that’s the way aha! i like it!
November 6, 2002 | 12:00am
Over the last four-day weekend, tired from all the "life-sucking" news of terrorism, I decided to revisit a stock of books left untouched for quite sometime now to divert my mind towards a more positive read. The one that caught my fancy was Jordan Ayan’s AHA! 10 Ways to Free Your Creative Spirit and Find Your Great Ideas. And since I am about to finish the Joy of Writing course with teacher Barbara Gonzalez, I felt this was the best book that can fruitfully occupy my time, and perhaps compel me to "creatively" prepare my heart and mind as I begin to write my graduation piece.
AHA! is a fleeting moment of discovery, a spark of genius, and a state of "eureka." It is stumbling on the right pattern or set of combinations in the whirling and dizzying kaleidoscope world. AHA! helps dreamers jumpstart the dream of someday inventing an amazing new product or technology, directing a stage musical, cutting a platinum record, or writing a bestseller. Thus, AHA! makes your lives more interesting by teaching you how to be more creative, how to make your work or play environments more inspiring and motivational, how to generate new concepts for businesses, products, designs, even lifestyle, and how these ideas can ingeniously seize market share.
"Creativity is cultivated, not inborn,"says Ayan. Few people realize they can learn to be more creative, but as he contends, "applying a few simple techniques will readily change that, no matter what your age or position. You can possess the tools that will effortlessly generate new ideas and help you see creative challenges from a fresh vantage point."
AHA! offers four fundamental elements of the creative spirit captured in the acronym CORE – curiosity, openness, risk, and energy. Curiosity is what prompts you to investigate new areas or look for a better way to do something. It drives your urge to invent, to experiment, and to build. As author and business philosopher Charles Handy aptly put it "Necessity may be the mother of invention, but curiosity is the mother of discovery." Openness allows you to accept new ideas and incorporate them into your thinking. Creativity blooms when you build on the insights of others. Ayan stresses, "If you shut out, ignore, or ridicule the ideas of others, you do not leave your comfort zone to discover the larger world beyond."
A creative spirit demands risk taking. In fact, without the willingness to take risks, most creative ventures would never get off the ground. Writers take risks when they allow their work to be printed and bound, and put onto bookstore shelves; artists when they exhibit their paintings; and actors, when they appear before an audience. Businesspeople risk their capital and their reputations when they start new projects or ventures. Energy is the spark that ignites you. It also relates to the degree of passion you bring to everything you do. When you are fascinated, or personally invested in a subject or task, don’t you feel charged and exuberant? The more you love something, the more energy you will have to dedicate to it, and so the more creative you will be.
Ayan unselfishly offers the following joyful and upbeat list of strategies to bring out our natural creativity. In this book, his enthusiasm is infectious, and his treasure trove of techniques stimulates your creative juices. Feel free, as I did, to share these thoughts, and enjoy the results
Connect with people. Pay attention to synchronicity – an unexpected event or string of events you experience that perfectly solves the problem on hand; and serendipity – accidents and random coincidences that trigger an idea or concept when we are not looking – in all our meetings and encounters. You can build a network of people you can trust to help improve and execute your ideas. Creative power often comes from learning to explore and execute your ideas through or with others. By doing so, you help them in turn.
Design an enriching environment. Enhance your physical environment. Redesign your room lighting and furnishings. Use aromatherapy to spark your memories, surround your place of work and play with environmental art to spur your thinking, and finding a "creativity trigger," a cue that automatically reminds you of your peak creative performance.
Get out of the box through travel. Use it to find inspiration for new ideas and to refresh your creative soul. You can turn your trips into entrepreneurial excursions to seek out new products and ideas to import, or new markets to which you can export our products. Also, consciously seek out synchronicity and serendipity as you travel, opening your minds to new people, ideas, and lifestyles. Most successful businesspeople I know discover their new ideas while out of the office hiking, cruising or sailing.
Be sparked by play and humor. Humor leads from "ha ha" to AHA! Have it in your work environment to encourage people to explore their wackiest, wildest, and weirdest ideas. Humor allows you to think in a more relaxed mode necessary for the brain to incubate and generate new combinations. Allow time to have fun, even with the most serious tasks.
Expand your mind through reading. Start a "creative reading" plan that facilitates reading across a wide spectrum of sources. Go to a magazine stand and pick out the top-left-hand corner magazine or any magazine that you would otherwise never read, or cruise bookstores and make way for serendipity or synchronicity by randomly selecting titles to browse.
Take up the arts. Participate actively in doing some type of art to connect with your deepest natural creative feeling. Learn to play a simple musical instrument and express your natural sense of rhythm, melody, and harmony. Why not pick up dancing to project your joy, as well as your angst? Or seek out fun and challenging art observation experiences at museums, galleries, and other venues where you can see what others have done and, hopefully inspire yourself. Attend unconventional art exhibits and concerts where you can see how artists are constantly challenging the status quo, and the traditional way of thinking.
Plug into technology. Buy and learn to use "idea-generation" software that can inspire new ideas, and help you burst through creative blocks. If you haven’t done it yet, get on-line on the Internet to begin taking advantage of the vast resources available. Visit websites that can enhance your creative power.
Power-think your challenges. Implement brainstorming as a primary tool to generate new ideas in your work. Experiment with exercises like "forced connections" and "role-playing" to get people to think in new ways. Learn to mindmap, and start a journal to track your ideas and develop them more fully.
Release your "alterconscious." Learn to respect your intuition and the messages it brings. Become more aware of when and how it appears to you, and determine its symptoms and cues. It is also not bad to daydream. Use it to encourage the free flow of your mind. Let yourself daydream in a relaxed state to invite your intuition. Practice a meditation technique to know how to empty your mind completely and pave the way for a refreshed creative spirit; practice visualization to mentally rehearse an event you will do, and seek in advance answers to your creative challenges. Remember your dreams too. You can benefit from the creative messages they may be telling to you.
Connect with your creative soul. Practice spirituality in anyway that is meaningful to you, write your own affirmations to boost your self-confidence and commitment to creative success, and use rituals to celebrate your successes. Pay attention to yourself, and if you want a relative peace and quiet, go on a retreat, refresh, and reconnect with your creative spirit, or take a pilgrimage to a "sacred" site of your choice that provokes a sense of wonder and awe.
Many other authors on the subject of creativity have echoed the strategies shared by Ayan.. They are available for you to use as much as you want, whenever you want. The question, as he poses, is whether you choose to implement them. They are in your hands, what you do with them is your choice.
I always look forward for AHA! moments. They are always a thrill, and a challenge. And I will always sing-along with the ’70s band KC & The Sunshine Band as it happily croons, "That’s the way Aha!, Aha!, I like it."
For comments and suggestions, e-mail bongo@vasia.com or bongo@campaignsandgrey.net.
AHA! is a fleeting moment of discovery, a spark of genius, and a state of "eureka." It is stumbling on the right pattern or set of combinations in the whirling and dizzying kaleidoscope world. AHA! helps dreamers jumpstart the dream of someday inventing an amazing new product or technology, directing a stage musical, cutting a platinum record, or writing a bestseller. Thus, AHA! makes your lives more interesting by teaching you how to be more creative, how to make your work or play environments more inspiring and motivational, how to generate new concepts for businesses, products, designs, even lifestyle, and how these ideas can ingeniously seize market share.
"Creativity is cultivated, not inborn,"says Ayan. Few people realize they can learn to be more creative, but as he contends, "applying a few simple techniques will readily change that, no matter what your age or position. You can possess the tools that will effortlessly generate new ideas and help you see creative challenges from a fresh vantage point."
A creative spirit demands risk taking. In fact, without the willingness to take risks, most creative ventures would never get off the ground. Writers take risks when they allow their work to be printed and bound, and put onto bookstore shelves; artists when they exhibit their paintings; and actors, when they appear before an audience. Businesspeople risk their capital and their reputations when they start new projects or ventures. Energy is the spark that ignites you. It also relates to the degree of passion you bring to everything you do. When you are fascinated, or personally invested in a subject or task, don’t you feel charged and exuberant? The more you love something, the more energy you will have to dedicate to it, and so the more creative you will be.
Connect with people. Pay attention to synchronicity – an unexpected event or string of events you experience that perfectly solves the problem on hand; and serendipity – accidents and random coincidences that trigger an idea or concept when we are not looking – in all our meetings and encounters. You can build a network of people you can trust to help improve and execute your ideas. Creative power often comes from learning to explore and execute your ideas through or with others. By doing so, you help them in turn.
Design an enriching environment. Enhance your physical environment. Redesign your room lighting and furnishings. Use aromatherapy to spark your memories, surround your place of work and play with environmental art to spur your thinking, and finding a "creativity trigger," a cue that automatically reminds you of your peak creative performance.
Get out of the box through travel. Use it to find inspiration for new ideas and to refresh your creative soul. You can turn your trips into entrepreneurial excursions to seek out new products and ideas to import, or new markets to which you can export our products. Also, consciously seek out synchronicity and serendipity as you travel, opening your minds to new people, ideas, and lifestyles. Most successful businesspeople I know discover their new ideas while out of the office hiking, cruising or sailing.
Be sparked by play and humor. Humor leads from "ha ha" to AHA! Have it in your work environment to encourage people to explore their wackiest, wildest, and weirdest ideas. Humor allows you to think in a more relaxed mode necessary for the brain to incubate and generate new combinations. Allow time to have fun, even with the most serious tasks.
Expand your mind through reading. Start a "creative reading" plan that facilitates reading across a wide spectrum of sources. Go to a magazine stand and pick out the top-left-hand corner magazine or any magazine that you would otherwise never read, or cruise bookstores and make way for serendipity or synchronicity by randomly selecting titles to browse.
Take up the arts. Participate actively in doing some type of art to connect with your deepest natural creative feeling. Learn to play a simple musical instrument and express your natural sense of rhythm, melody, and harmony. Why not pick up dancing to project your joy, as well as your angst? Or seek out fun and challenging art observation experiences at museums, galleries, and other venues where you can see what others have done and, hopefully inspire yourself. Attend unconventional art exhibits and concerts where you can see how artists are constantly challenging the status quo, and the traditional way of thinking.
Plug into technology. Buy and learn to use "idea-generation" software that can inspire new ideas, and help you burst through creative blocks. If you haven’t done it yet, get on-line on the Internet to begin taking advantage of the vast resources available. Visit websites that can enhance your creative power.
Power-think your challenges. Implement brainstorming as a primary tool to generate new ideas in your work. Experiment with exercises like "forced connections" and "role-playing" to get people to think in new ways. Learn to mindmap, and start a journal to track your ideas and develop them more fully.
Release your "alterconscious." Learn to respect your intuition and the messages it brings. Become more aware of when and how it appears to you, and determine its symptoms and cues. It is also not bad to daydream. Use it to encourage the free flow of your mind. Let yourself daydream in a relaxed state to invite your intuition. Practice a meditation technique to know how to empty your mind completely and pave the way for a refreshed creative spirit; practice visualization to mentally rehearse an event you will do, and seek in advance answers to your creative challenges. Remember your dreams too. You can benefit from the creative messages they may be telling to you.
Connect with your creative soul. Practice spirituality in anyway that is meaningful to you, write your own affirmations to boost your self-confidence and commitment to creative success, and use rituals to celebrate your successes. Pay attention to yourself, and if you want a relative peace and quiet, go on a retreat, refresh, and reconnect with your creative spirit, or take a pilgrimage to a "sacred" site of your choice that provokes a sense of wonder and awe.
Many other authors on the subject of creativity have echoed the strategies shared by Ayan.. They are available for you to use as much as you want, whenever you want. The question, as he poses, is whether you choose to implement them. They are in your hands, what you do with them is your choice.
I always look forward for AHA! moments. They are always a thrill, and a challenge. And I will always sing-along with the ’70s band KC & The Sunshine Band as it happily croons, "That’s the way Aha!, Aha!, I like it."
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