Let creativity be your lifecoach

Every 2 or 3 months I tend to change the setting in my room. I move around my furniture till I find a new setting that I like more. I have done this since I was a very young kid and my parents always thought it was a bit weird. The thing is that after 2 or 3 months I get used to my room, it’s boring. My room has so much potential to be used in different ways. I have lived in my room for 1 year now and I have already changed it about 5 times.

Each time I change my room, my roommate comes in. He is always surprised to see that I changed my room setting again. Each time I change it he tends to say: "Okay, but this time you really have the perfect setting.” He said this for the past 3 times. Is this his lack of creativity?

I can tell you honestly that he isn’t the only one who thinks that every time I change my room it looks better. Although everyone who tells me that the setting in my room looks better, each of them tell me they can’t do it with their room. They tell me that either their room isn’t big enough for it or that my room has so many options. Instead of thinking that I might be a creative genius, they think my room is just special.

Creative genius?
Well yea, maybe I’m not a creative genius. Maybe the truth is somewhere in the middle? What I have noticed is that my room has a lot of space. I live in an 18-meter square student room and now you might be thinking how is that a lot of space. But space is relative to how much stuff you put in the space. I mean if I put 18 square meters of stuff in my room, I hardly have any space. It’s just common sense. And if I put 18 square meters of stuff in my room, it’s very hard to find a different setting for the room. The more stuff, the less space to move everything around in.

Although this might be some fun facts, my main point isn’t that you shouldn’t overfill your room with stuff (although you really shouldn’t.) My main point is that you need space to be creative. You need space to think, space to try and space to fail. ‘Olaf, the f*ck are you talking about?’

Creativity
Well, in the last year I have read and watched a lot about creativity and what’s commonly said is that you need to try and fail. Even all my friends telling me they can’t change their rooms is bullshit. None of them has even tried to change their rooms. When I start changing my room, there is just 1 thing that I want to move. I take the time to move that and then I’m like okay and now? I start moving the next item to a new location in my room and I keep doing that till I’m like: “aaaaaaaah, it’s okay this way.” And this takes time, effort in trying and I ‘fail’ often.

Failing might sound weird to use in this case. What I mean by failing is that I often move the first item and think:” Nah, this isn’t going to work”. But instead of moving it back, I try something else. The same thing counts for writing this article. It’s not like I have a crazy good idea on how to write this article out. I just try something and then make it better. By trying I can see if I like the way that I wrote it. When in a couple of months I have a couple of articles and I have improved I can start asking others for feedback. I can see this as failures if they don’t like it at all. But I can also see it as potential for improvement. By trying you can improve ideas and when you do, people suddenly call you creative.

So what is creativity then? One definition used in the research field of creativity is ‘Thinking of something new with some applicable value.’ Me changing the setting of my room is creative if it has an applicable value for me. For me changing my room has a lot to do with the fact that it’s getting colder, so I want my bed to be closer to the heater in my room (yes, I like to sleep in a warm and comfy bed just like everybody. I haven’t found a life hack to change this.)

By thinking flexible (or giving your thoughts space) you can improve your creativity. Instead of thinking:” I can’t change my room because it’s too small or this is the only option. Give your brain flexibility to think how you could do it and then just try something. Let irrelevant information enter your mind and see if you can do something with it.

Interesting side note
It’s an interesting fact that students who were studying or traveling for a longer period in foreign countries were more creative when they arrived back home. Researchers thought the cause could be that they learned multiple cultures or at least one other than their own. By learning a different perspective their brains would have been more flexible in their thinking and because of this, they would get higher scores on creativity tests.

Let's make this practical
At this point, you might be thinking:” Okay, creativity sounds interesting and now I know how to improve it. But how can I use it?” Although most people think of art when they hear the word creativity, creativity is actually found everywhere. You can be creative in how you get to school, what routes you pick, what food you eat in a day, where you get the food from and how you use your time. Creativity can just be thinking of new ways to do thinks so it’s easier or better to do them. Maybe you want to save time or life healthier. Creativity can help you with both. I believe that creativity can help improve the life of every person. Cause creativity comes partly from having an open and flexible mindset. This means that you will always see potential and opportunities.

The ‘what if’ argument
A lot of people say:” But what if my idea doesn’t work or what if I’m not a creative person.” Well first, if your idea doesn’t work don’t stop there. Just because you tried something and it didn’t work doesn’t mean you can’t get the potential out of something that you want to get. This idea just didn’t work, the potential is still there to take, you just need to find another way. And there are plenty of ways that lead to Rome. You just need to find 1 of them. I will finish the article with an example of this.

Second, if you’re the person who doesn’t think of her/himself as a creative person. Then let me tell you a secret. Everybody is creative. Right now, you’re just stopping yourself from being creative because you’re not having an open and flexible mind. The fact that you’re having a hard time accepting that means that I’m right. You once were a little kid and you tried thinks. You weren’t afraid to fail. You know how many people tell me they can’t draw if I ask them to draw something? I’m not asking those people to make me the Monalisa, I ask them to draw. Just as I ask you to be creative and not be Leonardo Da Vinci. Just because the world has set such a high standard for the idea of creativity doesn’t mean that you aren’t. The key to discovering that you are creative is just trying. Just like the key to learning that you can draw is by drawing (stick figures can show you a whole story if you make a few small drawings and everybody can make stick figures.)

A final example
So everybody can be creative, now you know how to improve your creative skills a little bit and how creativity works. You now see that creativity can be used in everyday life to improve your own life in different ways. And now I will give you an example of how I did this and how I failed at times but never quitted.

I wanted to read more books. Now I have tried to read more books for the past 2 years but I kept failing in doing so. The biggest problem was that I really didn’t know what kind of books I actually wanted to read. So instead of pushing myself to read books that other people liked, I told myself to go to the bookstore every week. This was very easy to do for me. At some point, I had found a couple of books that I really wanted to read. So I bought them. After buying them I started to read them, but a new problem occurred. I didn’t know what book I wanted to read first and my concentration was about 15min when it came to reading. For me, it felt like studying whenever I was reading and that did not work for me.

Instead of planning to read an hour every day (yes, I was stupid enough to try that first), I tried to read 20min every evening. Cause I couldn’t choose what to read I first just focused on getting the habit of reading in and I just picked whatever book I felt like reading at the moment of reading. Boy did that go well….. I forgot to bookmark every time I read (I was ignorant enough to think that I would remember it, with every book.) This ended up in me getting unmotivated to read again since I kept reading the same chapters of different books.

This wasn’t the only problem that occurred to me, books are expensive and if I want to bring a book I need to pick which book I want to read in the morning. I didn’t like that, I liked the idea of bringing all my books with me all the time. Luckily we have something called an e-reader in this age and I don’t have to carry all books around. So, I bought an e-reader online, put all my books on it. This also solved my bookmark problem since the e-reader just remembers it for me.

Nowadays I read four times a day for about 20 to 30 minutes. This is a total of 2 hours a day that I read. Most days I actually do it since it’s so easy for me to do now. I have about 30 books that I still want to read and I have about 4/5 books on my e-reader that I’m currently reading. ‘Sapiens’ is the book I’m currently most interested in and most reading time goes into that book.

Now I hope you liked the article and you’re able to improve your life with some creative ideas. Let’s just try something! Also, check out my other articles. If you want to know more about me, make sure to check out my story on my website: www.obooij.com