When creativity enters your life, it can knock loudly on your door or can come quietly through the window, like a butterfly in summer. But believe me, once it enters your life, you will never forget its power for transformation. It ignites the road to innovation, aspiration, inspiration, exploring new ways to face challenges and will help your dreams become reality.

I love creativity in everything I do in life, but particularly value it in jewellery making and coaching at the moment. However, creativity belongs to everyone.

Has this ever happened to you? You’re on the bus or sitting in a café and completely relaxed, with your mind empty and watching life around you. Then suddenly, from nowhere, a solution to a problem you’ve been mulling over for weeks pops into your head. You can’t help but wonder why you didn’t think of it before.

Connect to creativity 

In that second that the thought came to you, you connected to creativity, that secret deliverer of inspiration and ideas. Yet it is more than a brief encounter, since when the creativity comes to life it can empower your ability to innovate, explore, learn new skills and can make your dreams come true.

That moment when the light bulb switches on inside your head is actually the final moment of a journey that has taken time to grow; stepping stones along the way—the basic steps in creative problem-solving.

Stepping stones of creative thought

The initial step is preparation, when you look for any information that might be relevant. This is the step when you let your imagination happily run wild. Being receptive, being able to listen openly and well, is a crucial skill here. But being able to listen to yourself, your natural ability and instincts takes time and belief.

These skills are easier said than done. We are used to our boring or limited way of thinking about solutions. Psychologists call this “functional fixedness.” We see only the first and obvious way of looking at a problem—the same comfortable way we always think about it, our thinking routines. The natural way of thinking that has developed in each of our lives, influenced by the experiences we have had etc. Another critical barrier to us letting the creativity in is self-judgement, that voice inside your head that constricts and limits our creativity within the parameters of what we deem acceptable, based on our life, ethos, belief system and perceptions. It’s your inner self that whispers to you, “I cannot say that as they will laugh at me” or “there is no way I can solve this issue”. However, through connecting to that negative thoughts/judgements and recognising they exist, then that is the first moment that you can try and change the pattern to let creativity in. Have the courage to discount its destructive advice.

Once you have considered and thought about all the relevant pieces and pushed your rational mind beyond the barriers, you can let the problem simmer. This is the development stage, when you think about all you have gathered. It’s a stage and process when much of what goes on occurs outside your focused awareness, in the unconscious. As the saying goes, “you sleep on it.”

Strangely, the unconscious mind is far more suited to creative insight than the conscious mind, since it is freer and is not limited by overthinking, and we are not able to control it in the same way as the conscious mind. Ideas are freer to mix together with other ideas in unpredictable ways, forming new patterns and links. It is also the memory bank of everything you know, including things you can’t readily recall. Further, the unconscious speaks to us in ways that go beyond words, including the rich feelings and deep imagery of the senses.

Listen to creativity

We are far more susceptible to “hearing” the unconscious mind when we are relaxing, having a mindfulness moment and not distracted by our surroundings. That is why I find daydreams are so useful in my quest for creativity. I seem to spend a considerable amount of time each day just away in my own world thinking of possibilities. Is this a waste of time? No, I have come to realise that it is invaluable. For any time you can just daydream and relax is useful in the creative process: a quiet walk, listening to music, travelling. For example, as Sandra Schmidt Bunkers, RN; PhD; FAAN mentions in her paper The Gifts of Silence and Solitude, “Nolan Bushnell, the founder of the Atari company, got the inspiration for what became a best-selling video game while idly flicking sand on a beach”.

Thinking about the problem and daydreaming hopefully leads to that eureka moment, when from nowhere the answer appears. This is the stage that steals all the other stages’ glory—the moment that people sweat and long for, the feeling “this is it!” But the thought alone is still not a creative act. The final stage is translation, when you take your insight and transform it into action; it becomes useful to you and others.

Creativity beckons

Our lives can be filled with creative moments, whatever we do, as long as we’re flexible and open to new possibilities—willing to push beyond routine. My life at the moment is filled with jewellery and silversmithing, coaching, painting, music, and anything arty I can try. However, the everyday expression of creativity often takes the form of trying out a new approach to a familiar dilemma. Yet half the world still thinks of creativity as a mysterious quality that the other half has. In this instance the grass is definitely not greener on the other side, for everyone has the power to be creative not just with their hands, but their thinking processes as well.

A good deal of research suggests, that everyone is capable of tapping into their creativity. We don’t just mean getting better ideas; we’re talking about a kind of general awareness that leads to greater enjoyment of your work and the people in your life: an energy that can improve collaboration and communication with others.

Many of us do not see ourselves as being creative, because we don’t have much of an audience for what we do. In fact, we focus too much on “Big C” creativity—the glamorous achievements of geniuses—and overlook the ways each of us displays flair and imagination in our own lives.

Creativity isn’t just for artists, musicians, poets, writers, jewellers and designers etc, it is for everyone. It is not a rare gift for the professional creator, but a tool that we all can use.

Next time you “hear a knock at the door” whilst you are in the kitchen cooking, playing with your children, doing some DIY at home, doing some gardening, painting a room, wrapping a gift – open the door and let creativity in and think.

I AM CREATIVE.