This technique asks us to look again at what we know from a different perspective. One of the things our creative mind is best at is correlating and utilizing, seemingly useless, disparate and random bits of information and turning them into something new and useful.

You can often find that getting your creative thinking going in one area will set it off in another.  This technique can be divided into three separate parts.

Part I

If you are stuck on something, begin by throwing around a few ideas and putting them into a preliminary mind map using even those ideas you may have thought of and discarded before.

Part II.

Take an ordinary every day object and list a minimum of 10 different uses for it. For example you might choose any of the following. A cooking pot, rolling pin, newspaper, paving stone, egg beater, fish slice etc.  So here’s what the results of that might look like;

11 alternate uses for a cheese grater -

1. Fill with earth and use as a pot plant

2. Grate any number of things other than cheese

3. Flatten and use as a hand trowel in the garden

4. Put an empty plastic bag inside and fill with rocks to create a door stop

5. Use as an incense holder

6. Put a candle inside and use as a lantern

Feather Your Nest ©2010 Kadira Jennings

7. Fill with bits of straw, cushion stuffing, cotton and wool and hang outside for the birds to get materials to line their nests with

8. Put inside a low bowl filled with water and use as a container to arrange flowers in

9. Hang outside in the wind together with other metal objects so they jangle together and scare away the birds from your garden

10. Take to the beach and fill with wet sand to make sand castles

11. Use as a container for pens in the kitchen.

Part III

If you feel inclined and I would urge you to actually do this  because it is part of this technique – make one of the things you have written on your list.  Have fun with it.

Why this often works is that your conscious mind has been wholly engaged in puzzling over something else, thus giving your subconscious mind a chance to work away at your original project.

Now return to your original project and see if any new ideas occur to you. It is amazing what the creative mind will come up with when we leave it alone and learn to lighten up and play a little.  – Happy Creating!

PS: If you’d like to share a picture of your creative project I will post it here with a link to your site.

Creativity is much broader in scope than the act of creating an artwork, sculpture or anything within what we would consider the creative disciplines.  We all have the ability to be creative within our lives and are born with our own unique and special creative genius.  This may take many different forms from a brilliance in chemical equations to a dazzling ability to create blown glass sculpture or organize events involving thousands of people.  When we are using our Creative Genius we are always ‘in the flow’.  What we are doing feels natural to us and we love doing it.

However there is a lot more to the creative process than your ability to manifest something. There are some extra pieces to understand.  Creativity is a process of bringing something into being that may not currently exist or creating a new thing out of something that already exists.  As the old saying goes – there is nothing new under the sun.

You can be pretty sure that most ideas you have stand on the shoulders of some-one’s previous creativity.  Your new idea often comes from the rejection of old ones.  It is the ‘contrast’ of those old ideas that serve to drive you towards a new one.  You see some-one’s house painted  blue and like the idea of a blue house, just not that particular blue.   So you get inspired to experiment with a bunch of different blues until you find the right one. What doesn’t work is just as important to the creative process as what does.  So an intrinsic part of it involves the ability to gather  information and experiment with trying unusual combinations of things.

Abundance ©2010 Kadira Jennings

Manifesting things in our lives is something that comes naturally to all of us, it’s as natural as breathing .  We are constantly manifesting things.  Everything that is part of  your life today was manifested as part of your life by you.  By that I mean, that you arranged for all those things to be in your life, from the plasma TV set to your toothbrush, from your pets to your partner.  It all began with your thoughts and the feelings you had around those thoughts. dictionary.com says about manifesting -’ to make clear or evident to the eye or the understanding;’

Creativity on the other hand has a slightly different meaning – dictionary.com‘s  definition of it is ‘to evolve from one’s own thought or imagination, as a work of art or an invention.’

It seems that manifestation occurs from the place of subconscious and is driven by thought and emotion.  So how is what we call creativity different?  Creativity is a lot more conscious in its initial stages.  We set out to do something like create a painting, make a movie or design a car, quite deliberately,  with thoughtfulness and often unique intuitive flashes of insight. We are still accessing the subconscious but in a more directed way than the fashion in which the majority of people manifest things in their lives.  Manifestation for most people is a more hit and miss affair, in terms of positively intended results,  because they don’t understand the way the laws of manifestation work.  Elements of these Laws have been presented as the Law Of Attraction through movies like The Secret.  So while everyone has the potential to access a unique Creative Genius not everyone does.

The difference then between Creativity and Manifestation is that  Creativity is the consciously directed manifestation of something, while the process of Manifestation  can occur either consciously or unconsciously. How can that be? My next post will explain the process of manifestation which is important to everyone since we all do it and yet most of us don’t know how we do it, or have not yet mastered the process.  It is this manifestation process that determines ultimately how successful your business is, how well received your art, or even who you attract into your life on both a personal or business level.  And of course – remember that Art is a Business.

When you begin making small changes on a daily basis it increases your flexibility in dealing with change.  The creative process is a process of change. If we constantly struggle with it then the whole creative act becomes one long battle or else we don’t engage in it at all.

The Collins Dictionary has this to say about creativity. ‘Characterized by the sophisticated bending of the rules or conventions’ …… Interesting don’t you think?

Change is the one constant in our lives, as strange as that may seem. We may not be able to predict what change is going to happen but we can know that eventually it will happen.  Whether you are a big business or an individual creative you know that change is coming.  In light of this fact it is therefore in our own best interests if we are prepared to manage ourselves because the change itself can come from a source beyond our control and in fact often does.

Therefore a key element to being able to manage both  creativity and change is to be comfortable with the idea and process of change.  This requires our own conscious participation in the process of change.  We must learn to manage change before it manages us.  Which of course means being aware of where we are heading in the first place and being open to allowing what we want into or lives.

The Key to Change

If we look at this in terms of being an artist,  what happens is that, more often than not, we take the easy way out and keep producing the kind of works we have always produced and so we stay stuck in a rut. (Of course that doesn’t apply just to artists).  We don’t want change and the fear and uncertainty this brings up for us.  Since change is coming anyway, we would be far better off recognizing this fact and instead opening our hearts to the inner guidance available to us through our intuition.  In opening to and embracing our intuition we are then able to access a source of wisdom which can navigate us through the choppy waters of change and bring us safely to the other side and into a position of greater strength.

This applies just as much to business as it does to any of the creative disciplines.    And the longer we stay stuck the harder it is to move from it. (A subject for another day.)  However creativity demands that we unfold creatively  as a continually expanding process and if we are afraid to make changes to the way we do things we stop this unfolding in its tracks.

What ways do you manage change in your life?  How do you deal with it?

Picture Credit: Taken from Suzan Lenz’s blog

She has a great installation there using old keys and this image is actually called Key to Promise on her blog – she has some interesting things to look at – go check her out.