGE YOUR SURROUNDINGS

Move your desk. Change the decor where you work. Add a plant, change your chair. Take your laptop to your local coffee-house and work for the day. Work at the kitchen table for a change. I like to work on the back patio or in the garage from time to time. Just try a change of surroundings, you will be impressed how effective it can be.

(3) TAKE A FIELD TRIP

If you are feeling bogged down creatively, go somewhere where you can have some new creative stimuli. Try a museum. Go window shopping at a mall you don’t normally frequent. Get out in nature and just be there experience it. Go to the park and just walk around. Forget about work for a couple of hours and I like to go to the bookstore and look at all the creative books.  Read more... (549 words, estimated 2:12 mins reading time)

Many people claim that they don’t have any type of creative or artistic talent. What they don’t realize is that their inner creativity has nothing to do with talent. Discovering and indulging your inner creativity is more about expressing your feelings, moods and thoughts through some sort of creative activity is a personal thing that doesn’t have to be shared or compared with anyone else’s idea of art. Also, there are many activities besides painting and artwork that count as being creative. Your inner creativity is what you feel when you are relaxed and open, when you have the urge to create…something. Whether you feel deeply in touch with music, painting, drawing, sculpture, or even simply decorating your home, what you experience when you do those things is your inner creativity tugging at your sleeve and wanting to be recognized.

To get in touch with your inner creativity, you must first admit that you have some. Creativity is often buried beneath the day to day stress of work and family. People forget to take time for themselves, so they truly feel that they have no creativity that needs to be expressed. When you learn to stop and breathe for a few minutes and let your mind wander you may be surprised at what you can discover about yourself and your creative urges. Allow yourself to take time for yourself, to meditate and to get in touch with your inner feelings.  Read more... (420 words, estimated 1:41 mins reading time)

Many a time we are stuck and lost when facing a hard to solve problem. We had finished trying every possible option there is and yet we failed. And we thought that there are no more solutions to it as if the world has come to an end!

But don’t worry because there are ways to solve such a problem provided you are ready to look at it from a different angle and be more creative in dealing with it..

How to be more creative in solving the hard to solve problems? Here’s how.

1. Look deeper into the problem. Try to understand it better so that you know how it works. Try to find the connection among the elements composing the problem. Identify what you are gaining and losing as the impact of the problem. Then only you’ll be able to solve it because you have got the foundation of what the problem really is.

2. Identify all valid constraints and assumptions that prevent you from seeing possible solutions. If you cannot view the problem, definitely you won’t be able to solve it.

3. Break the problem into parts so that it is much easier to solve. Start by solving the overall view part first and then the more detailed part. Do this by jotting down the simplest question and then the possible solution to it. Move to the next question – a harder one – and do the same until all questions are answered.

4. Apart from having a critical thinking in solving the problem, you must also be creative and analytical as well. Try and make any suggested solutions work by being creative.

5. Remember that there are many possible solutions to the problem. So study them carefully and find the one that suits you most. This way, the problem can be solved much easier.  Read more... (438 words, estimated 1:45 mins reading time)

“Creativity is God’s gift to us. Using our Creativity is our gift back to God”.
~The Artist Way

As stated in this quote from Julia Cameron the importance of being creative is clear. By using the gift of creativity people can heal themselves and their lives. The expression of your gift is different for everyone, some may enjoy cooking while others prefer to create sculptures or dance. Whatever your gift is in the creative realm it is something that makes you happy. We’ve all heard about dancing to the beat of a different drum and expressing your gift is much like that. You express your creativity in the way that feels best to you and it is an act of reaffirming your spirit.

What is Your Gift?
Over the years I have met many people, who were miserable because they had nothing they were passionate about, or they had something they loved to do, but did not do it because of self imposed time limitations or money limitations, stress or whatever other excuses they had to avoid being creative. This caused them to feel the pressure from inside themselves even more, the urge to be passionate, to find joy was there but they didn’t take the time to discover it and explore it. The good news is everybody can get into the habit of being in touch with their creative inner beings.

Making Changes
We can recreate our lives at any time if we choose to. Nothing is more boring than doing the same routine over and over again, always socializing with the same people and going to the same places. So when you want to discover what you are passionate about, when you want to explore your creative urges you must first learn how to become comfortable with breaking out of a rut and shaking up your routine.  Read more... (634 words, estimated 2:32 mins reading time)

If you want to learn to play Guitar, you should be able to do so without having to struggle a lot in the process. In fact, the steps are fairly simple and easy to follow, but knowing what to keep in mind might be the important thing here. Although there are a lot of different approaches, only a handful of them are effective. Therefore, being on guard and knowing more about these should be the thing that you would want to keep in mind. Here are some of the more effective steps that are worth trying out.

First, keep in mind that you cannot learn to play Guitar overnight and if someone said you can do so, it is a bold-faced lie! It is strongly recommended that you keep aside a certain number of hours every day in order to master the task and learn all the nuances to it. Ideally, beginners should target at least two to four hours on a daily basis to ensure that you don’t forget what was taught to you the previous day. This is very important, and essentially the thing that can make all the difference.

Next, you should stick to the same form of instruction over your course of learning. Shifting methodologies will usually end up quite badly and you might never really learn to play Guitar. Not only will you be able to easily figure out the instrument but you will also be able to do so without having to struggle in the process. It might seem lucrative at some points to shift over to other methods, but ideally, you should stick with the same method so that you don’t end up mixing up two or more approaches and not knowing anything as a result of it.  Read more... (495 words, estimated 1:59 mins reading time)

Many people do not think that they are creative. This is because the creative spark has been smothered underneath the day to day stress of earning a living and not taking any time to explore and develop our passions. You can easily learn creativity to better express yourself. There is creativity in some form within everyone, whether it is a deeply buried urge to use colors or an embedded set of emotions that are stirred by musical notes. Creativity doesn’t just mean painting or creating some kind of art, creativity is letting your mind and your soul free to wander, to express how you feel in any kind of medium.

There are numerous benefits to getting in touch with your creativity. First and foremost learning to be creative and freeing your mind to do so enables you to better explore your feelings and express those feelings more clearly verbally. Creative activity also relieves stress and can help clear your mind of daily stressors making you more relaxed and able to sleep or concentrate better afterwards. Learning creativity means getting in touch with the “you” that may be hidden from the rest of the world.

You may not have any training with artistic expression such as painting, but when you hold a brush to a clean piece of paper you may find that your mind knows what it wants to express and the colors you choose, the strokes you make are all straight from your heart. Don’t ever think that finding your creativity means that you have to take classes or training; unless that is what you want to do. You can always allow yourself a private relaxation and stress relieving creative activity that isn’t for anyone else to see or even know about. Your urge to create comes from deep within, and if you don’t let it out to play once in a while it can affect all sorts of areas in your everyday life. That creative juice is there, but it’s up to you to open the cap and let it out.  Read more... (418 words, estimated 1:40 mins reading time)

This is a technique for thinking up very good, creative ideas, you have most certainly used it yourself before but due to its simplicity and understated process you probably weren’t aware you were.

An awareness of this process will help you to recreate the same conditions and access those Eureka moments whenever you need to. It will also help demystify the design process used by many top advertising agencies, copywriters, engineers, comedians and scientists. In fact Einstein professed to getting his best ideas while he was shaving (as a part of this process)… but don’t worry if you are a lady because any form of distraction for your conscious mind will work; all is revealed below.

Simply follow these steps…

Step 1. Identify what it is that you need to achieve. Be absolute and as concrete as you can about this so that you are not leaving too many different directions for your mind to look in. Sometimes identifying what it is you need to achieve is what you need a big idea about, this is fine, just bring this knowledge to step two and take the whole project one level at a time.

Step 2. Research. This is the bit most of us tend to skimp on because the prospect of it really does seem mundane and often difficult to initiate. But it is imperative to your success. Like most unappealing tasks, it is also easier than you anticipate and can even be fun once you get started so make yourself a big mug of tea and jump head first into it.  Read more... (572 words, estimated 2:17 mins reading time)

Whether you’re an aspiring novelist or a working copywriter, creativity plays a role in your work.

Fiction writers and poetry writers need creativity for obvious reasons. They need to come up with creative story ideas and find memorable images that will ring true for readers and have an emotional impact.

The same can be true for copywriters and web writers. When you’re writing to sell, your words have to rise above the noise. To do that they have to be grabbing or moving, they have to be authentic, and they have to be memorable… otherwise readers will click away to another web page or drop your ad in the recycling bin.

Fortunately, creativity is something you can learn. Use any on of these three techniques to discover how to boost creativity in your own marketing writing.

Keep a Journal: People are bombarded with images every day. And experiences. And sensations. Breath-taking moments. Epiphanies. These are all potential sources of creativity in your writing. But, only if you keep track of them. If you don’t, some of your best potential inspiration will be lost.

The best way to keep track of these moments so that you can turn them into creativity boosters later is to keep a journal. Keeping a journal does not have to be a lengthy time commitment. Set aside 15 to 20 minutes – even 10 minutes is better than nothing – and during that time write down the most inspiring moments you’ve had in the last 24 hours. These moments could be anything from a description of the sky peaking through clouds to a metaphor that struck you while watching a child play to the way the breeze feels when it ruffles your hair.  Read more... (544 words, estimated 2:11 mins reading time)

How many of us have had the dreaded creativity block? Most of us, and I think it is rare that no artist, be it designer or writer has never experienced a creativity block before. Whether you are creating a website or writing original content, there is always a time when you just stare at the screen and cannot think what to do next.

Here are some tips for those who are faced with this problem and want their creativity back. It really is quite simple once you have thought about it, as there are plenty of steps you can take to get your creativity back on route, for sometimes simply browsing different galleries and reading articles just is not enough to get your creative mood back.

You cannot define the process of getting your creativity back as there is no predefined tactic, and there are no fixed rules. The first step you can try is shutting your computer down and going far away from it. Go for a walk, run or bike ride. You can even go out for a meal or a picnic, go window shopping, whatever, the important issue is to get away from it all.

Once you have taken your break go back to your office or working area at home and browse through all the magazines, brochures and pamphlets you have. After you are satisfied that you have gone through all the new items you had, go and switch your computer on again and open your current project. You should find that a new spark is there and that you feel fresh to work again.  Read more... (521 words, estimated 2:05 mins reading time)