Gain creativity by tricking your brain

I am a huge fan of hacking the human body. Ever since I involuntarily became a rather ugly teenager, I had a burning desire that those attributes that everyone implies that they are given and what they are could be influenced..

Without pimples and with a body more in line with my head, things improved a lot. It cannot be said that it was a great success, I could not convince myself that I had been the cause behind this change, but it was enough to convince me that we can influence our body, that we have a certain power over what happens inside and outside of it, a power that we do not work.

I've been experimenting with cold exposure and willpower for months. How has this allowed me to double the maximum number of push-ups I can do in 10 minutes? The normal thing would be that now it gives some explanation or at least, it directs you to a resource with which to learn more about this. Double my max push-ups? Sounds great! But no, I'm not going to do any of that. If I did, I would not be working to improve my creativity and this is the goal of the post.

Does this mean that to gain creativity you must leave people halfway? No, if it were that, surely there would be much more creativity around us.

How creative are you?

Not all people start from the same level. Therefore, it is convenient that before continuing we do a small test. Below is an image. This image has a black dot in the center.

What you have to do is stare (without blinking) at the point for 5-10 seconds. If as the seconds progress you notice that the colors are disappearing, your brain is more creative than average. If the colors disappear completely, that means that you are a very creative person..

Already? How's it going? Actually, I have invented that your creativity depends on the experiment of the image. It occurred to me that you would be more interested if I took that little freedom.

Now, if the image has worked (it does for most people, but don't suffer if you haven't succeeded on the third time), what goes to show is that your brain is very lazy and is always looking for patterns . Still lazy is not the word, it is economical, because thinking makes us spend a lot of energy. The white background and the faint colors do not move, when we look at the center point, after a short time our brain stops wonder what's in that space and assumes it should be white. Although we perceive the signs that indicate color, your mind decides to ignore them. As you move your eyes, the colors become relevant again and reappear.

In case you start to wonder what your brain spends like a 60hp diesel has to do with creativity, I will tell you that it is this incessant search for patterns, as the example in the image shows, that prevents you from being a more creative person..

Run away

Creativity can be understood as the ability to see things differently, to find unknown solutions to recurring problems, to discover something new in something known.

If you don't stray from the norm, from what is usually done, if you don't start a post by promising something and delivering something else, if you don't force your brain to get out of the ordinary, you won't get it to discover new and original ways of seeing the world in which you move.

You may have heard of the 10,000 hour rule. Apparently, those are the hours you have to practice something to become an expert on the subject. Now, so many hours spent doing the same, they won't get the hang of it. The practice must be deliberate, understanding this type of practice as one that makes life difficult for you from day to day. You must try to get out of the norm, from what you know, from the common way of doing things to really become a teacher.

But you not only have to run away from the pattern, you also need to get away from the problem itself.

Herbert Benson is a scientist who has spent years studying how people get to that moment where they say: "Damn, I got it! aha moment by the Anglo-Saxons. Well, what does it take to achieve it?

In most cases, it is a double process: it begins by combining activity with the task at hand so that we undergo a prolonged mental effort focused on the problem at hand. Followed by a period of separation, of relaxation. It is at this point when we are more inclined to generate groundbreaking ideas.

So, if you want to develop your creativity in general, learn to feel comfortable going out of the norm, testing what "shouldn't work" prevents your brain from being able to settle on a routine of patterns. And if what you would like is to find a creative solution to a problem that troubles you, crush it and then let it be, let your mind take care of finding a solution.