Breaking Barriers to Creativity – Five Strategies for Seniors

Recent research on aging shows a clear link between developing creativity and having a joyful and fulfilling middle age and beyond. For seniors to be more effective, productive, and fulfilling in their lives, they need to break down the barriers to creativity. Here are five new ways of thinking, speaking, and acting that I discovered while working with Dr. Sylvie Labelle and Dr. Fred Horowitz, executive coaches.

1. Don’t let the people around you, the environment, and self-defeating beliefs sabotage your ability to be creative.

How often have you limited yourself by saying things like this?

– I was not born creative; I can’t learn to be creative now at my age.

– Creativity requires a lot of talent; I’m not talented enough.

– Being creative is too difficult for me.

– I’m not smart enough to be creative.

– Creativity is really stupid; I rely on logic and reason to solve problems.

– Only certain people need to be creative, like writers, artists or musicians.

In many cases, the environment in which you live or work blocks your creative thinking. How often do you face negative judgments and critical comments from your family, friends and colleagues? As a result of these limitations, creativity becomes an underutilized ability. Most of his thinking becomes robotic and operates in monologue, giving more of the same type of thinking.

2. Believe in your ability to be creative.

Research shows that creativity does not belong only to the so-called creative types. Most normally intelligent people are capable of some degree of creative work. Through perception and understanding, creativity can be deliberate. Creativity comes from many different elements: experience (which you certainly have a lot of), knowledge (which you have also accumulated over the years), technical skills, talent, and persistence in achieving goals. Creativity is a quality that can be learned, trained and practiced if you put your mind to it.

3. Live the created life.

According to Dr. Fred Horowitz, we can benefit from thinking about creativity in four ways:

(1) Living the created life by speaking something new into existence (“I’m changing careers,” for example) not based on the past, but honoring it. A created life is distinguished from a “reactive” life, in which we are under the influence of our circumstances, emotions, moods, and thoughts.

(2) Generate possibilities, advances, a new future by saying something new that wouldn’t happen if we didn’t say it. This is different from predictions, which are based on the past and give more of the same in the future.

(3) Generate ideas by engaging in conversations with people who do not share our views. It is a collaborative conversation, in which something new is opened up through the process of dialogue.

(4) Fulfill what was brought into existence by taking action based on what we are committed to achieving. Actions need to “call” us – they need to resonate with us, connect us with something beyond our identities.

4. Try new ways of thinking and acting.

Dr. Sylvie Labelle suggests new ways to think and act differently without necessarily changing who you are. Here are some simple steps she recommends to free yourself from restrictions:

* Do the opposite of what you are used to.

* Open some things for discussion.

* Do not focus on what others think.

* Get out of your comfort zone.

* Don’t rely on old solutions from the past.

* Take the time to dig deeper into the problem or challenge

* Talk to others, both experts and non-experts in the field.

* Turn the problem upside down by asking what the problem is or what is missing.

* Sleep on it by taking frequent breaks, distancing yourself completely for a while, or setting it aside while you sleep.

* Ask more questions.

* Visualize how different aspects of a problem fit together and storyboard or act out its components.

* Use a graphic organizer to chart what works and what doesn’t.

5. Have fun and laugh more often.

Doug Hall, an eccentric and creative thinker, pointed out that fun is fundamental to creativity. In fact, he has devised his own Law of Physics of Creativity: no fun, no enthusiasm and no energy. He claims that you can increase your brain power three to five times by laughing and having fun before tackling a problem.

Robb Correl offers these simple ideas for becoming a more fun person:

* You are more fun than you think, so be yourself.

* Enjoy the inconsistencies, inconsistencies and paradoxes that surround you. Stop complaining about things and start laughing about them.

* Let more light into your life. In other words, relax and find the fun you can in most situations.

* Adopt comically silly perspectives, such as seeing a problem from the point of view of a Martian.

* Invent strange reasons why things are the way they are.

* Accept human weaknesses and frailties for what they are.

* Accept all that is and avoid much suffering in your life.

* Laugh “with” people and not “at” them.