BECOMING A CREATIVE THINKER

[Greg Anderson]

Someone wisely said, “It is better to copy genius than to create mediocrity.”  There is certainly a lot to be said about the wisdom of copying genius and there are many places to apply what you learn in the process.  There are, however, times when there is no genius thinking available.  It could involve something that is totally yours and creative thinking is the only way to solve the problem.   So what do you do in these circumstances when you do not think you have any creative talent?  Here’s a suggestion: 

 

First you can rethink.  One rethink would be to understand  that creative thinking is not always original thought.  It is sometimes a composite of your thoughts picked up along the way.  You then bring your thoughts together as they apply to the problem at hand.

 

Next it is time to get reassurance from the famous creative thinker, Albert Einstein.   He said, that  “Imagination is more important than knowledge.”  That suggests moving off of the beaten path and letting thoughts come without running them through your educated filter mechanism.  Be willing to tolerate what you might call a little far out.

 

Now allow what are seemingly unrelated thoughts to connect with each other and with previous knowledge and express the outcome in a new way.  That makes the creative process go in the following order:  Think, collect, create, correct, connect again.  Once you have the material to  sort through, you can decide what relates and what does not.

 

Finally, you connect the ideas by positioning them in the right context to make the thoughts complete and powerful. 

 

While all this is going on, it is well to remember that creative thinkers don’t fear failure.  Creative people consider failure a learning process where you discard the unproductive or unnecessary and move on.   They don’t let ideas that don’t work prevent them from coming up with more ideas that do work.                                                

 

Many people mistakenly believe that if individuals aren’t born with a creative nature, thy will never be creative.  You can now see that creativity can be cultivated.  So go for it and you will discover that you can be a creative thinker.

 

Gregory B. Anderson–director