I have a great idea. In fact, I have more than one great idea. What about you?

Even if you do not consider yourself a creative person, I bet that you have had a few great business ideas, tens of interesting ideas for a book or a movie and thousands of creative ideas of various kinds and sizes.

The fact is that ideas happen all the time. They flow freely – interrupting serious business meetings, lurking around while we are taking a shower, changing our daily plans and challenging the way we do things.

But there are the times, when we desperately try to come up with something original and it does not work! Our mind simply refuses to be creatively-productive. It happens to me once in a while (for example, when I am trying to think of a topic for the next post).

I found that when I feel stuck and uninventive I usually follow what I call “10 Un-Rules of Creativity” and they help me overcome a mental form of creative paralysis. These are actually the guidelines that many graphic designers, architects and writers already use. But I believe that whether you are trying to come up with a new marketing strategy, write a piece of software or think of fun things to do for the weekend – you can benefit from applying them in your life.

1. Give yourself permission to be creative.

Many people who start learning about self development mistakenly believe that they lack creativity. Well, it turns out that you do not have to be a special kind of person to be creative.

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“Everyone is a genius at least once a year. A real genius has his original ideas closer together.”- Georg C. Lichtenberg

Have you ever wondered why most genial ideas, breathtaking poems and break-through discoveries are written on dinner napkins, ticket stubs, paper scraps and the palms of the hand?

It seems that genius often appears in the least expected places and the most inappropriate times. Think of the last time you had a brilliant idea or found a spontaneous solution to a problem that you had been struggling with for a long time. Where were you at that moment? In the shower? Cooking? Going down the steps? Or talking to a friend about a completely different topic?

The latest neurological research has made a few very intriguing discoveries. First of all, scientists believe that breakthroughs, insights or “aha” moments happen when the right hemisphere of our brain (called also intuitive/creative brain) is activated.

Secondly, research also indicates that in most people   the left hemisphere is dominant which is responsible for analytical step-by-step thought. For example, if your right hand is dominant it would most likely mean that you rely on your rational brain more than on your creativity and lateral thinking. And while it may serve you well in some situations, you can benefit hugely from increasing your right brain activity.

Here are 9 easy-to-do activities that you can practice in order to boost your creativity and improve your learning skills:

1. Meditate. Recent studies have made a fascinating discovery – our intelligence depends directly on the efficiency of communication between the left and right hemispheres of the brain. What does it have to do with meditation? As it turns out meditation is one of the most effective ways to balance our rational and creative thinking and increase bilateral activity in the mind. Meditation also improves our learning ability and retention of information.

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Everyone has an idea of what writer’s block is. I am familiar with this problem first hand. You sit there… staring at a blank word document and it stares back at you. Your mind tells you – “Write something!”, “Anything!” So you write some banality that starts with “Everyone needs motivation in life”. And your brain screams, “No! Delete it before someone sees it! No one wants to read THIS.” So you are back where you started – a white void, where all great ideas die, before being born.

You might not have experienced writer’s block. But I am sure that at some point you have had to deal with imagination or thinking block. Do you know that feeling – a complete brain hiccup where all of a sudden you just cannot come up with a decent answer or solution to a problem, because your mind goes blank?

Following Murphy’s Law – great spontaneous solutions rarely come to us when we are thinking intensely about them. Quite the opposite, the harder we try the more feel confused and frustrated.

Why?

As it turns out, it all has to do with the way our brain works. It can either process information in an intuitive and spontaneous way, while looking at the whole picture or it can process the data in an analytical and sequential way, looking first at the pieces then putting them together to get the whole. It all depends on which hemisphere of the brain is more engaged while thinking. After numerous experiments neurologists have found that the left hemisphere of our brain is responsible for logical thinking, while the right hemisphere is for creative and lateral thinking.

Most people use left-side thinking or think “rationally” a lot more than they use the right side of the brain. You might be wondering what is wrong with thinking rationally and relying on your analytical skills.

Nothing. Unless you over use them. Health care professionals report that left hemisphere strokes are a lot more common and more dangerous than right hemisphere strokes. It may be a signal that we work our rational mind into a blowout.

Sense versus Sensibility.

Contrary to what we would expect, relying heavily on our logical brain might not always be the best way to solve complicated problems or make the right decisions in our professional and personal life.

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