This week, I have been listing to an audio book about creativity and how it develops in the mind. The focus is not just the right brain processing, but how the right and left-brain have to work as a team to produce the ideas. I have learned that when we relax we become the most creative. My wife has become tired of me walking out of the bathroom after a relaxing morning shower and telling her I have an idea. All she needs to do is here the words “I have an idea” and without blinking an eye, she will ask, “So how much will this cost?”
I have learned that when we think about a problem we use the left-brain to analyze the problem and all the simple solutions are right there in our frontal left lobe. These are in the short term memory, best example I can give you is writing instruction for a balloon design, then edit it, work on it some more and pretty soon your eye automatically reads the words, punctuation, and any errors are automatically corrected in the frontal lobe. Thus, we think the document is perfect, but when somebody reads the document this is new information and all the errors stick out like big red marks on the page.
The right brain is the creative side, but it is more than that. It is the part of the brain that helps associate all information with passed knowledge. It is the part of the brain that makes the connection among different object, places, and events.
Allowing the brain to take an idea from the logic side to the creative world opens an endless opportunity to create new ideas, designs, and is limitless. Toss in the fact that a beginner does not know the limitations of past failures they will take something that a veteran engineer knows will not work and make it work. How do they accomplish this? Nobody has told them they could not do it, so their right brain takes over and creates something new. Whereas the veteran engineer uses his left side of the brain to solve the problem, and their solution was – “It’s impossible”
As an entertainer, with years of knowledge, I do not want to fall into the trap of left-brain thinking. One solution offered by the author is to think like an outsider who has no knowledge of the problem. Think like a child, try all possibilities even if you know it is not going to work – try it.
Creativity comes from looking at problems from different eyes, careers, and experiences. When I started in entertainment, I studied juggling, magic, face painting, and gymnastics. These abilities gave me a different solution to entertainment problems. Now, later in my career I watch my children and try to see things through their eyes. My 5-year old son Carter has shared many solutions to my entertainment problems and each time he explains, I listen. Because somewhere in his mind are views and ideas I have not thought of and one of those thoughts are going to be the right solution to my problem.
So next time you see a child playing with a balloon, watch, listen, and learn. The lack of knowledge and past failures may open a total new right-minded view of the problem. Thus giving you the creative solution.