CREATIVITY !!!

 So what I am going to share in this topic is creativity, specifically the fact that the majority of people are actually sabotaging themselves, sabotaging their ability to come up with ideas that are going to help them in their lives, help their businesses succeed, help society and essentially help move society forward. So around enhancing your brains creativity this is going to take into account a lot of psychological work that has been done, a lot of neuroscience and a lot of information that is coming from businesses around what actually helps ideas get implemented as well as being generated. The thing is everyone is creative and one of the first myths that I want to dispel is this idea that there is segregation between people who are creative and who aren't creative and there is this myth going around popular culture right now about left brain people versus right brain people, it is this idea that if people get damaged to left hemisphere of their brain that the right hemisphere takes over and that makes them more creative essentially this all is not true.  What insights around functional brain Imaging and structural brain Imaging are showing us is that all of the brain is used when creative inspiration moments take place , essentially what is happening when an idea is being generated is that new connections are being formed between networks of neurons in the brain both between  the left hemisphere and the right hemisphere now, there are slight differences between what the left hemisphere and the right hemisphere do but the most important thing to realize is they are both involved so there is no such thing as a left brain person or a right brain person everyone is a both hemisphere brain person and therefore everyone actually has the ability to use both hemispheres to generate ideas even if you don't necessarily consider yourself to be creative compared to other people to other people but what exactly is creativity a lot of people think it Is just generating an idea or some people even think that it is producing artwork well the actual definition of creativity is along the line of producing a new idea which has value to someone and it is this aspects of value that I want to think about , it is very easy to generate ideas In fact generating ideas is one of the easiest things to do if you don't them not being very good ideas but only ideas that actually make a difference in the world are the ones that add something they have a value to someone else and this could be monetary value in the form of business ideas it could be social value in the form of a movement that people consider making society better , it could be artistic value and therefore emotional feelings that people get when they see the results of someone's creativity but it is also the productivity aspect of creativity generating an idea isn't enough to be creative you actually need to execute on that idea because ideas of fleeting moments ideas happen spontaneously and vanish if you don't do anything with them so if you're just going to think that creativity is all about generating ideas then you're going to end up not producing much with your life but our all ideas good well the answer again is no ,In fact the brain is one of the laziest organs that you're going to meet because it has learnt to be so advanced that it can take shortcuts when it recognizes what it needs to do so if you set someone a creativity challenge essentially asking them to generate an idea most people's brains will follow the following sequence the first ideas that they come up with they're actually just memories so the brain has been taught through practice and experience that if they set a certain challenge or asked a certain challenges or asked a certain question certain answers will be correct answers and  these are therefore the right answers to give so if you set someone a creativity challenge , the first thing that is going to come into their mind are memories if you then push people further and say look yeah we know that works but how about something a bit more special then they'll come up with ordinary ideas and ordinary ideas are ideas that they know work because they're very similar to memories essentially this could be someone just tweaking a color or tweaking a size of something or doing the same piece of work but in a different location but fundamentally it is still close enough to the safe memory of what is working to be assured  of being correct , but it is only when you say to people look we know those ideas have worked in the past but they're not going to be good enough for the next thing we are trying to do we need to think of something that is different and that can be quite uncomfortable for a lot of people when you push them past what their initial ideas are because at that point the brains kind of thought you I've completed my task , I've given you the idea therefore I'm going to shut off again , if you push it further it starts then pushing ideas into new territories and this is where connections get formed in the brain between ideas and memories that didn't exist previously . This is where you start getting special ideas, ideas that actually have real value and impact on society. So if having an ordinary idea is something along the lines of you're a jazz musician and you've got a jazz song that you've written previously but you have played again just with a slightly different tune or in a different key but it is fundamentally the same song , yes it is a different idea but it is very similar to the previous one if you then try and push it further to turn into a completely new song ,that is a special idea something that didn't exist previously something that has value that didn't exist previously . Examples of special ideas aren't just from the arts it includes everything from the theory of relativity which fundamentally changed what came before it to some artistic concepts like Impressionism or post-modernism, jazz , bebop, , break dancing, essentially things that change the art form and even in business ideas like the IPhone , ideas like internal combustion engine , ideas like the wheel of things that didn't exist before hand and these are the ideas that actually have the most value and push people and society forward so if you want to have a special idea there has been a lot of research in psychology and neuroscience about what is actually going on in your brain.

       Essentially there are four steps that most people's brains go through. The first one is preparation this is about absorbing knowledge and absorbing and understanding and insight around the challenge that you're facing every idea is based and built on knowledge you already have , it is impossible for you to write a French sonnet a French poem if you know no French  so that is why it is important to understand that ideas don't just spontaneously arise they're being built on in your brain by combining new connections between what you already know .The second step is incubation and a lot of people don't realize this the majority of ideas happen when you have prepared your brain taken on board knowledge but then step away and give it time to actually form those new connections because 99% of the activity that is going on in your brain is what you're not aware of , Everything you do that you're conscious of which includes movement talking fantasizing visualizing all of that actually only takes up 1% of your mental activity based on some science being done at the University collage of Landon the other 99%  some of it goes around regulating hart function and the hormone levels in your body but a lot of it is also about the brain forming these new connections and it happens subconsciously without you being aware of it , if your brain then forms a new connection that might solve a challenge and therefore  might be a good idea , this is when after a while it might come to you as a moment of Eureka sort of inspiration or illumination moment and this is why a lot of artists cannot explain where their best ideas came from  because in reality it was happening subconsciously and then only when an idea the brain recognized that it might be a good enough one did it actually visualize it in the form of an idea that then they could work on but after you have this moment where you realize you've had an idea it is then also important to verify this idea to deny a two degree your brain does this automatically thinking okay no that won't work ignore that and sometimes it requires experimentation and tweaking and refining for it to actually turn into something. Well then why is it that certain people consider themselves more creative than others is there actually a difference between certain people being more creative than others and so there is this big debate about nurture versus nature , is there genetic basis that some people are just naturally more creative and better a table to generate ideas and others or is it all about how you brought up at school a very famous study happened in the 70s where people were said a creativity test and an IQ  test and this was done between sets of twins which allowed them to see whether or not genetics had a factor in determining abilities in people. When it came to the intelligence the twin tests showed that 80% of your intelligence is hereditary based on your genetics but only 30% of your creativity was based on your genetics this meant that 70% of people's creativity was actually based on aspects that had been built up by their behavior when they were growing up and were still happening when they were developing now so is it all nurture. There was another study that was done asking school children about whether or not they're creative, in the second grade the number of students that answered I am creative was 90% but by the time they reached high school that had dropped to about 5% or5-10 %. So there is something that is happening between these formative years of pre-schooling and going into your early teens that is essentially drilling out the creativity of people, what is going on? Well there are lot of theories going around but one of the main things is that people being taught to give the right answers and it is something that everyone of us is going through now  a lot of you are doing exams and most important is to do things properly to pass the test, to move forward in life . A lot of our upbringing is about schooling , Literally testing and giving the right answer and being punished if you give the wrong answer but it is also a bit more abstract sometimes the fact that when you generate a new idea and you try and explain it all ideas are still rough when they're first visualized and therefore your view if you try and explain a new concept to someone and it is not yet perfect because you haven't given it the time to refine it, It is going to sound imperfect and therefore the most common response you're going to get to a new idea is criticism.
                                                                                                                                                       
  People are taught to avoid criticism and to do things properly to succeed in life.So there is a lot that can be learned from what is going on in schools that is essentially drilling people to avoid being creative. So what is the solution? Is art the solution should we teach people to all be like artists? Well, the fact is that lot of the artists are some of the most creative people in the world if you asked a lot of people to name creative people they would name artists but not all artists are creative. I know it is a very controversial statement but not all art requires creativity, in fact, a lot of art is actually just copying other people's art or performing other people's ideas. Think of the difference between a composer and a violinist performing that person's music or Think of a difference between a dancer and a choreographer. Teaching art isn't the solution. It is a very important aspect of the schooling system but it is not the only solution that needs to happen countries like China are investing billions of pounds to improve their art education system with the goal of improving their innovativeness as a nation and as a country later on but there, if they take the number of artistic pieces as a representation of how innovative their country is actually becoming, it is a false analogy. There are other things that relate to creativity more than just being able to perform someone else's work and being graded that you have the skill and talent to perform it well. So can you actually measure creativity, can you be objective about it and the answer is yes. There are number of creativity tests that set someone a challenge and then measure their responses. A person is asked to think of the number of creative uses you can think of for an object and it is a standard test to use and there are number of ways you judge people first of all number of responses you can give in a minute, for example, a person gave 3 uses which is pretty good . For those who are interested, they are still working on the average but it is looking to be about four individual ideas per minutes as being the world average but as well as the number of ideas it is also just important to look at the type of idea an individual comes up with. If they gave ten ideas that were all just different colors for the same object that is essentially only still one idea and then there is also the ability to look at different responses between different people, so if you take a hundred or a thousand children all doing the same test you can then see this one child thought of an idea that no one else in that entire group looked at. So you can measure objectively someone's creativity by a number of different challenges-how many ideas they can generate to a specific challenge and what is actually triggering these ideas, So a bit of interesting news from neuroscience is that they're starting to understand what is going on in your brain when you have ideas.Essentially just like your heartbeat your brain has a different frequency depending on how active it is. When you are asleep you are at what is called theta level where you are having dreams in your brains going a bit haywire but there is an actual rhythm and as you wake up you move into what is called an alpha state that is where you're still quite relaxed traditionally when you're just woken up or you're doing something relaxing like you're in the shower you're exercising, you're walking , you're daydreaming etc and then when you start to need to focus especially when you start going to work or studying, your brain becomes really quite active and it moves into what is called beta state . What studies have shown is that different aspects of creativity require different brain activity and they actually cancel each other out. If you want to generate ideas and have these inspirational moments and allow your brain to form these subconscious new connections generating ideas actually happens at this low alpha level but if you want to then be able to focus on those ideas refine them and turn them into something that is valuable and putting them out there to the rest of the world, then you need to have to focusing ability of a beta level. So what this means is you can't just stay in one brain activity level forever and assume that you're going to have the best ideas. You actually need to oscillate between relaxation and focus in order to be able to be creative but there is another thing that you probably didn't realize your brain is doing and that is actually inhibiting your ability to come up with ideas in the first place. There is a famous study done by Charles limb in America where he took freestyle rappers and freestyle jazz pianists and put them in an MRI scanner to see what parts of the brain were being activated once they started improvising essentially coming up with a stream of ideas on the fly and what they found is there is actually a part of the brain that gets deactivated called the dorsal lateral prefrontal cortex , it is just in your forehead behind your eyes and it is one of the most advanced parts of the human brain and this part of the brain is essentially controlling impulse control . It is the sort of brain part that prevents you from doing rash things and it is especially important when you're meeting your in-laws for the first time or you're in a job interview etc. But it is actually filtering everything that is going on in your brain and therefore preventing ideas from surfacing. So if you can learn to control your dorsal lateral prefrontal cortex it'll be a lot easier for you to be able to visualize ideas essentially on-demand. So when it comes to enhancing your creativity what can you actually do? Well, there are temporary solutions and then there are long-term solutions. Temporary solutions include getting yourself into alpha mental state things like taking a walk, daydreaming essentially things that you find relaxing different people have different things they like to do. The other thing is changing your surroundings some people essentially get stuck in a rut when they have been focusing on the same challenge day after day it is actually important to give your brain variety in order for it to be able to retrigger the ability to form new connections because otherwise it gets stuck in the focused state and doesn't allow the subconscious work to happen and chaining your routine as well something as simple as being told to make a sandwich in a new way. Studies have shown that can instantly raise your creativity by about 14%. So walking to school a different way, walking to work a different way, going to different places for lunch all of these things are changes to your routine. There are also long-term changes that you can make. If you want to actually get your brain structure to change so it becomes easier for you to become creative on command. Regular creativity challenges a lot of do sudocoos , there is actually creativity aspects challenges that you can do every day in order for you to start forming those new connections more easily in your subconscious you can also do improvisation training or essentially Any training that helps you shut off or able to focus your ability to stop your dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, to be able to  control that inhibition in your brain and finally gathering new knowledge and experiences . All ideas and all special ideas are based on knowledge you already have if you increase the variety of your knowledge outside of your speed of specialty, even going and trying things that scare you a bit and essentially being curious about other things in the world that is going to give you a much larger breath of knowledge and experience that can form new connections. So these are all ways that you can enhance your creativity based on what science has told us. But there is one last thing I want you to think about ideas are worthless unless you actually go and do something with them. So one of the most important parts of creativity is once you actually have an idea go and actually do something about it, go and make the world a better place with it.   

©Malik Aaqib