An expansive definition of creativity – and how to get unstuck and start creating

ByLukas

I’ve been thinking and writing and talking an awful lot about creativity lately. Making up for an extended period of being creatively stuck myself!

At the core of getting unstuck was redefining what creation and creativity mean to me. 

Ever since I’ve done that, I’ve started several new projects (including this website, a coffee blog, on top of my language-learning-related projects). I’m also writing a radionovela story for a Spanish language course. And I’m writing drafts for 1-2 new blog posts every day.

More importantly: it doesn’t feel like I’m working so hard. On the contrary: I’m relaxing much more. Everything feels easier. I feel freer, happier, and much more fulfilled.

Getting unstuck and redefining what creativity means can have the same powerful, liberating effect for you, too. And even if you think you don’t need it, creating more might yield incredible benefits in areas where you wouldn’t expect it.

So let’s start by redefining creativity, and then help you get unstuck and start creating more.

My expansive definition of creativity

At the moment, this is what creation (and creativity) means to me. I update this definition a lot, but this is it right now.

To me, creation is giving my perception of the outer world – and how I interpret it in my mind – a way back out. 

Here’s another way of looking at it.

Stimuli from the world around you enter your brain through your senses. They interact with your thoughts, feelings, and past experiences until something new emerges: a creation. A creation that’s uniquely yours, because it emerged from your unique blend of experiences, thoughts, and feelings.

This is my current understanding, which might be similar or different from yours. You don’t have to agree–but doing so might make your life easier, more fulfilled… and yes, more creative. 

Why creating is a natural completion of the “flow of conscious living”

If you’re creating, it means the inputs and experiences that enter your brain flow out again after you’ve interpreted and transformed them. 

If you don’t let them flow out again, you’re blocking yourself halfway through that process. 

Here’s a blocked flow of experience & creation:

Input from the world around you –> interpretation and interaction with your thoughts, feelings, body, past experiences –> BLOCK

That block leads to tension. More and more input builds, and even though you’re interpreting it, processing it, it has no way out… Until you can’t take it anymore, and something inside you overflows and breaks. (This leads to destruction instead of creation. We’ll talk about that in a second.)

On the other hand, if you remove that creation block (and you get unstuck), you’re completing the flow of conscious living.

Here’s an unblocked flow of experience & creating:

Input from the world around you –> interpretation and interaction with your thoughts, feelings, past experiences, your body –> a unique creation emerges.

There are no blocks here, no friction. No buildup of inputs, experiences, thoughts and emotions. It flows through and out. And that’s how it’s supposed to be.

Another metaphor: refraction in a prism

I imagine it as refraction in a prism (I’ll expand on this in a separate article). Warning: this is a metaphor, not a scientific explanation of refraction. I’m sure it’s not correct scientifically; the goal is to illustrate the process of creation.

Rays of light enter a prism and are then bent, changes direction many times. They bounce around, and emerge again on the other side. 

So for you as a living being, sensory input enters your mind, where it starts bouncing around. You interpret it through unique pathways in your brain paved by your previous experiences, thoughts, feelings… 

And by bouncing off each other and interacting, it gets transformed (refraction) and something new emerges. That’s your creation. 

The decision you have to make: will you open your mind to that creation and let it emerge? Or will you prevent it from emerging at all, so it endlessly keeps bouncing around in your head? 

What does a “creation” look like?

I can describe my current understanding of the process. But what emerges as the result of your creative process, I can’t tell. 

But it’s NOT “art” in the sense most people think about it: something you can put in a museum or publish in a book. Although it can be that.

It’s everything that emerges inside you through living your life and (this is vital) that you put back in the world. Good and bad. Pretty or ugly, useful or useless.

You don’t even have to show it to anybody. You don’t even have to look at your creations yourself. You can create because it helps you process certain events. Or because you feel like it. Or for any other reason.

Here’s a random, mundane but valid list of creations:

  • Having conversations with others
  • Listening to someone, then taking what they say to heart
  • Writing an email
  • Performing routine tasks at work
  • Cooking
  • Writing
  • Painting
  • Drawing in the sand.
  • Assembling a machine
  • Anything you create at work
  • Giving someone a hug
  • Calling a friend
  • A small note
  • A sketch
  • A grocery list
  • Delivering a work project
  • Singing
  • Dancing
  • Building something
  • Gardening
  • Playing with your kids
  • ……

Creations are created through action

You might’ve noticed these are all verbs. In other words, you create by taking conscious action to get things out of your head, into the world. 

You can’t create by doing nothing, by getting input and not letting anything come out. Again, if you do that, you’re bound to reach a point where you can’t hold it in anymore, and you uncontrollably create something less desirable. 

The things you create in a situation like that tend to be destructive. Think: an emotional outburst. Anger. Aggression.

So let’s call that creative destruction. I like to avoid that as much as possible. I can imagine you do too.

The path to getting unstuck and start creating

Quick recap. If you take the time every day to process all your experiences by consciously creating something… you’ll notice immediate relief. It’ll feel as if a huge barrier has been removed. Resistance is gone. You’ll better understand your emotions, your feelings, your patterns, and your thought processes. And you’ll be able to create more. Much more.

That’s what “getting unstuck” feels like.

If you have no idea how to start, here are four ways of getting unstuck that have worked for me and many others:

  • Morning Pages (full article/how-to coming soon). Stream of Consciousness writing: the single best tool for getting unstuck, generating ideas, and working through a LOT of other things in your life. And writing the Morning Pages every day counts as creating every day. For best results, write them by hand, not on a computer. Don’t ask me why (I might looks into it, though). (Tip: don’t read them back. And don’t show them to anybody.)
  • Long walks. The solitude, the physical movement, and the connection with your surroundings sparks new insights. This is not in itself creating, but it helps with getting insights, inspiration that can 
  • Meditation. An obvious one. It can take a while before you see the effects of this. It’s much more subtle than morning pages. And it’s no direct “creation”. But it can help you create something
  • Answering ‘journaling prompts’. Same as Morning Pages: journaling, but more “guided”.
    • For example, answer without thinking: “If it didn’t sound so stupid, today I would enjoy doing_________” Anything you answered here, do it today (or this week). I got this one from Julia Cameron (who popularized the Morning Pages). It works because you give yourself permission to do something silly. And sometimes, creating is silly 🙂

Once again: creating is taking action. So do these activities… And then take action. Put something out there. Talk to someone. Create something. Unblock yourself. 

Taking it one step further: from conscious creation to creating value

Once you’re consciously creating every day, you can (but don’t have to) take it a step further. You can learn to guide your creative process towards “creating value”. That means: creating ideas, things, concepts that are considered valuable to others around you. 

Here’s why this is a good thing: that value will inevitably flow back to you in form way or another… be it through friendships, gratitude, experiences… money… or anything else you personally value. 

That way, apart from fulfillment, you could make a living by consciously creating and dedicate your life to what you like creating the most.

If this concept of “creating value for others” triggers something inside you, you’re not alone.

You (like most people, including me) might feel shame, guilt, or insecurity around creating. You might think you aren’t “good enough” to create. Or your creations will never be valuable. You might not trust yourself (more about that here

That’s why I added a “mundane” list of “creations” above: to remove the guilt or fear of shame around creation. To expand the definition to something we all do automatically. Everything is a creation. It’s the most natural way of living your life, and it’ll lead to a lot more satisfaction and fulfillment. 

If you’re interested in taking the path of value creation in your life, I’ll have something for you soon. But first… get unstuck. You won’t be able to create value consistently if you’re stuck 🙂

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  • | | | |

    #99 Why bother to journal?

    ByLukas

    Stream Of Consciousness writing isn’t about what you write. It’s about the very fact that you’re writing.

    Nobody cares about the words on the pages. Nobody will read them anyway. Neither should you.

    This is not a novel. This is not a love song. This is not a poem. This is but an externalization of your mind’s chatter. Ugly, pretty, insightful, bland. It doesn’t matter.

    There’s no great work. Nor is there any bad work. No high standards, no judgment. Nothing but what flows out of your mind.

    So if none of it matters… why bother to write Stream of Consciousness?

    Because it forces you to slow down.

    Because it forces you to pay attention to what’s on your mind.

    Because it forces you to listen to the way you talk to yourself.

    Because it helps you get all the overwhelming thoughts and worries out of your system.

    Because it helps you gain clarity.

    And because sometimes, insights emerge. Not necessarily in the words on the page. But due to the fact that you’re writing the words on the page.

    Stream Of Consciousness journaling is writing. Venting. Self-therapy. Problem-solving. Meditation. Goal-setting. Creative liberation. And anything else you want it to be.

    Because you have all of that in you already – if only you’d re-learn to listen.

    And listening to yourself, it turns out, is much easier when you put it all on the page.

  • | |

    #48 Volume matters

    ByLukas

    The Pareto principle states that for many outcomes, roughly 80% of consequences come from 20% of causes (the “vital few”).

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle

    I’m okay with publishing 80% rubbish if that’s what it takes to stumble upon something good.

    But if only 20% of what I publish is any good, and I publish one post a week, then on average, I’ll only publish something insightful once every five weeks.

    If I publish once a day, then on average, I’ll publish something insightful more than once a week.

    This is why I’m okay with publishing a daily blog post.

    It’ also why I write pages and pages of stream-of-consciousness journaling every day, most of it rubbish, whining, scattered thoughts, if that’s what it takes to get to that one insight or breakthrough. Sculpting away, day by day.

    Write more rubbish, and you’ll write more good stuff too.

    Volume matters.

  • | | |

    #43 Quick-Start Guide to Stream of Consciousness Journaling (Morning Pages)

    ByLukas

    On 1. January 2021, I started writing 3 pages of stream-of-consciousness journaling a day. I haven’t missed a day since. That’s 663 days in a row: an inner dialogues of 1989 pages poured in to piles of journals.

    Stream-of-consciousness journaling is also often called Morning Pages (a term coined by Julia Cameron in her book “The Artist’s Way“).

    The idea is that you wake up in the morning and before you do anything else, take a journal and pen, and you start externalizing the voice talking to yourself in your head on the page.

    You don’t stop to think about perfect phrasing (your inner voice never stops talking, either). In fact, you don’t lift your pen off the paper at all until you’ve filled 3 pages.

    Shopping lists, to-dos, dreams, interactions, worries, fears, excitement, goals, friends, family, memories, ideas, goals,… whatever’s on your mind.

    No poetry, no perfect prose, no structured sentences, no coherent insights – unless that’s what flows out of you.

    No judgment either. You never even have to read this back.

    Nothing but pure, unfiltered stream of consciousness.

    This simple practice has transformed me.

    Why write Morning Pages?

    • The feeling of liberation once you’re able to relax your mind and channel your stream of consciousness. Like an athlete “in the zone”, your mind becomes one with the pen in your hand, and words flow from your head and heart onto the paper. Once you get it, writing 3 pages becomes easy – after all, your inner voice never shuts up.
    • Intentionality. When I write them by hand, it seems to slow me down just enough to get in the zone, calm my racing thoughts and think more slowly and deliberately.
    • Creative breakthroughs. You start by writing down everything on your mind in an unfiltered way, free of judgment and stress. Then, you start “sculpting away, day by day.
    • Externalizing thought patterns, loops, destructive self-talk. Once they’re on the page, it’s hard to ignore the way you speak to yourself.
    • Recognize recurring patterns and topics that come back over and over again.

    Tips for success:

    • Write 3 pages today. Not more, not less. But do it today. Cut yourself off when you reach 3 pages. Today. Repeat tomorrow.
    • Don’t read your notes back. Don’t show them to anyone. You want this to be pure, raw, unfiltered stream of consciousness. This is not publication material, this is a representation of your messy internal dialogue.
    • If you have a creative breakthrough or interesting idea while writing your Morning Pages, keep writing until the 3 pages are full; then make a separate note about the idea or insight you had.
    • See it as a huge unpolished pile of thoughts with interesting connections; then use that to uncover interesting connections, good ideas that you can further develop. Good ideas and insights will be buried in a sea of fluff – and that’s fine. Volume matters. (again, sculpting away, day by day)
    • Julia Cameron suggests writing your Morning Pages right after you get out of bed – before your ego wakes up.

    Or don’t do any of the above and just write.

    Write first thing tomorrow morning.

    Don’t overthink it, just write.

    Don’t read it back, just write.

    Don’t worry about grammar, just write.

    Then when you’re done, write some more.

  • | |

    #66 Scarcity is like pollution

    ByLukas

    Some days I have ten ideas to write about. Some days, zero.

    But when I lack ideas to write about, the ideas aren’t really gone. I’m in a scarcity state: my brain chemistry prevents me from accessing the insights.

    When I feel lonely, friends and family I can connect with aren’t really gone. I’m in a scarcity state: my brain chemistry prevents me from connecting with them.

    Scarcity is like pollution.

    When noise pollution of cars, planes and construction machines drown out the singing of the birds, the birds aren’t really gone. I just can’t hear them.

    When light pollution drowns out the stars, they’re not really gone. I just can’t see them.

    So how do I get out of scarcity? How do I reduce pollution?

    Here’s what works for me:

    Notice I’m in scarcity mode. Then move. Meditate. Do stream-of-consciousness journaling.

    Then find a place where I hear the birds.
    Find a place where I can see the stars.
    Write anyway.
    And connect with friends and family anyway.

  • |

    #34 Where else?

    ByLukas

    Regularly asking “Where else?” is one of the simplest ways to become more creative and generate innovative insights.

    Not only does this allow you to connect new insights with existing knowledge and experience, but it also invites you to imagine new use cases.

    • “Where else have I seen this (or something similar) before?”
    • “Where else does this apply (to my current knowledge)?”
    • “Where else might this apply (in contexts where I haven’t discovered it yet)?”

    Examples

    Harvard Medical School professor Herbert Benson suggests the neurotransmitter NO (Nitric Oxide) may be the catalyst for breakthroughs and “aha moments.”
    Where else have I seen this before? -> Pranayama/Yogic Breathing: Nasal breathing (and humming “om”) can increase nitric oxide production fifteen-fold. Humming your way to epiphanies might be worth a try.

    Learning a language by grouping words instead of reducing it to words and grammar. Where else does this apply? -> Conversation Based Chunking; learning series of digits by grouping them together;… See: chunking concept in cognitive psychology

    Uber made it possible for people to share/rent out their car.
    Where else might this apply? -> How about sharing/renting out your home? That’s how AirBnB was born.

    You don’t have to look elsewhere.
    See what’s already there, then ask…
    Where else?

  • | |

    #26 Becoming less blind to what’s already here

    ByLukas

    I write about the same topics over and over again, with slightly different words.

    I listen to people explaining the same topics over and over again, with a slightly different interpretation.

    I practice the same breathing exercises every day, becoming aware of changes so subtle it’s hard to believe they make any difference.

    While all that energy spent on what seems like “repeating” and “reviewing” might seem like a waste of time, the constant revisiting of things we already know is how I grow.

    Because with every repetition I’m discovering a new part of the same insight.

    A new nuance that in itself might seem insignificant, but added to my personal experience, insights, understanding, might make all the difference.

    And with every new insight, I become a little less blind to what’s already here.

    In the process, I have to accept that the perfect words might never come.

    The perfect explanation might never come.

    The perfect execution of a skill might never happen.

    But if I stay the course, my understanding of what matters to me in life will always keep growing.

    At some point, through all the practicing, learning, reading, writing, I might stumble upon a groundbreaking insight.

    Or maybe it never happens.

    It doesn’t matter. I feel fulfilled regardless… As long as I keep sculpting away, day by day.

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