Skip to main content

Article Wednesday: Using Change to Promote Creative Thinking

By: TJ Philpott

Change can be considered an asset that helps promote creative thinking. Life as it is has each of us routinely existing in environments that lack the necessary stimulus to tap into our own creative resources. Consider a picture hanging on the wall in your home. The longer it is there the less it gets notice. After a while, it no longer presents the noticeable change it once did for you and therefore ceases to exist. The same is true for your own thinking process and the creative intelligence contained within. If it is not properly stimulated it will remain dormant. The best way to awaken it is to stimulate it with something new or different. Here are 3 reasons changing your environment will help to stimulate your thinking process and awaken the dormant creative resources within. Work Station Stagnates Your Thinking Let's face it, your workstation is a deliberately contained environment designed to minimize distractions. This also greatly reduces any stimuli that can lead to new ideas. Ironically, by minimizing distractions for the purpose of increasing your productivity this type of work environment actually 'limits' your mind from utilizing its own creative intelligence. If the mind is expected to create new ideas it must be exposed to new things otherwise it will likely remain somewhat dormant. Change of Location Reduces Stress Changing your environment also changes your outlook, which leads to altering the way in which you may think. By maintaining the same surroundings, you can actually experience an increase in the stress you feel. It is natural when sitting at your desk to expect yourself to 'produce' since this is your 'work' station. This results in you unknowingly applying more pressure to yourself. Boredom and depression are also a threat if the situation is not corrected. Any environmental change can 'release' the hold pressure has got on you. This 'breath of fresh air' can re-energize you and completely alter your thinking process. New Environment Triggers New Ideas Less pressure and more stimuli allows your mind to relax and take a new perspective on the way you think. Introducing new surroundings that are less structured can also loosen the reins on a thinking process that has become more regimented. Any change is stimulating especially if the new surroundings are unfamiliar. This will enable you to tap more deeply into your own creative resources. It is quite common for our creative thinking abilities to become stagnated by our own environment. If our surroundings lack stimulation, our thinking process tends to hibernate thereby keeping any creative intelligence buried deep within. The reasons we mentioned above for the importance of change as a stimulus to our creativity serve as a reminder to break the bonds of your routine. To do so expose your mind to the change it needs in order to encourage or promote any new thoughts and ideas.

About The Author

TJ Philpott is an author and Internet entrepreneur based out of North Carolina. To learn more about creating a better environment for creative thinking and to also receive a free instructional manual that teaches valuable niche research techniques simply visit:http://blogbrawn.com

Comments

  1. These are great ideas!

    I have changed my location, moved rooms or outside to stimulate my creativity but I never thought about making actual changes in the environment itself.
    I am going to try this for myself and also for my kids! Thank you.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I like to go on nature walks. Take a pad of paper and bullet point a few items that come to mind. Then I'll go home and write about the. Fresh air, sunshine, exercise, and nature are just the cure for what ails you.

    Stephen Tremp

    ReplyDelete
  3. Great ideas Virginia. Thanks for sharing them. I know from past experiences that just being outside, sitting on the patio on a warm sunny day can get the mind churning and get the ideas flowing.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Thanks everyone for sharing your thoughts and ideas. I really enjoyed this article and plan to rearrange my office this weekend and paint my living room. Something I've been wanting to do and know feel even more motivated about.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Thank you for visiting my blog and for leaving a comment.

Popular posts from this blog

Interview Friday with Author Maggie Lyons

Maggie Lyons was born in Wales and brought up in England before gravitating west to Virginia’s coast. She zigzagged her way through a motley variety of careers from orchestral management to law-firm media relations to academic editing. Writing and editing nonfiction for adults brought plenty of satisfaction but nothing like the magic she discovered in writing fiction and nonfiction for children. Several of her articles, poetry, and a chapter book have been published in the children’s magazines Stories for Children Magazine and knowonder! VS: I want to thank you for being my guest here on The Writing Mama today, Maggie. To get things started can you share what you do to help balance your writing life with your family life? Maggie: Very fortunately for me, I’m retired and my son left the nest some time ago. That doesn’t mean I have no other commitments, of course. In fact, I’m very busy as a freelance editor, but I do have the privilege of being able to control m...

Interview Friday: Author Sands Hetherington

Sands Hetherington credits his son John for being his principal motivator. Sands raised his son as a single parent from the time John was six. He read to him every night during those formative years. He and young John developed the Crosley crocodile character in the series during months of bedtime story give-and-take. Sands majored in history at the University of North Carolina (Chapel Hill) and has an M.F.A. in creative writing and an M.A. in English from UNC-Greensboro. He lives in Greensboro. VS: I want to thank you for being my guest here on The Writing Mama today. To get things started, Sands, what do you do to help balance your writing life with your family life? Sands: Hi Mama and thanks for having me over. Actually, my family life was part of my writing life. I was a single (male) parent of a six-year-old son. We always did bedtime stories. One night John invented a red crocodile named Crosley for an after-lights-out companion. This evolved directly into...

Interview Friday with Author L.R.W. Lee of the Andy Smithson MG Fantasy Series

From an early age L. R. W. Lee knew she wanted to write a children’s book. Her imagination for such a book was cultivated early on as her family didn’t have a lot of money. She and her older brother were encouraged to use their imaginations to entertain themselves. And use them they did – climbing trees and tree forts, using a quilt for a matchbox car city, making puppets and putting on shows, and much more and her creativity and imagination grew. VS: Mr. Lee, I want to thank you for being my guest here on The Writing Mama once again. You recently just released the 2 nd book in our series, which is a great accomplishment. What do you do to help balance your writing life with your family life while writing a series? Lee: I’m spoiled in that regard. I founded, built and sold a multi-million dollar company in January 2012. Since then, I’ve been free to write full time so I don’t face quite the challenges as many authors. I write while everyone is out of the house and ...