8 Reasons Why You Have Lost Your Creativity
In a fast paced innovative world where attention spans are
shrinking by the minute, we are becoming more and more ‘under the pump’ to
think and be creative. We tend to hit a block and stay frustrated and impatient
in hopes of a creative flow to come our way again.
This article may help you to regain your creativity and able to pin point your vice and get the creative juices
pumping out again.
Why You Have Lost Your Creativity
1. You Grew Up!
All young kids have creative ideas. They make up imaginary playmates,
play with dolls and action figures, bake cookies in imaginary ovens, solve
imaginary mysteries when they play detective with the other kids in the
neighborhood, they sing songs they make up, they dance in free form, and when they
draw pictures it doesn’t matter that horses aren’t purple in real life.
Somewhere along the way, we
become more rational, even jaded sometimes, about the world. Those few among us
who stay creative as adults often exhibit a child-like spirit. If you walk into
the office of creative types like
graphic artists, website designers, engineers, and programmers, it is very
likely that you find toys around. Think about Google, a company known for
hiring creative individuals. They turn their their workspace into a playground
of sorts with large shiny slides to carry you in kid-like fashion from one
floor to the next and they have bean bags for chairs in some of their
boardrooms.
2. Your Need To ‘Make
Money’ May Have Put Your Creative Side
As we near adulthood, our parents, teachers, school counsellors,
and even our peers start talking to us about the practical side of life. Our
parents might say, “You need to have a way to support yourself.” Our guidance
counsellors may steer us toward a certain college degree program or specialized
training program because it pays well and we have an aptitude for it, not
because we enjoy it. Our need to make money and take care of ourselves often
squelches our creative side.
Those young adults who rebel and
become musicians and artists may hear things like, “When are you going to get a
real job?” even if they are working 60 hours a week! If you follow these
same people into their thirties and forties, most of the time you’ll find that
they finally give in too and go and get a “real job” to support themselves and
their family.
3. Pharmaceuticals Are
Zapping Our Creativity
According to the United States Centers For Disease and
Prevention (CDC), more than 5.2 million children are diagnosed each year with
attention deficient disorder (ADD). These kids tend to be harder to manage in
the classroom so schools and doctors have been pushing Ritalin, a
pharmaceutical that calms them down and also zaps their creativity! In fact,
according to the CDC, as many as 70 percent of all children in some areas are
given Ritalin.
Creativity altering and
behavior modifying pharmaceuticals are also given to those
individuals who are considered bi-polar, manic, or depressed. Then there are
those individuals who have Asperger’s Syndrome or so called “personality
disorders” who are given pharmaceuticals that crush creativity too. Some of the
most famous creative individuals that have ever lived are thought to have had
Asperger’s Syndrome, bouts of depression, mania, ADD, and bi-polarism. Think
what we would have lost if Mozart or Van Gogh would have been given
pharmaceuticals to subdue their creativity!
4. You May Not Be
Getting Enough Sleep or the Right Kind Of Sleep
When we sleep, there are two
basic phases: REM sleep and deep sleep. REM
sleep is a light form of sleep named after the fact that we often have “rapid
eye movements” during REM sleep. It takes about a hour and a half to move out
of REM sleep into deep sleep. Deep sleep is when our brains sort out and
catalog all the information we have taken in during the day. If we don’t get
enough of this type of sleep, we lose our ability to be creative and
imaginative.
5. You May Be Vegging
Out In Front Of the TV Too Much
There is a famous TV viewing
experiment conducted by Herbert Krugman dating
back to 1969. Herbert found that in less than one minute of TV viewing, our
dominant brain waves switch from beta waves to alpha waves. It puts us in a
vegetative state where our conscious mind goes on autopilot. While this can be
good in small quantities to relieve stress, most Americans are watching on
average more hours of TV than any other country.
Too much TV stifles creativity.
6. You May Be Just Too
Darn Tired!
In our modern day society, we are
on the go all the time. We are racing the clock trying to get our work done,
get to meetings, fit in time with the kids and our spouse so we don’t feel
guilty, and generally we sacrifice sleep to make more hours in the waking day.
Over time, this raises our cortisol levels and puts us in a chronic state of
stress and anxiety which depletes our energy.
Under these circumstances, most
people find it very difficult to even think about being creative.
7. May be you haven’t got any opportunity
You may wonder, but yes! Maybe you have not got any opportunity
to prove yourself. This may be the reason that the creativity has been dumped
from your mind. Even many of us now days are into wrong jobs but unlikely
continuing for many reasons. This will definitely lead into being idle in the
work which may stop your creative thinking.
8. Standardized Tests,
Stereotyping, and One Correct Answer
Our educational systems, including K-12 and advanced matriculation,
have by and large resorted to standardized tests. These tests have one right
answer. In school and college, we are given multiple choice tests designed to
have one right answer. We are given true and false tests where we have to pick
one or the other with no room for exceptions or creative thinking. The images
and common examples used are stereotyped. Even as older adults, we have to take
driver’s license tests and other tests that have only one correct answer for
each question.
We have created a society that is taught from a young age to
zero in on one way of thinking about each issue and topic. This squelches
creative ideas.
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