How To Have Hundreds of Fantastic Creative Ideas

Here’s a question. Where does all creativity begin? Where do all the greatest artworks, the most wonderful songs, the finest sculptures ever created come from?

OK, that’s two questions. The answer to both is the same. From an initial idea.

Everything we create as artists starts with a tiny seed of an idea that we then explore and expand upon, add other ideas too, edit and hone until we can release it into the world as our art.

So it follows that no ideas equals no creativity and no artwork. And a very unhappy artist.

If we don’t have that raw material to shape, it doesn’t matter how talented we are, it’s like the equivalent of asking a gourmet chef to conjure up a delicious banquet - without any food.

Here then are the crucial 3 steps for having a lifetime of fantastic creative ideas:

1. Stimulate your senses. Our experiences in the world are transmitted to us through our senses of sight, sound, scent, taste and touch. If you’re not aware of the messages your senses are sending you as you go about the day, you may as well be walking round in hermetically sealed deep sea diving helmet. With jet black glass!

   The easiest way to start to reconnect with your senses is to focus on one at a time. Take yourself to a place where there’s plenty of stimulation, maybe somewhere in a busy town, or out in the countryside. Sit somewhere comfortable and focus on just one sense at a time, noticing everything that’s coming to you through that particular sense. Spend 5 minutes doing this, then another 5 to write down all you experienced. Then move on to the next sense and repeat the process. The more often you do this, the more attuned to your senses you’ll become.

2. Acknowledge that your creativity is always on. Your creativity and your ability to generate new ideas is always on, it’s not something you can disconnect. But it IS something you can ignore. So just acknowledging that your creative mind is constantly making new associations, new connections, producing new ideas, is the first step to bringing those ideas into being.

   Permission is the key factor here. By acknowledging your creativity, by giving your mind permission to be creative, it will oblige and produce al the ideas you need. Without that permission, it will sit in frustration like a little boy stuck inside with his face pressed against the window, desperate to go out and play with his friends but told by his mum that he’s not allowed to. For no obvious reason. Can you imagine the frustration? Unless your give your creativity permission to come alive, you’re doing exactly the same thing!
3. Capture your ideas. The real reason you feel you don’t have enough good ideas is not because you don’t enough good ideas. It’s because you don’t remember them. So all those times an idea comes to you in the shower or in the local store and you think you’ll remember it and expand on it later, you simply forget it moments later, and it slips away, lost forever.

   The best way to capture your ideas is to carry with you a notebook, or a camera or a voice recorder. As soon as an idea hits you, capture it. Don’t fall into the trap of only taking your notebook out when you think you’re likely to have ideas, or when you feel in the right creative mood. Take it everywhere you go, as your creativity is always switched on, remember? You’ll soon notice that the more you capture your ideas, the more will appear. It’s like the ideas that you capture somehow send a message back to their source saying: “Come on over guys, this place is so welcoming, they give you a warm bed, a great meal, room service AND cable TV!”

Follow these 3 essential steps, practice each one as much as you can, and you’ll find the number of great ideas you have and capture increases many times over.