Developing Your Creativity
We are all doing our best to adapt massive change. It hasn’t been easy. But chances are, it is not going to get any easier either. These days I am getting a lot of questions from companies on how they can boost creativity and innovation in the new workplace. Unfortunately, the answer is no different than before: There is not a quick fix solution as you can’t tell anyone to ‘do’ creativity or ‘do’ innovation. You have to become it, at which point it is no longer an add-on option…it just is. Here are some Life Works Labs thoughts on the issue…
Becoming More Creative At Work
Without dedicated work and training, human beings fall into repetitive patterns of thought and behavior. This makes us feel that we’re in a rut and life starts to feel meaningless, desperate, sometimes not even worth living. We become risk averse and complacent and do whatever we can not to change the comfort of our habits, even if we know they are negative.
This closing up to life can — and does — happen to even the most creative people. Many artists get depressed and stuck. The best writers often get writer’s block. The beauty and emotion of music can fade in the best players. For many people, it seems like weeks, months, even years can pass without having a single creative or innovative idea. How to reliably be creative as a way of being is a timeless question that has yet to find a universal answer. In the end, it is not something that can be forced or demanded of someone. It simply does not work that way. Creativity is not an objective binary process.
Throughout history, many great creators have relied on their ‘muse’ — a spark of divine inspiration that unlocks the creative juices and gets things flowing. Others have relied on a talisman or good luck charm or something mystical that brings them closer to their creative source. For 60 years, B.B. King called all of his guitars ‘Lucille’, and he had a lot of them. We each have a different kind of muse, reflecting the unique creative signature that we all have. But, in the end, the power of such a muse is limited and destined to a short and risky life when comes from the outside. Anything external to ourselves is impermanent and ultimately unreliable. Creativity and innovation are no different.
Being Creative Demands the Inner Work
The first key to unlocking our creative potential is to witness — and then work like hell to snap out of — our repetitive patterns. If we do that, we have a chance to create new outcomes and a different future. In other words, the first step towards more creativity is the cultivation of our own awareness of ourself in our environment.
By developing this quality and way of being, we give birth to our own internal muse — one that cannot be taken away or lost. We start to tap into the infinitely creative power of higher consciousness.
True knowledge is experiential; it comes from the life lessons we have internalized into our hearts and whole being. Fran Grace
When we know something ‘by heart’, we start to operate from this position. Our mind and body become like instruments that we can plug into and play with inspiration and ever fresh perspectives that we source from within. This does not and cannot happen overnight. But, we can make it a dedicated practice that we use to evolve our life work. We must recognize that we continue to grow throughout our lives and that the process of learning, unlearning, and re-learning continues as long as we are alive. In this sense, creativity and innovation are not logical processes dominated by our brains, but rather experiential ways of being from the heart.
Creativity is our human right and responsibility
Creativity and innovation are inherently human processes. All that we do in the world is one way or another related to serving other human beings. People often limit the notion of creativity to the arts and innovation to technological progress. This is a very limited and incomplete view. When the human element is removed from the process, the results are binary, mechanical, highly dualistic, and can never be truly creative or innovative. A big part of the unlearning that is required is that we ALL have creative potential no matter what we studied at school or have done so far in our careers. If we want to have a positive impact in the world, it is our responsibility to tap into our creative powers. It is our duty to be more human. Like everything, this takes effort, time, patience, and devotion to develop. Nothing we were ever taught really showed us how to do it.
Find your Flow Together: Co-creativity
In the workplace, a major blockage to improving creativity is the outdated belief that diamonds are created under pressure. Neuroscience has confirmed that we are the most creative when we are not under the influence of stress or competition. Our highest peaks of creativity happen when we are in flow — a state where our minds and hearts are in coherence. Learning how to get into your flow state is a great booster for enhanced creative performance. Applying yourself when there is the next part of the challenge.
Jamming Together
At work, people need to be creative and co-creative. Quite a few people can find creative insight on their own, but very few are able to be creative in a group setting. Why? Here are a few reasons…
- we resist being vulnerable
- we are afraid to share and/or face rejection
- we do not have the language skills to constructively criticize each other
- our skills are unbalanced in the group
- we feel too much ownership of our ideas
- our our egos get in the way
- we don’t remember how to be playful and ambiguous
What are your reasons? Being creative in the team setting is very much like playing in a band. If you know how to play something well, you can probably adapt as you go. But if you are starting out from zero, the results won’t sound good until everyone can play their part and hold the song together. Even great virtuosos often struggle to play as a band as many want to be solo performers or go off and do their own thing. Being creative is hard. Being a team is not easy. Being a truly co-creative team is another level of difficulty altogether.
Expanding Consciousness, Connectivity, Creativity at Work
While creativity does not have a clear roadmap that objectively works for everyone, Life Works Labs offers guidance on how our positive emotions and elevated states of being unlock our creative powers. Creativity and innovation cannot simply demanded from anyone or sustainably reproduced if they are coming from force. They can only be natural outcomes if we have the courage to try and the willingness to make a sincere effort and tap into our real power. We must overcome the fear of being a ‘creative’ person, or feeling like creative phony if we are coming from another kind of background or lower level of consciousness.
Becoming a Co-Creative Enterprise
The role of the company is to create the right atmosphere for co-creation. Fear needs to be removed from the equation and psychological safety must be prioritized. A creative culture needs to be fertilized. The conceptualization of workplace must stretch its boundaries and encourage people to experiment creatively without clear KPIs or fear of failure.
In the new normal, it has to be recognized that the places where talented people choose to work must support them in actualizing their personal and collective dreams. This will require ongoing dynamic re-calibration of the growing creative power of individuals within the organization and the manifesting powers of the company. This also requires a change in perspective — for everyone to see the company as an organic and dynamic entity of creative people pursuing a collective process in harmony with one another.
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If you are looking to expand creativity, consciousness, or connectivity within your team or organization, please drop me a line at markus@jointidea.com
Markus Lehto, Co-Founder, Life Works Labs, March 2022
