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How to Tap into Your Creative Potential, Solve Problems and Come Up with New Ideas

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How to Tap into Your Creative Potential, Solve Problems and Come Up with New Ideas

How can tapping into your creative potential help you solve problems, and come up with new ideas?

Before I was a full-time artist, I had my own public relations company. I had a big problem to solve and needed a really creative solution. I had a celebrity fitness guru coming to town and a fitness studio to fill up with students eager to see what they could learn from the master.

I had to come up with a whole publicity campaign, pronto, but unfortunately I kept coming up with the same old tired ideas for my campaign.

Everyone was counting on me to pull a rabbit out of the hat and I was running out of time!

Monday was the deadline I’d given myself to come up with my “great idea.” It’s now Saturday. I’m on a plane heading out of town. While wandering around the airport waiting for my flight to depart, I walk into a book store. I’m just wandering around the store, looking at books and magazines.

Suddenly, there staring me in the face was my answer! I’m not talking about just any old idea, but the BIG idea from which I launched my whole publicity campaign! The headline and picture on the front cover of U.S. News & World Report gave me the idea! (U.S. News & World Report is now mostly web based). The article on the front cover warned about the many perils of fitness campaigns and how multiple injuries were the result of these ill-planned campaigns. All kinds of fitness buffs weren’t even stretching or warming-up. They were just leaving the house, running a marathon, and ending up in the hospital! Now the experts are saying, “Take it easy,” instead of “No pain, no gain!” I bought the magazine and read the article on the plane. By the time I arrived at my destination, I had my entire publicity campaign mapped out!

My publicity campaign, “Warning! Exercise Can Be Hazardous to Your Health” was a huge success! The campaign received lots of free publicity and bottom line, filled up the fitness studio with eager students wanting to hear from the expert how to exercise properly without getting hurt!

Over and over again it totally works for me, every time, whether I’m fretting over creating a painting or a publicity campaign! It doesn’t matter! It works every time!

“I’ve realized, from years and years of experience, being able to focus my concentration on something other than focusing on the specific problem at hand actually releases my creative energy so I actually can solve the problem and come up with new solutions.”

The first thing I have to do as an artist when creating a new painting is to come up with an inspirational idea for my painting. This process is very similar to the writer staring at a blank sheet of paper and asking themselves what they want to write about. What do I want to say? What do I want my viewer to feel? What do I want to feel? What do I want to communicate? Where do I start?

That process of thinking what I want to create takes me outside of myself. I start focusing on people, places and things – not on myself. This is absolutely the key! From my personal experience, the key to solving problems is looking outside of yourself for the answers!

My husband and I ride our bicycles around 10 miles every day. That blast of oxygen helps kick-start my system and my creativity. We’re both immersed in the moment – looking out for kamikaze squirrels, etc. darting into our paths, but still enjoying each other’s company. We laugh and talk about things going on in our lives, but the best part of the ride is the ride itself – being outside in nature – away from our daily selves and being 100% immersed in the moment.

I can’t tell you how many amazing ideas have just “popped into my head,” when I’m riding my bike!
Something happens when your mind “disengages” on the problems at hand and re-focuses elsewhere!

So, that is how it works! Go for a walk, take a hike, go see a movie, get on a plane, or get in the car and go somewhere, anywhere!