Increase Creativity With Visualisation: How Just 10 Minutes a Day Can Boost Your Creative Output

Visualisation is a technique we can use to boost our creativity by playing in our heads powerful images of how we want to be, at our most creative, productive and happy.

Here’s how it works: Every time we see an image we give it some meaning and then associate emotions to it. For example, what would the following pictures make you feel? A Caribbean beach in a holiday brochure? A set of dentist’s tools? A brand new Porsche? A giant cockroach?

With visualisation we can imagine images that trigger within us states that are most conducive to our creativity. Images that we picture inside our heads can be as powerful as those we actually see with our eyes. And the great thing is, we can produce these images whenever we want.

Many people think they can’t do visualisations. Here’s a simple example to try:

Imagine you’re standing at the front door of where you live. Think about the following things –

What colour is the door? Are there any windows or panels in the door? What type of handle does it have? Where’s the keyhole? Is there a knocker or a bell? What’s the letterbox like?

Ok, now how did this exercise feel?

That was an example of a simple visualisation. Once you can do this then it’s just a case of expanding it to whatever you want. Let’s try adding a few more details.

Go back in your mind to the image of your front door. Imagine your key in your hand. Is it cold or warm? How heavy is it? Put the key in the lock. How smoothly does it go in? When you turn the key, what do you hear. As you open the door, how easily does it open? What can you smell? What else can you hear?

How did it feel this time to add more detail the image?

Now you have the basic format for powerful visualisations. Think about how you can adapt this to boost your creativity.

For example, you might want to visualise yourself sitting at your computer typing away furiously at your novel, writing 1000 words an hour or more. Or you might wish to see yourself opening a letter to reveal you’ve been offered a 3 novel publishing contract.

You might see yourself out in nature somewhere painting landscapes, feeling highly inspired, creative and alive. Or at the opening night at your new exhibition at a national gallery, soaking up the atmosphere and praise all around you.

Maybe you’d like to visualise yourself dancing, putting on a flawless performance, being totally in the flow and at one with the music? Or the audience’s reaction at the end, delighted, amazed, spellbound.

Whichever you choose, make it something that you really desire, that you’d love to be experiencing for real in your creative life. Put simply, visualise yourself doing your greatest creative work.

Once you’ve picked something, set aside at least 10 to 15 minutes, go somewhere quiet where you’ll not be disturbed, get comfortable, close your eyes and begin your visualisation.

Imagine every detail you can, bring in each of your senses as fully and vividly as possible, until you feel as if you’re really there.

Practice your visualisation every day, and very soon you’ll find it easier and easier to slip right into and enjoy.

If you find you’re not quite fully connecting with your visualisation, then maybe it’s not the right one for you. Adjust some of the details until you find one that is most rewarding and that you look forward to returning to time and time again.

What you’ll also notice over time is how your creative life will begin to move closer to the images in your visualisation. The more you practice, the more you make your mind familiar with the visualisation, the more powerful it will become.

:: Share Your Experience ::

Try your own creative visualisations, picturing yourself doing YOUR greatest creative work, and share your comments and experiences by just clicking on the comments link below.

Creative Health For Life: Why Short Term Crash Diets Don’t Work!

Most of us have embarked on new diets or exercise regimes in an effort to be more healthy, lose weight and get our bodies in better physical shape.

Here’s what usually happens:

We start with huge motivation and the best of intentions, and for a few days or weeks, all goes fantastically well. The weight comes off, our fitness noticeable improves, and we start to feel a little healthier.

But then, a few weeks, or even days in, almost inevitably we begin to falter. We start to miss how we were before. The extreme structure of the diet plan, so different to how we exercised, ate and lived before, starts to feel too demanding, too much of a strain and too much to maintain.

In short, the radical plan we began on may have helped us to gain some very short term benefits, but it’s simply not sustainable. Because most diets are aimed at short term weight loss or an increase in fitness, not at a long term new way of healthy living.

How does this relate to our creative lives?

Similarly in our creative lives, we may have an idea for a new creative project, begin it with huge enthusiasm, commit hours a day to it for a few weeks then realise that this too is not sustainable.

We see other things in our lives start to slide, the motivation we had when we began the new project starts to falter, our creative resistance notches up a few gears, and before long, the new project is resigned to a dusty shelf in a dark cupboard along with the dozens of others we’ve begun equally enthusiastically in the past.

Sound at all familiar to you?

And, in that same forgotten cupboard, take a look at the shelf below. Yep, there’s all those crash diet plan books...

Why don't these crash diets work?

So what can we do? How can we maintain the impetus and momentum we gain from those first few days of a new project, or a new diet?

We need to first understand why the quick fixes and crash schemes DON’T work, and why we have this cupboard full of aborted efforts.

And the reason is surprisingly simple. The new regime we took on was just too different to the habits and routines we’d been used to before.

The habits and routines that we’d grown into and been comfortable with for years, maybe decades – however good or bad for our creative health they may be - just can’t be changed overnight.

It’s unrealistic to expect to be able to drastically change a vast number of elements in our lives at once and be able to maintain those changes.

Sounds a bit negative. So what CAN we do?

There is hope! The alternative, the way that CAN work, is to realise that a healthy creative life comes from putting into place little habits, taking it step by step, building up a long term plan for how we want to live, and how we want to create.

So if you want to write a new novel but haven’t written more than a few sentences for months, how realistic is it to expect to be able to write a chapter a night for the next 60 days?

Instead, start by setting yourself an aim that’s achievable but still slightly stretches you beyond where you are right now. For example, every day before breakfast, set aside 15 minutes to write 50 words.

Once you’ve developed this habit, increase it steadily to 100, 500 or 1000 words, and/or 30, 60, 90 minutes as you build your creative muscles and stamina.

If you want to create a new photography exhibition, but haven’t taken your camera out of its case for a year, do you give yourself a fair chance of achieving this by expecting to shoot 3 rolls of film every day for the next month?

Instead, again begin with an achievable aim like taking your camera out of its case and taking 3 pictures each morning, regardless of how the pictures come out. This too you can build upon as you strengthen your creative discipline and habits, working up towards the levels of creativity you want to be at.

Remember, “being creative” is not something we just do, it’s something we ARE. Creativity is a way of life, a part of our identity.

To get the most from ourselves creatively, we need to develop sustainable long term habits, not just quick bursts of unsustainable creativity that ultimately only end up adding to that dusty collection of part finished projects in our cupboards...

:: Share Your Experience ::

What experience do you have of the "crash diet" approach to creating? What creative habits can you begin to put into place that will support your creative health in the weeks, months and years to come?

To share your comments, just click on the comments link below.