Creativity is one of the most fascinating aspects of thought, because for people to create we need a combination of freedom and restriction at the same time in the most optimum balance.
Too much freedom without restriction can lead to boundless ideas but no complete product, whilst the opposite can stop us from developing the ideas we need to create anything.
This is why creatives with too much or too little freedom both seek help from an online therapist or mindfulness coach to help them focus their creativity like a laser beam and mindfulness is often the lens that helps turn thoughts into reality.
The reason why this works, according to Mindful, is that the creative process consists of four main stages that each require different levels of freedom and focus to function properly, and mindfulness can help with all four.
· Preparation/Mind Mapping – This is where people rely on their imaginations the most to come up with as many ideas as possible.
· Incubation – The least active part of the process, where the mind organises ideas, develops them and looks for a moment of insight and clarity.
· Illumination – Sometimes known as the “lightbulb moment”, this is where the subconscious ideas link together and form a cluster of creativity.
· Validation – This is when a new idea faces the more logical part of our mind and evolves from a thought into a more tangible construction.
Mindfulness can be a viable technique to help during each step. It can boost divergent thinking at the preparation stage by avoiding distractions and becoming more aware of the moment.
At the incubation stage, on the other hand, mindfulness has an even stronger effect by avoiding the temptation to try and “force” an idea, instead allowing the mind to work subconsciously.
As well as this, mindfulness can boost our mental self-awareness, so we quickly know when we have come across those brilliant ideas that may pass our self-validation.
Finally, mindfulness helps boost resilience and helps us maintain awareness that even if an idea doesn’t work in reality the first time around, we can keep trying and improving our methods for finding ideas that do work.