Enhancing Creativity

The highly creative are probably innately predisposed to their condition, but creativity must be nurtured to realize the potential. Recent research in brain plasticity suggests that creative capabilities can be enhanced in everyone, and at any age. Andreasen devotes the last section of her book to general suggestions on how this might occur.

Her suggestions are similar to an exercise regime that seeks to enhance motor functions: Identify the functions you want to enhance, and then involve yourself in activities that will accomplish that goal.

Recall that the research suggests that highly creative people seek new experiences, are tolerant of ambiguity, and approach life and the world relatively free of preconceptions.

Andreasen thus suggests that we broaden our life and knowledge base by explicitly exploring intriguing new areas. Further, since creativity seems to emerge out of free-association thought, we should spend some time each day meditating or just thinking for the sake of thinking. We should also imagine non-present objects and events, and mentally argue the other sides of important issues. We should carefully observe things that we normally ignore, and seek connections to our life. We should write or sketch what we observe, and note how our ability to make new connections improves over time through such recorded observations. In effect, we should slow down and smell the daisies.

Nothing fancy about any of these suggestions, just as there's nothing fancy about a conversation. Such simple activities can become very creative however. For example, folks spend a lot of time observing televised activity. Shift from the electronic to the natural world, slow things down to human scale for yourself and/or for your students, and see what happens.

Mark off a ground surface space the size of your TV screen and spend 15 minutes a day over a couple weeks carefully observing and recording what occurs within it. At first you'll observe and record the obvious, but you'll note subtler plant, animal, and other changes over time—and you'll begin to make connections you didn't make when you just glanced at the area when you formerly passed it. Consider variations: observe a pet or an aquarium; observe traffic or pedestrian activity from a single spot; observe a shrub; observe the weather; listen to the same song or read the same poem every day (Sylwester, 2003).

You'll discover that slowing down and contemplating your observations enhances creative thinking. The current external pressures to meet and assess state school standards can thus diminish the development of student creativity.

Creativity is both an ordinary and extraordinary brain property that must be understood—and wisely and gently nurtured. Nancy Andreasen is an excellent guide.