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Keep your creativity alive – Live A Great Life Podcast by Dr Prem – Chapter. 31

Keep your creativity alive - Live A Great Life Podcast by Dr Prem – Chapter. 31


Here is a quote – Thus the man who is responsive to artistic stimuli reacts to the reality of dreams as does the philosopher to the reality of existence; he observes closely, and he enjoys his observation: for it is out of these images that he interprets life, out of these processes that he trains himself for life.

—Friedrich Nietzsche

When we think about creative people, we often think of them as being busy, tireless and hardworking. This is usually the impression because that’s the only information we have about them. You only find information about what creative people do, and not about what they don’t do. An atom has a proton and an electron, and that is what we take it for. We often forget that 99.99 percent of an atom is just empty space. Similarly, a great part of creative work is not about what you do, it’s about what you don’t do. It’s about doing nothing at all, just being.

What is creativity?

Creativity isn’t finding something new. It is rearranging what you already know into a new mold. The impression is a crucial part of creativity. When you cannot perceive things in a new way, creativity becomes impossible. The individuality of a creative person, which shines so obviously in their work, isn’t something completely God-gifted. It is something that springs from deep introspection. For example, if you want to paint a flower, the first time you look at the flower, you will see the obvious. You will see what everybody else sees. It’s only once you meditate on it long enough that you realize its true nature. Only then are you able to see the flower as no one else has ever seen it. In short, the flower reveals its essence to you.

How modern life affects creativity

According to ancient Indian philosophy, what we think is directly influenced by our surroundings. If you keep the company of a particular community of people – say, bureaucrats – for a long time, you automatically start behaving like one without even realizing it. Your body and mind optimize themselves to living in one type of conditioned environment to such a high degree that you lose your individuality and get absorbed into a stereotype. Creativity shuts its door on you.

Modern life has been particularly damaging in this respect. Now, even the little time we had to think for ourselves is lost because of our smartphones. Earlier, at least while we were going somewhere or while we had no one next to us to talk to, we could introspect. Now that opportunity is completely gone. Now, while returning home after hours of work, we check our smartphones. We see millions of posts on Instagram, hundreds of messages on WhatsApp, and so on. We are lost once again without being aware that we are lost.

How schools kill creativity

According to French philosopher Michel Foucault, one of the reasons the Renaissance was the most creatively productive periods in human history is because, in that period, people with eccentricities were held in high regard. They weren’t sent to mental institutions. They didn’t have to deal with psychologists telling them that something was wrong with their head and they should change themselves. A creative person has very high chances of being an eccentric, as only a person with a singular personality can come up with a singular work of art. Most artists successfully carry their eccentricity through their childhood into their adulthood.

But what do our schools do? At schools, every student is judged by a set of standards that are beneficial for students with a certain type of abilities and harmful for others. It is like calling monkeys superior to cats or dolphins just because they are good at climbing trees. In environments like these, the creativity within us suffers. Rather than helping us embrace our eccentricities, education forcefully suppresses the same, making us feel hopeless and inadequate. Ultimately, we are produced as a finished product to fit in some particular industry we don’t like, and that’s the end of our individuality. We are then successfully institutionalized.

What to do to be more creative

According to researchers from the University of California, Santa Barbra30, creativity is more likely to blossom in a period when you are daydreaming or letting your mind wander. This conclusion is completely in accordance with the experiences of some of the most creative people the world has ever seen.

Albert Einstein discovered his revolutionary theory of relativity during one of his long walks in Bern. Isaac Newton came up with the idea of gravity when he had to stay at home because of the plague, observing falling apples and the revolution of the moon. Rabindranath Tagore wrote most of his work while he was outdoors, contemplating nature.

If your life is like clockwork, you cannot expect your work to be creative. It will bear the stamp of the same monotony that haunts your life. In modern fast-paced life creativity has indeed become somewhat elusive. However, it is still not extinct. Here are a few things you can do to be more creative:

Contemplate

Life has become supersonic. We have very short attention spans and no time for anything that doesn’t interest us beyond five seconds. You will not become aware of the world you live in if you look at it with the same attention. So don’t look, watch. Don’t hear, listen. The world has many tales to tell you. Ideas are floating around. You might ignore the idea of a masterpiece while paying attention to something inconsequential on your phone. So don’t look away. Open yourself to the experiences of the world, and let it pour its wonders into you.

Never take the beaten path

While doing what other people do, you cannot hope to find something that others don’t. Most of us so-called adventure lovers go on adventures with a group of people. Probably with tour guides, who take us to the places where they take everyone else, and tell us what they tell everyone else. Don’t just follow the guide. Go solo. Ditch your camera. Explore the true face of nature. Meditate upon it and let your soul speak about the wonders you have seen.

Don’t pretend, live

Creativity is an inner impulse. We are likely to thwart it because just like other humans, we have the desire to be liked. We know what others want, and by giving them precisely that, we attempt to seek admiration and avoid criticism. This is not how creativity works. You have to be real and you have to be fierce. Shake off the illusions that the world is living in. It might not be what others want, but it is definitely what they need.

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