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Train Yourself To Be Creative
Learn to reconnect with your creative side. More than 90 percent of five-year-olds are creative, but only five percent of 13-year-olds (and older) are creative. We have trained ourselves out of being creative. Train yourself back into creative thinking by learning how to revisit a problem, issue or opportunity in the following ways:
· Frame it differently. Make it a product, a hobby, an inanimate object, a cartoon, a food, a superhero, etc.
· See it from another perspective: man, woman, child, minority, friend, enemy, teacher, employee, customer, affluent, poor, honest, greedy, etc.
· Morph the problem by changing it to the best, worst, an object, a person, a policy, a fruit, a car, a game, etc.
· Link it to an unrelated item to see the correlations; identify how it is similar, how it is different. This forces the brain to see connections it would normally ignore.
· Use pictures to visualize the problem, issue or opportunity. How does the visual encourage different thinking?
· View the problem as a color -- what does it make you think of, how does the color offer a new perspective?
· Brainstorm using the phrases, "What if?" "How about?" or "Just consider."
· Use word association to generate ideas
· Write a headline, poem, obituary, news report or book title that relates to a business issue, event or other need. This forces a new perspective on the situation.
So, remember the bad B's: bland, boring and blending as a way of going bust. To succeed, Stand Out.
Tomorrow we'll look at working in an open environment
Source: Jay Forte is a performance speaker, consultant and founder of Humanetrics, LLC. He applies years of research, along with his training as a CPA, to help organizations maximize performance and profits through improved employee productivity, creative thinking and customer service. He is the author of Own It! Getting Your Employees to Think Like Owners. |