Tapping Into Your Creativity

Whether or not you would define yourself as an innovative person, the truth is everyday each of us taps into our creativity to problem solve.

Meditation and mindfulness get a lot of attention for their ability to help relieve stress and to build focus. However, they can help with creativity too! Different practices result in different benefits. Here’s how mindfulness can help strengthen your creative skills.

1.    Some mindfulness techniques allow us to tap into our divergent thinking, which is the ability to see the bird’s eye view of a situation along with the possibilities versus the more linear, convergent thinking from focused attention practices. Both practices are important, but the ability to switch between skills is what gives you the tools needed for any situation!

2.    As we know mindfulness improves your attention. This is important for creativity, because when we’re distracted and not focused, we miss the possibilities of some great ideas! With a stronger focus, we notice the usefulness of the thought and can explore it further.

3.    Mindfulness strengthens our ability to be resilient. Innovative ideas and creative problem solving rarely fall into place smoothly. There are steps forward and steps back. Your ability to work through those setbacks help you to work towards the final creative solution.

You can prime yourself for some creative ideas by allowing some time for open awareness during your practice. This means, releasing your attention to the anchor (your breath, body sensations, etc.) and allowing your attention to be more open, watching thoughts arise without becoming too attached to them. It can feel overwhelming at first, but allow the experience to be what it is, and use the time to observe what arises with an open mind.

This is an article from the Harvard Business Review about how you can develop your creativity with 10 minutes of meditation.

Create some mental space, and allow your innovative thoughts to flow!

Jenine