Creativity is about putting on your faded overalls, rolling up your sleeves, and punching in each day to dig into your work. And yet it’s also about pausing, taking breaks, and working on something completely different for a while.
It’s about going on creative excursions and refusing to censor or criticize anything that pops into your mind, and then later sifting through your bounty and judging each idea carefully to determine which ones you will devote your time and attention to in order to turn them into reality. It’s also about opening your mind, and then constraining it. This is the yin-yang of creativity.
Creativity Involves Concentrated Effort and Letting Go
Twyla Tharp, one of America’s greatest choreographers, writes about the creative process in her book, “The Creative Habit: Learn It and Use It for Life”
Forced creativity is about writing through writer’s block, making time for your art even when you don’t feel inspired, and dancing even when you don’t feel the music. It’s about scheduling a regular time to practice your craft even when you’re not feeling creative. Stephen King once said, “My muse may visit. She may not. The trick is to be there waiting if she does.” Many people are familiar with Jerry Seinfeld’s productivity calendar which he uses to make sure that he sits down to write every day.
Creativity is not about doing things halfway, but about immersing yourself completely in your work: read everything you can on your subject matter; set aside a specific time each day to practice your craft; make it a daily routine; clear away all clutter; and don’t allow anything to interrupt or distract you.
At the same time, although discipline and hard work are essential to creativity, letting go is also an important part of the creative process. Hemingway was a regular swimmer and is said to have gotten some of his best ideas while going for a swim. In a similar vein, Julia Cameron writes in “The Artist’s Way” that Steven Spielberg claims some of his best ideas come while driving on freeways.
For artists as well as for scientists, ideas and solutions to problems sometimes come not while standing at the drawing board deeply engrossed in their work, but while they’re fast sleep. August Kekule von Stradonitz was the German chemist who laid the groundwork for modern structural theory in organic chemistry. He is said to have dreamed in 1865 of a snake biting its own tail, which upon waking led him to realize that the dream represented the benzene molecule, thus allowing him to conceptualize the six-carbon benzene ring.
The Creative Process Requires Whole-Mind Thinking
As I wrote in my post “Creativity Whacks to the Head – Roger von Oech”, the creative process involves both the nonlinear, free association, lateral thinking of the right brain hemisphere to come up with ideas, and the linear, sequential, analytical thinking of the left brain hemisphere to see those ideas through to fruition.
Creative ideas are largely the result of being able to take two separate elements and combining them into something new. Without the right brain’s ability to see connections between seemingly unrelated objects, areas, or concepts, this process would not be possible. At the same time, without the left brain’s ability to plan, analyze, and execute, new ideas would never live to see the light of day.
Use Expansive and Constricting Creativity Techniques
Some creativity techniques are intended to “open your mind” and encourage “free thinking”, such as idea generation and brainstorming sessions. For example, you can begin a creativity session by releasing all of the preconceived ideas you have about a topic and questioning all of your assumptions.
Other techniques create constraints and force your mind to focus, such as setting time deadlines , forcing associations between the problem and a random word, setting budgetary or spatial constraints, and so on. By combining expansive and constraining creativity techniques you can come up with several different alternatives to choose from for solving the problem at hand or for generating new ideas.
Conclusion
Yin and yang is about balance and harmony. Yang is forceful, while yin is receptive; yang constructs and implements, while yin is imaginative and poetic; yang pushes upward, while yin pulls back down . . . By using this same concept of ebb and flow in your creative life, you’ll be better able to both conceive and give shape to your creative ideas.
“Yang is as the day, turning into night, and yin the night preceding the day; the one is the force that drives the waves of the ocean forward, the other the force that draws them back so that they may go forward again.”
–”Twin Souls,” by Patricia Joudry and Maurie D. Pressman
Related Posts:
- Lateral Thinking: Think Out-of-the-Box
- Creative Thinking Techniques: The Playful Edition
- 30 Creativity Cards: A Gift I Made for You
Recommended Product:
Learn to meditate, increase your focus and concentration, boost your creativity, and augment your brain power with the Silva Life System.
Did you enjoy this article? Subscribe for free by RSS or e-mail and you’ll always know when I publish something new. (What’s RSS?).
Also, please share it on the social media site of your choice, thank you. 
