Well, wouldn’t we all love to unleash more creativity…
Thomas Edison said that genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration. I am not discounting the perspiration part, but especially in times of stress we sometimes forget to leave room for the 1% that fuels the other 99. Particularly if your job does not involve using Photoshop or After Effects, you may not realize how much creativity goes into what you do. But there is creativity in all human endeavor. Sometimes great benefit can arise from creative ideas that may far outweigh the effort involved. Whether it’s an idea that enables two people work better together (even if they don’t work for me), finding a better way of phrasing a concept in a proposal, or completely rethinking how we do business with a particular client, all these solutions come, not from hammering harder at the idea, but sitting back and accessing a more creative part of my brain.
Unleashing creativity is not easy, but paradoxically, it’s the easiest thing there is. It involves letting go, instead of holding on. For those of us who tightly manage our schedules and push forward constantly, letting go requires paying a great deal of attention because we are not used to it. Yoga, sensory deprivation tanks, moshing, having a martini and watching the sunset, all have elements of a kind of release into the unknown. The important thing is the attentiveness to that moment when you don’t hold on, just for a microsecond. That’s when creativity can emerge.
If you try moshing let me know how it goes!
