January 26, 2021

Whenever I become discouraged while working on my third book, I think of Grandma Moses. Remember Grandma Moses. the artist who painted images of country life when she was in her 70s, 80s, and 90s? Thinking about this amazing older artist makes me wonder about creativity.

Some experts believe and teach us that it’s possible to recapture the creativity from our youth. These experts also believe that the older we are, the greater our experience base becomes that we can draw from. Creativity allows us to stretch our minds, do new and exciting things, and engage us in ways that take us one step closer to reaching our full potential.

Are there things we can do that will help make us more creative? Or are some people simply born this way? Or is creativity a skill we can develop much like a muscle?

Here are some ways to help us think like Steve Jobs or Jerry Seinfeld.

• Take a nap. Many of our creative insights occur in our dreams.
• Exercise our brain.  See how many red fruits you can name in 30 seconds, for example.  Or count backwards from 100 by 6s without making an error. Or visualize a route you take regularly (to the grocery store or work, for example) and see how many turns and road signs you can remember. This exercise strengthens the right hemisphere of our brain.
• Keep a journal. If you can record, you can recall, and if you can recall, you can re-create.
• Write a paragraph about a fear. Write it to the end of every possible outcome. Name it Catastrophic Expectations.  To harness our fears about taking a risk, detail precisely what could happen if everything goes wrong. When we make this info totally explicit, we then can face it.  And only then can we swap our fears for our analytical capability.
• Listen to many different styles of music, even those we do not like. Highly creative people appreciate diversity, and different styles of music stimulate different parts of our brain. An open mind helps us appreciate all styles.

Being open makes creativity more possible, more likely to happen. And creative people love what they do. Creativity comes closest to providing that total fulfilling and meaningful life we all hope to have. That’s what Grandma Moses did: created herself a meaningful life that brought her great joy.