5 techniques to prompt your creativity
Your creativity isn’t something you can just turn on and off, but it is definitely something you will undermine if you are in constant go mode. Our brains aren’t designed to ideate and innovate when we are in focused execution mode.
Here are five techniques you can use to cue creativity and theta waves.
1. Engage in long, slow, repetitive movement
To activate your creativity, do a moving meditation like LSD (long, slow distance, not the drug).
A meandering walk is the best example. It’s so natural for human beings to do this. To walk, run, jog, swim, bike, paddle. Whatever feels good.
When we do those types of rhythmic, repetitive activities, we drop into theta brain waves. That’s why when we are on a long walk, we start ideating.
This explains why some leaders love walking meetings. By moving slowly together, you activate everyone’s theta waves and maximize creativity. Try it. You will be blown away by the quality of conversation, the quality of ideas and your ability to think in an agile manner. Walking meetings versus sitting meetings are extraordinarily powerful.
It's one of the reasons why Steve Jobs never did a crucial meeting sitting down. If you've read his biography by Walter Isaacson, all the meetings where they came up with the iPod, the iPhone and the iPad happened walking around the Apple campus.
2. Open you mind
Opening your mind to possibilities is a skill to cultivate, especially in a world inundated by social media and marketing machines that feed you more of what you are already thinking.
One of the main mechanisms for training this mental capability is meditation. When you meditate daily, you improve your ability to drop from beta into alpha and from alpha into theta.
I recommend spending 1% of your day, or 15 minutes, in meditation, maybe using an app like Headspace or calm.com, which are both wonderful. This will train your brain to let go of urgency and dig into important creative work.
To open your mind, you can also go for a walk, listen to music, do a prayer or whatever works for you. Those are all similar strategies for calming your brain and allowing it to wander.
3. Seek solitude
If you want to be creative, ideate and problem solve, you and your team need to step away from the hustle and give yourself the space to relax and explore ideas.
That’s why bands go to places like Abbey Road Studios to record albums. There's soundproofing, no external windows and no distractions. It’s also why writers often go into the woods and artists tend to have a studio set apart from everyday life.
I would argue that business people need to do this as well. That's why retreats are powerful, as long as you all commit to genuinely relaxing, setting aside your devices and disconnecting. That’s when you will start to think differently.
4. Be wary of fear of failure
What destroys a creative state? Fear of failure. The second you are worried about what other people will think of your ideas, your creative brain shuts off and you pivot back into beta brain waves.
This is one of the reasons I deliberately encourage my children to do things that make them scared. I want them to build up their ability to overcome the fear of failure. Crash on the surfboard? No big deal. Get back up and go again. (Coming from the person who broke his neck body surfing, that’s quite an attitude!)
I just want them to feel confident. My kids are very different. Adam won’t stand up on a surf board and is risk averse. Ingrid is like, “I want to ride giants.” But I’m working on helping them both grow up in such a way that they can overcome the fear of failure.
This is an essential skill for all of us. The best ideas come when we are open and exploring what’s possible. There will be a time for analyzing and assessing. But that comes later. When you are creating, don’t do anything else. Just invent.
5. Practice moving meditation
Moving meditation is any activity where your muscles are contracting in a consistent pattern over a period of time, such as walking or cycling. This kind of activity helps you relax and let your mind wander. If you do this regularly, it is also a powerful stress reducer that can decrease symptoms of depression and anxiety.
The idea is to focus on an activity or exercise to the point where you seem to have no thoughts at all. You disappear into the motion. You aren’t thinking about anything. You are just there.
As a result of being fully “in” your experience, you not only optimize the physical elements of the activity, you practice habits of mindfulness, ideation and relaxation.
Movement as meditation triggers creativity and ideation.
I think back to a great picture I have of my son, Adam, at-one-and-a-half years old. We were on a beach in Maine, and he just wandered off on his own. I let him go because I could tell he was deep into his experience, and I knew he was totally safe.
The ease of his movement, the calm in his eyes . . . it was amazing. I think that’s how we should all try to be whenever we move. Adam was doing something that came naturally to him. He was doing something that I hope you can do in your life to spark mindful movement.
Want to learn more?
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Relax and create
Reflect and learn
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Let me know what you think about this article and the new book in the comments section below!
