How to Boost Your Creative Powers

Can we improve our ability to be creative? Yes. In fact, learning to be more creative can be quite enjoyable and easy to do. There are many techniques that have been developed to improve creative and artistic ability, as well as to improve creative problem solving.

These include such techniques as brain-storming, image streaming, hypnosis, and various forms of meditation.

What all creativity enhancement techniques have in common is they aim to bypass the inner judge or critic in our head.

Most of us have an inner voice that is running a constant commentary on everything we think and do. This inner voice may barely be noticed most of the time, yet it has a great impact on what we can accomplish in our life. In many of us this voice is usually critical of our efforts, and no matter what we do it's never good enough to please our inner critic.

As we attempt to come up with new ideas our inner voice may be saying, "This idea is stupid." Or it might tell us, "I should never be mediocre or average, I must be brilliant and perfect all the time. If I can't be totally brilliant and innovative right from the start, I am a failure and it's better not to even try".

Sometimes we may not be aware of an inner dialogue, but we may picture images of ourselves failing, or we may have sensations of fear and embarrassment that stop us from pursuing new ideas or new actions.

Why is it important to bypass or shut off our inner critic when we want to be creative? In most of us, the inner critic is quite harsh and is never pleased with anything we do. None of our ideas are good enough. All our ideas are stupid and bound to fail.

What effect does this constant running dialogue in our heads have on us? Our inner critic is trying to make us perfect, but it usually has the opposite effect. If our inner judgmental dialogue is mostly negative, our creative abilities will suffer.

Instead of enabling us to come up with better ideas, it is far more likely that the negative inner dialogue will cause our ability to come up with new ideas to dry up completely. The creative part of us will feel inadequate and embarrassed and shut down.

Young children are born creative. They are very willing to explore and try new combinations. They don't have a concept of failure. The younger they are, the less they have set ideas in their mind of how things are supposed to be.

As we get older, most of us develop an inner voice that constantly tells us whether what we are doing is acceptable or not. This inner critic can squash our creativity.

Your inner critic isn't being evil when it criticizes you, or when it tells you your ideas are not very good. Your critic is actually trying to protect you from being ashamed or embarrassed by the potentially negative comments and reactions of other people to your ideas.

The problem is that the inner critical voice can become so automatic that it will criticize your ideas before you even formulate them. It just starts to spew forth its negative assessments before you have a chance to develop and realistically evaluate your ideas.

Eventually, under the constant barrage of inner criticism, your creative side may shut down in fear and discouragement. In some people this shut down of creativity can become permanent.

Even people who are very bright and very talented can suffer because of the messages from their internal critical voice, telling them that nothing they do or think is good enough.

The critical, judgmental, analytical function of the brain is not the part that knows how to generate creative ideas. Furthermore, the brainwaves that you generate when you are being rational and analytical are quite different than the brainwaves that go with maximum creativity.

Even if you have the most kindly inner critic in the world, you still need to bypass the judgmental part of yourself when you want to be creative.

When you need to be more creative, send your inner critic out for a walk!

This article is taken from the new book by Royane Real titled "How You Can Be Smarter - Use Your Brain to Learn Faster, Remember Better, and Be More Creative" Check it out at http://www.royanereal.com