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How To Rewire Your Brain To Unlock Your Creative Mind At Work In 5 Easy Steps

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

Do you ever feel like your Creative mind is out to lunch? We all do from time to time, and it can be frustrating. Yet, when you are in a state of flow, you can easily come up with creative solutions to problems and can brainstorm creative ideas at the drop of a hat.

The question is; Is it possible to switch from creative block to creative flow on demand?

The good news is that the answer to this question is a resounding yes! In this article, I’ll show you five easy steps you can take to rewire your brain so that you can unlock your creativity at any time.

Step 1. Turn off your brain to open up your mind

When it comes to being creative, your brain is the enemy. Why? Because it’s highly structured and wired to think linearly, whereas creativity requires random access and lack of structure.

To think creatively, you need total freedom from your intellect. You can’t force a creative thought through a logical sequence of steps. Creative Thoughts don’t respond to directives and don’t follow rules.

They only manifest when you’re naturally open to them, and you can only have an open mind when you free yourself from judgement and pre-conditions. In other words, you can’t “will” creative thoughts into being through a mechanical thinking process.

How hard is it to elicit creative thoughts, then? Easier than you think.

In fact, your mind is constantly generating creative thoughts, whether you know it or not. But if your entire mental bandwidth is maxed out with linear brain activity, then they are obscured from view.

The easiest way to experience your creative mind at work is when you dream. Dreams are 100% creative thinking at work. The entirety of your dreams are pure unbridled creativity, a fiction of your creative mind unchecked by your thinking brain, which is resting.

The problem with dreams is that, for the most part, they are not really useful in your daily life (on occasion, there can be happy coincidences, but they tend to be rare.)

So, your first step to unleash your creativity is to “turn off” your thinking brain long enough to un-obscure your creative thoughts, allowing them to come to the forefront of your mind.

How do you do that? By engaging in an activity that defies your linear thinking patterns.

For example, if you’re tasked with marketing a new webinar for our company, and you’re having trouble coming up with original promotion ideas, stop and go for a walk outside, or go run a totally unrelated errand that takes your mind away from your task.

Now, make sure that you have your smartphone handy, so you can take notes or dictation when your creative thoughts come flooding in the middle of your unrelated activity. This is akin to achieving a state of dreaming (daydreaming) while your brain is busy doing something else.

Step 2. Avoid distractions at all costs

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

Creative thinking requires peace of mind. Peace of mind is the absence of any thinking activity that brings you stress, anxiety, anticipation, worry, and so on.

One of the biggest sources of this mental noise are distractions, such as device notifications, incoming emails, constantly checking your social media accounts, answering texts and phone calls, etc.

How To Avoid Distractions at Workplace

This is particularly important when you have to do creative writing. Once you manage to open the channel between your creative mind and your fingertips, any type of interruption to this flow will immediately set you back in your creation process.

The same applies to people walking in the door, forcing you to engage socially or coming into your space to ask you a question.

The creative process requires privacy, so make sure that people in your circle know not to interrupt you when you’re “in the flow.” Remember to turn off the sound of all notifications and don‘t read or answer any type of direct messages during this time.

Finally, avoid the temptation to look things up on the internet during your creative sessions, because before you know it a simple research task will become an endless rabbit hole of tangential distractions and frustration.

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Step 3. Turn off the clock and start living in the now

Focusing on the past or the future is a sure-fire way to kill your creative thinking. Here’s the thing about time: when you think of it, the entire concept is really a fiction.

Now, I’m not saying that things that happened in the past and that will happen in the future are fictional in and of themselves.

But if you’re consumed by the concept of time, that is, you’re anxious about a future event, or you’re constantly regretting actions that took place in the past, then you’re not living in the moment.

And if you can’t be present because you’re distracted by fictional thoughts about the past and the future, then you’re leaving no bandwidth for creative thinking to enter your mind.

Turn off the proverbial time clock so that you’re fully present when you’re engaging in creative thoughts, and you’ll become an open vessel for boundless creativity to flourish.

Step 4. Stop multitasking and put the horse blinders on

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

Another killer of creativity is multitasking, which is why creative people tend to be bad at it. When you try to juggle multiple tasks, your brain can’t focus on any one of them with sufficient peace of mind to open the doors for creative thinking to come in.

Multitasking is a highly structured and sequential activity that’s meant to occupy every possible “productive” second of your time for the sake of achieving maximum efficiency.

While, in principle, you could get more done this way, this technique runs counter to the way creative thoughts manifest. If every second of your workday is coupled with structured tasks, there’s no time left for the unstructured nature of creativity.

So, when you need to come up with fresh ideas, put on the proverbial horse blinders and focus on a single task at a time — the activity that needs to engage your creative mind.

Let’s go back to the example of creative writing. Writing involves a number of tasks. Creating an outline (the structure), doing research on your content (finding your sources), writing (the creative part), editing (the critical part) and proofreading (ensuring accuracy).

Now, once you have your structure in place, it’s very tempting to conflate your writing with your research and your editing, that is, write a bit, Google something, then edit what you just wrote. In other words, multitask.

If you do this for the sake of efficiency, you’ll be killing your creativity and come up with a sub-par product. Creative thinking and multitasking are incompatible.

Instead, do your research in advance and leave your editing for later and in the middle; just write in a big stream of consciousness without judgement or criticism. Let the creative juices take over, and just write no matter what comes down on the page.

This is how most original ideas manifest. Now, the first pass might be rough and unpolished, but out of that stream of consciousness, you’ll likely produce your best writing.

When you’re done with this unbridled creative process, then and only then, re-engage your critical thinking brain to shape your creative flow through a structured editing process.

Step 5. Engage in activities where breathing becomes your main focus

Finally, if you’re having trouble turning off your brain with its unending stream of thoughts about the past and the future and thus are unable to get “in the zone,” then the last line of defence is your breathing.

Breathing is how you oxygenate your cells. Deep diaphragmatic (belly) breathing provides the best oxygenation, which has multiple benefits for your overall health and your ability to open the floodgates to your creative thoughts.

So, if you’re stuck or in a creative drought, forcing or “willing” your mind to create will not work. Instead, engage in activities where breathing is your main focus, freeing your mind of repetitive thoughts that take up your entire mental bandwidth, leaving no room for your creativity.

Examples of such activities are working out, jogging, meditation, diaphragmatic breathing exercises, swimming, cycling, and so on.

These 5 simple tips will help you keep your mental peace at workplace

Next time you need to engage your creative process, make sure you leave some time to break up your day with one of these activities.

Some of your best ideas will manifest when you remember to breathe with intention, so remember to have your smartphone handy to capture your creative thoughts as they come, so you remember them when you get back in the office!

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Wrapping Things Up

Creativity is not hard. What’s hard is unwinding the web of unnecessary, repetitive thoughts that encroach upon every minute of your workday, drowning out your creative process.

Now, since we’re all creatures of habit, I can’t promise you that just reading this article is enough to unlock your creative mind — it’ll take practice, lots of practice.

But now you know the recipe for success, and if you train yourself to follow the above 5 steps, you’ll develop over time the ability to think creatively on demand, something that’ll become a lifelong asset.

Author bio:

Marcelo Beilin is a ​Digital Marketing Consultant​ and blogger who helps clients take their traffic and online revenue to the next level. He also helps readers find the perfect tools to earn online income at BestTech2EarnOnline.com​.

You can connect with him on ​LinkedIn​.

Email address connected to Gravatar: ​[email protected]

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How To Rewire Your Brain To Unlock Your Creative Mind At Work In 5 Easy Steps was originally published in ProofHub Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.



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