Unleash Your Creativity

It's not just child's play - making time for art can keep you on top of your mental game

- ELLI JACOBS

WHY WE LOSE OUR CREATIVE SPARK 

'While as children we're naturally creative, as we mature we become very self-conscious of not getting things right, we begin to judge ourselves, and if we don't have a specific talent, we feel we're not good enough to make art so we push it aside and this affects our capacity to think creatively in the face of life's challenges, explains artist and art therapist Yvonne Kiely.

'Under the increasing pressures of everyday life we also default to a goal-oriented style of thinking and this constrains our capacity to see possibilities adds associate professor Muireann Irish at the Brain and Mind Centre, University of Sydney. This is why training ourselves to remember how to think in unconstrained ways is extremely important if we are to thrive in our lives.

REIGNITE YOUR CREATIVE BRAIN

Since we can't solve our problems with the same thinking it took to create them, by embracing deliberate creativity - a means of exposing the brain stimuli to spark off new ideas - we can enhance our ability to see more solutions and experience life in more colourful ways. And although creative thinking takes many guises, the most important aspect is to organise the mind and to balance the brain networks through following a simple three-stage process.

STAGE ONE

Brainstorm a wide range of ideas

New research published in the Journal of Cognitive Enhancement has shown that taking a short course (as brief as one-and-a-half hours) that encourages you to use a variety of thinking styles can have a big impact on creative performance. Participants also found their problem-solving skills improved thanks to the shifting of perceptions, mental blocks and fixed points of view that came about while they were thinking creatively.