We were all born with the potential to be creative, in some form or the other. Even though we might think that we aren’t creative, it’s probably simply because we don’t know how to develop and apply our creative thinking skills. I remember in elementary school we had an hour for “creative writing”, we had art day and I do remember something along the lines of creative thinking skills as part of evaluations. So, schools were tasked with tapping into our creative potential (at least way back in the day, things have changed so much now).

As we develop ourselves and our skills in our chosen field, we train our minds to look for certain things. Business owners and entrepreneurs are trained to look for ways to make money when an idea is presented. A detective is trained to look for specific cues and clues and to use specific techniques when questioning a suspect. A trainer’s mind is, well, trained, to recognize where a student may have potential problems and to use certain techniques to help the student learn the information. So, why can’t we train ourselves to be creative thinkers?

Being creative isn’t just about finding ways to solve specific problems or inventing new things. Part of being creative is having a”creative mentality” – a questioning mentality – always asking yourself what else or how can it be better or, simply why?

Here are some ways we can work on developing our creative thinking:

1. First and foremost, let your ideas explode! As you analyze your wildest ideas you will see how there might be potential in the idea. For example, I use my fan all day, everyday of the year. Unfortunately, it just sits there spinning & blowing air on me from one direction. I sure wish that thing had wings and could fly around the room and cool me from every direction! That’s totally ridiculous, a fan with wings, but what might not be so ridiculous is a ceiling fan on moving tracks (like track lighting). Maybe something similar exists, maybe it doesn’t but that would be my starting point for research.

2. Look at it from another point of view. Say you decided to have a cookie sale and decided you will sell 3 cookies for $1 in your standard ziploc bag from the grocery store because to you they looked just perfect in a set of 3! That’s great, but what if a family of 4 wanted to buy the cookies? What if someone rushed to the cookie sale to get a quick gift on their way to a dinner party, and thought the cookies would be a great gift? So now you’d have a new idea of selling 4 cookies for $2 and sell them in a gift bag. Just think about other scenarios for typical everyday things will help to increase your creative thinking.

3. Finally, challenge yourself and your assumptions. Just ask yourself “why?” Don’t simply assume that what you see is the only or best way to do something. Why does the switch of lamp only turn the bulb on and off – could it do something else? Why does my car only drive forward and in reverse? Why do pants have two legs?

So the first thing we need to do is to train our minds to make creative thinking come as natural to us as our chosen profession, or hobbies or favorite pastimes. We need to make it a habit if we want to be successful in accomplishing what we want as entrepreneurs and educators and mentors. Just think how many times one of the “gurus” have produced a product and you thought to yourself “Why didnt I think of that??” Get it ? THINK!

Wow, I didn’t realize I wrote so much today, so now I’m off to practice my creative thinking….