4 Ways to Amplify Creativity
“Swayed by the gentle word that lends a helping hand, actions rest assured they make me a better man” — Song Lyrics
I can’t say what creativity is, but I can say creativity done well is creativity articulated to make sense.
The obvious answer to amplify creativity is to practice creativity. Write down 10 ideas a day, be accepting of all the bad ideas you come up with, pick the good ideas, and express creativity more often.
There is no single answer to amplifying creativity, and the range of ideas exceed the contents of what this article can fit.
1. Put thinking into practice
A river isn’t flowing if the water is still. You create flow when you think. What you give your attention to grows. So by thinking about what it is you want to be creative about, you create a growing flow. From this, you map out entire worlds.
It’s easier to remember details if you are the inventor of your thoughts. If an idea belongs to you, you’ll remember it. However, by not thinking about the details of your map, you forget them. This indicates you have a need to store the information somewhere.
In storing the information, it becomes external. One importance of your imagination being external is so you can play with it. Creativity is especially amplified when you never get attached to any ideas. Fixation on one idea is a limitation. Having the ability to rip and tear ideas gets rid of ideas while simultaneously generating other ideas.
What does this mean?
It means you’ve gone from thinking to producing a growing flow to mapping out a world to making the world external to building a foundation from which you can be more creative from.
The foundation reinforces your thinking. The cycle begins again. Most people map out one world, make it external, then stop with a fixation to their ideas. They fail to identify they can treat their ideas like they are a blacksmith folding a sword to reinforce it into something stronger during the creation process.
Layers and layers generate something sufficient. It’s like the reason why you were supposed to make a rough copy in school. You make the rough copy, then you make a good copy. The good copy is meant to be solid, with thoughts you couldn’t do better than.
Sometimes you have an idea off the bat and it’s really good. That’s fine, you don’t need to sabotage it. I’m not spewing a one size fits all method.
However, thinking about how you can make something better usually leads to it being better, but maybe you can’t do everything on your own. Perhaps you need something or someone alongside you, a moment apart, but best kept in mind.
This is another opportunity to amplify creativity. You create a form of guidance for yourself.
It isn’t a coincidence people who are creative are high in the big five personality trait Openness to Experience. What experience is it you are open to?
These experiences are forms of guidance which compliment your creative process. Perhaps you open yourself to the experience of listening to a music playlist of songs which capture the theme of a character you are working on. Maybe you’ll visit a beach, watch boats pass you by and you get inspired by that. You might sift through hundreds of online paintings to create a gallery for yourself which compliments what you are trying to accomplish.
Exposing yourself to different experiences, no matter how small or abstract, is a form of guidance which amplifies your creativity. It’s something passive which accompanies you while you put thinking into practice.
2. Apply creativity more often than when you feel like it
The reason you don’t apply creativity is because you don’t have momentum.
Remaining in a stagnant spot cultivates your default comfort zone. It can be hard to get out of a comfort zone. However, you don’t need a reason to do something in order to do it.
Maybe you could think about your idea and gain momentum, or you could sit not knowing what the heck to do but start doing something until you get a feel for coherence, or you can create quick representations of your ideas you can look back on so they can trigger coherence. These methods are ways to gain momentum.
Ideas can appear just as fast as they dissappear. Finding ways to lock an idea down gives you the chance to start momentum. A simple note can help. Practicing memory cultivates the persistance of memory.
You know you’ll get nothing done if you continue not doing the thing you set out to do. Motivation does not come before you start doing something. Motivation occurs after you start doing something.
It’s like when parents want to take their kids swimming but the kids retaliate because they don’t want to go swimming. Then, after the kids get to the beach and actually go swimming, the kids don’t want to leave! They want to keep swimming.
That’s how motivation works; backwards.
The more often you engage in creativity, the more creative you are, and the more you reinforce your motivation to be the engagement of creativity.
You don’t need reasons to be creative. You don’t need reasons to do anything. You’re be able to do it. So make time to apply creativity so it can exist in reality in some way. For example, you can talk about your ideas to people you trust. Communication is a good way of mapping out creativity.
Do more studies, expand your visual library, develop what compliments what, experiment, go outside, find inspiration, watch movies, play video games, build on the creation of others, research, and let the experience of reality inspire you.
3. Be original by using boundaries
If you ask someone to talk about anything, what is their reaction?
Most people won’t say anything because when you give them the option to talk about anything, they have no idea what to talk about.
In having complete creative freedom, people become directionless.
Lets say you have to name a character.
You can ask “What name will this character have?”
You’ve seen where that leads.
Or you can set a boundary. For example, if you ask yourself to come up with names that don’t have the letter “A”, then you brainstorm a little easier.
Since you are looking for character names without the letter “A” it forces you to be more creative.
Putting boundaries in place for what is not allowed forces you to be more creative.
If you wanted to write a book by using the least amount of the word “the”, you’d have to rethink your sentences so they exclude “the” as much as possible. Here is an excerpt from a book I’ve been writing:
“In a moments pass, the serpent lost its poisoned grasp. Accidentally, it let slip a meal of flesh and feathers. Anger boiled in its heart when it swore revenge on a god born from a spark of imagination who stared down crying tears of laughter.
What taste is better than the flavour of vengeance, dear God? Thought the reptile
A rotten smile spread from behind yellow eyes, and across a loosening mind. A vulgar idea conspired neglectful of a dinner invitation.”
Here I try to use “the” as little as possible. “The” exists only because I couldn’t think of any way around it.
Once you remove words you rely on, you have no easy way to weasel out of being creative.
You realize how much you use crutches for the sake of convenience, and those crutches are why you are not more creative.
4. The shadow is the gateway into creativity
I like to refer to the shadow as all the parts of you you either reject or have undiscovered. Carl Jung knows more about the shadow than I do.
All internal aspects of you are your identity, including the ever changing parts of you.
A lot of creative people have trouble with their identity. The reason for it is their identity constantly changes, like a sea.
They think their identity is external. It’s not. Identity is internal. It’s like a community of you’s across time.
All personalities you can think of are part of you and your identity, even the darkest most horrible parts of you. When your capacity for good grows, so does your capacity for evil. All you have to do is imagine the opposite of the highest good.
The highest truths are one and the same with the absurd. — Carl Jung, The Red Book
This gives you an expansive range of personality traits you can empathize with, and then express in creative work.
Your work might not make sense. It could be a little schizophrenic. Creativity in its unbound form doesn’t make sense to our consciousness, but carries dreamlike properties much to the liking of our subconcious.
You can see yourself metaphorically as a mediator which creativity flows into to be articulated into something our consciousness understands.
So you draw from the pool of your shadow, where ideas already exist. You just need to put together combinations of pieces to form the mythological and symbolic representations the human subconscious hungers for.
The greatest stories appeal to the human subconscious. Symbolism and mythology are two very important aspects of creativity. This also means in order to make something people will love, it has to be bound to symbolism and mythology.
As long as you are in denial of your darkness, you are in denial humans can create something out of nothing.
I’ve heard too many people say “People need references or inspiration to make something creative”
I’ll validate your suspicions. The above quote is wrong. Pure originality does exist.
This is not to argue who has superiority over the other. Forms of guidance, such as building on the ideas of others, help amplify creativity. As mentioned in way 1 “Put thinking into practice” you can layer onto ideas like a blacksmith folds a sword to make it stronger.
So, what “the shadow is the gateway into creativity” means is: You have access to all the aspects of you and you can use all aspects to be more creative because you can reach into the pools of good and evil to mix different traits which then amplifies the dimensionality of your work, and through your work you integrate your shadow which then shifts your identity constantly.
Everything you imagine is part of you. You are everything you imagine. You don’t need to be normal, nor do you need to wish for your brain to be a different way.
You have what you have an must make do, regardless of who you are.
Conclusion
These were 4 ways to amplify creativity, although there are plenty more. Some people’s thinking generates ideas 90% of the time, others generate ideas 10% of the time. There is a wide range of creative people and different methods for amplifying creativity. Implementing all 4 of these ideas will amplify your creativity, as it has done for me. Make sure to create forms of guidance, like mood boards, music playlists, anything complimentary to your focus.
Put thinking into practice, apply creativity more often than when you feel like it, be original by using boundaries, and the shadow is the gateway into creativity.
