We lose our creativity more and more everyday.

As we grow up, the world around us forces it out of us. We learn to thing logically instead of considering all the possible outcomes. We think using a convergent mindset instead of a divergent one.

Instead of allowing our mind to come up with hundreds of different solutions for a problem, we have been taught to think: We can’t do this. This isn’t possible. This is too expensive. This breaks the rules. This goes against policy etc.

Instead of spending time painting what we want, or playing childish games, we critisize ourself, put ourselves down, say that our work isn’t good enough, say that it has to be better. We don’t accept the raw beauty of our creativity.

Even as a child, I had vivid dreams. I would dream of new worlds, talking animals, alternate universes where nothing made sense. But the dreams started to fade, I don’t know when it was that I had my last dream. I don’t remember any of my dreams for over a year now, which is crazy as some of my childhood ones stick to me to this day.

As a child, I feared so much. Zombies, kidnappers, death, monsters, dolls, killers hiding in my closet. And as scary as all of that was, as terrifying as it was being kept up for hours, scared to death that something would reach out from under my bed and grab me, I was imagining. But as I grew up, my parents told me that I was being silly, childish. There is no such thing as monsters, no one is under your bed, no one is in your closet. Then I stopped, I stopped being scared. I grew up.

I used to draw, and write, and play, and dance. I made up stories on end about completely different things, I didn’t care about what other people thought, creativity just flowed through me. Even a few years ago, I made up a character and would spend most of my time making videos about her life. But I haven’t written a story in months, I quit dancing, I criticise all my drawings.

There used to be so much to me, but the more I grew up, the less I used my creativity. It’s gone.

School’s use fear as a motivation to work, they want you to be scared of failing, scared of falling behind, scared of disappointing. We use so little of our brains while under fear, it isn’t worth our while.

In a TED talk I found (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZfKMq-rYtnc), they did a study to see what percentage of different age groups are creative genius’s. They wanted to see how many of the kids came up with new and innovative ideas. For kids age 4-5, they found that 98% of the kids were creative genius’s. For kids aged 10, they found that 30% of kids were creative genius’s, for kids aged 15, only 12% and for adults, only 2% were found to be creative genius’s.

This is absurd, the proof is right in front of us. The world murders our creativity.

So how do we get it back?

We need to make a few realisations: First that everyone is creative. All humans have millions of brain cells interacting with eachother, every single person has creativity within them. They just haven’t learnt how to use it.

Second that creativity isn’t just imagination, creativity requires logic, colour, shape, thinking. It uses our whole brain.

Third, that we need creativity of thought. We should never be stuck in the mindset that the way we think is just the way we think. We need t think about all the different ways we can look at it.

Next are a few proper exersizes you can do, I found them from this TED Talk (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-YScywp6AU at around 11:33) yes, I am slightly addicted tot TED talks now.

First, he suggested that when you’re brushing your teeth, look at the toothbrush and think of three random words that have nothing to do with the toothbrush at all. Every night, keep on doing that, and eventually, your brain will be able to generate random words at a much faster pace.

Second, every 90 minutes in your sleep, you go into the REM stage where youb are dreaming. What they tried out, was doing something very particular before sleeping (they played Tetris) and then were woken up on a 90 minute schedule. They asked what the studies had dreamt about, and they all had some link to Tetris. So, he suggests doing something before sleeping and then waking up 90 minutes later and recording what you dreamt about, as unconnected as you think it is.

Third, when you are faced with a problem, go onto Wikepedia and click on random article. This will bring you a random article about anything, and find a link between that article and your problem.

We are all creative. Don’t forget that. If you’ve made it this far, maybe I could have helped in some way.

But…What Do I Know?