More Creative Thinking Definitions to Consider
There are a lot of myths surrounding creative thinking processes and famous creative people. It is easy to assume that creativity is a scarce, limited resource that is doled out to only a few gifted visionaries, but time and time again, there are examples that break the rule.
Everyday Creativity Insights
In Calin Fiora’s article “Everyday Creativity,” published in Psychology Today in November 2009, she interviewed numerous experts on the topic such as Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and Eric Maisel as well as everyday creativity practitioners and here are some of the findings:
- Increase your creativity by simply believing that you are creative. Everyone has inventive powers.
- Change your perspective from “How creative are you?” to “How are you creative?”
- Focus on open-mindedness, curiosity, and persistence, and find activities that make you feel positive, energetic, and intrinsically motivated.
- Understand that you solve problems better if you approach them with a different mind-set.
- Encourage playful experimentation, a willingness to learn from mistakes, and persistence to unlock creative thoughts.
- Separate idea generation from idea evaluation. Otherwise, you dismiss ideas that might seem far fetched, but actually lead to an innovation breakthrough..
- Try to carve out some morning time for creativity as a way to infuse the rest of your day with existential meaning.
- Conserve your mental energy by chasing and embracing problems instead of avoiding or dwelling on them.
So here in the third in our series on Defining Creativity, we are adding some additional bits of advice from creators, thinkers and other individuals who have thought about the nature of creativity.
These are just a few examples of individuals who have made their own lives better, or the lives of everyone on the planet better just by listening to themselves instead of the world at large.
27 Additional Creative Thinking Definitions to Consider
Here are 27 additional tidbits of practical advice about creative thinking for you to consider:
- “Inspiration comes and goes; creativity is the result of practice.” ― Phil Cousineau
- “Problems cannot be solved by thinking within the framework in which the problems were created.” – Albert Einstein
- “The greater the emphasis on perfection the further it recedes.” – Haridas Chaudhuri
- “As soon as you have made a thought, Laugh at it.” – Lao Tzu
- “All great discoveries are made by people whose feelings run ahead of their thinking.” – C H Oakhurst
- “If you can dream it, you can do it.” – Walt Disney
- “The ‘Muse’ is not an artistic mystery, but a mathematical equation. The gift are those ideas you think of as you drift to sleep. The giver is that one you think of when you first awake.” ― Roman Payne
- “Don’t think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it’s good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art.” ― Andy Warhol
- “To be an artist means never to avert one’s eyes.” ― Akira Kurosawa
- “Non-judgment quiets the internal dialogue, and this opens once again the doorway to creativity.” ― Deepak Chopra
- “In order to be open to creativity, one must have the capacity for constructive use of solitude. One must overcome the fear of being alone.” ― Rollo May
- “Let your creative and imaginative mind run freely; it will take you places you never dreamed of and provide breakthroughs that others once thought were impossible.” ― Idowu Koyenikan, Wealth for All: Living a Life of Success at the Edge of Your Ability
- I think that perhaps if I had had to slow down the ideas so that I could capture them on paper I might have stifled some of them.” ― J.K. Rowling
- “To understand a new idea, break an old habit.” – Jean Toomer
- “You see things: you say ‘Why?’ But I dream things that never are: and say ‘Why not?'” – George Bernard Shaw Back to Methuselah
- “Exhilaration is that feeling you get just after a great idea hits you and just before you realize what’s wrong with it.” – Rex Harrison
- “Many ideas grow better when transplanted into another mind than in the one where they sprang up.” — Oliver Wendell Holmes
- “Love what you do and do what you love. Don’t listen to anyone else who tells you not to do it. You do what you want, what you love. Imagination should be the center of your life.” ― Ray Bradbury
- “Live out of your imagination, not your history.” ― Stephen Covey
- “I think imagination is at the heart of everything we do. Scientific discoveries couldn’t have happened without imagination. Art, music, and literature couldn’t exist without imagination. And so, anything that strengthens imagination, and reading certainly does that, can help us for the rest of our lives.” ― Lloyd Alexander
- “Just close your eyes and keep your mind wide open.” ― Katherine Paterson, Bridge to Terabithia
- “Rightness of limitation is essential for the growth of reality. Unlimited possibility and abstract creativity can procure nothing. The limitation, and the basis arising from what is already actual, are both of them necessary and interconnected.” ― Alfred North Whitehead
- “Anything creative requires a bit of acting, and filling in blanks with imagination.” ― Christina Westover
- “To think creatively, we must be able to look afresh at what we normally take for granted.” ― George Keller
- “You need feeling, emotion, to create. You can’t create out of indifference.” ― Leo Tolstoy
- “The battle with the gods thus hinges on our own mortality! Creativity is a yearning for immortality.” ― Rollo May, The Courage to Create
- “You need to distinguish between interests and passion, because mere interest won’t sustain you over the long haul. People are convinced they need to become more disciplined, but when you are passionate, you don’t need to cultivate discipline; it follows naturally.” — Eric Maisel
Did You Miss the Other Posts Defining Creativity?
Check them out here:
- 41 Creative Thinking Definitions to Ponder and Explore
- “Anti” Creative Thinking Definitions–What Thinking Creatively is NOT
DO IT! – Creative Thinking Exercise
What practical advice on creativity do you have? What tips or tricks have worked for you to get the creative juices flowing? Share in the comment below.