By Patrick Chan

It was Henry Ford who said, "Whether you believe you can, or whether you believe you can't, you're absolutely right."

So if you believe you are creative, you'll be creative.

And if you believe you are not, you'll be not.

But the good news is, we are all born creative!

The main cause, if you are still not, is you have NOT believed that you are.

Of course, there are also other factors hindering our creativity.

One of them is you don't need to be creative most of the time. Most of what you do does not require you to think differently. Take for example, walking to the grocery store. Or standing in line at the checkout counter at the supermarket. Or simply commuting to work. None of these activities you do every day engages your creative brain in a way different or provides stimulation to evoke creative thoughts. The outcome is that you become a creature of habit and habit-bound thinking is simply uncreative!

The second cause why you are not creative is you have not been taught how to be - yet. Just look at our typical educational system and you'll observe that it has become a "guess what the teacher is thinking" game.

Many of us have been lied to. We have been told that the best of ideas reside not in our heads but in someone's else's!

And then there is the problem with ourselves - our attitudes. Most of us have certain attitudes that lock us into a status quo and prevent us from thinking something new or different. These inhibiting attitudes are important to help us live our lives but they truly get in the way when we are attempting to be creative and think out of the box.

About the Author
Patrick Chan is a creativity trainer, a bestselling author, and a full-time puzzler. His unorthodox creative thinking techniques, icebreakers, and learning systems have since intrigued hundreds of audience including teachers and educators alike who attended his presentations and seminars. He continues to mesmerize hundreds of people from all over the world every day by his amazingly mind-boggling brain teasers and visual icebreakers via his web site at http://www.wordjuxtapoz.com.

Main | Next Ariticle