Mindfulness Can Help Your Creativity

Mindfulness can help your creativity by enabling you to be focussed in the present moment, open your thinking to new unexplored ideas, and foster optimism.

Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn describes mindfulness as “paying attention on purpose, in the present moment, and non-judgmentally.” It’s all about tuning into your sense of inner calm so you can be a better conduit for new insights and solutions.

Here’s how mindfulness can be a catalyst for creativity:

1. Adopt a beginner’s mindset

When you’re approaching a new challenge, it’s easy to bring your biases and baggage to the table. However this is the moment to stay open, the root of creativity is embracing the millions of possibilities at your fingertips.

The “beginner’s mindset” is a Buddhist principle practiced at IDEO. It means starting fresh, assuming nothing, and living the question. A lack of deep expertise in a new topic is an opportunity to get creative. Anyone can adopt a beginner’s mindset all that’s required is openness and receptivity.

2. Practice radical acceptance

Accepting the world as it is today requires a willingness to sit with uncomfortable truths and to see problems from all angles before jumping in to solve them.

By accepting a situation, you’re able to consider a better approach from a place of non-resistance. At IDEO, they have a bias toward action: IDEO make lots of tangible creative designs as a way of imagining the future. But action can be so much more impactful when it’s grounded in reality and driven by clear intentions.

3. Drop your ego

Mindfulness teaches us that the ego, the part of us that demands to be “right” is not our true self. Our true self is found in the in-between moments when we’re able to just be the times when we take in what’s around us, quiet our minds, and open ourselves up to feedback from the people we’re designing for.

One way to drop our egos is by creating “sacrificial concepts”, rough concepts and first ideas that could ultimately be cast aside in service of learning. Critiquing a sacrificial concept is an invitation for people to share their reactions without hurting anyone else’s feelings.

People sometimes suffer from the “disease to please,” wanting people to like everything they have come up with. But as we lean into mindfulness, we can learn how to set ego aside. Mindfulness can help your creativity by enabling you to drop your ego.

4. Listen deeply

Have you ever noticed during a conversation that the person you’re talking to is mimicking your posture? If you put your hands on the table, so do they; if you sit up straight, they follow suit. In conversation, people are often looking for an opening to make their next point, rather than paying attention to what’s being said. But if you focus on your own replies, you miss out on the words, tone, and body language of the people around you.

In The Power of Now, Eckhart Tolle says that when you practice judgement-free listening, you’re giving another person the power of your presence. At IDEO, every project starts with listening. IDEO’s human-centered, interdisciplinary creative approach means that the whole team learns empathy skills and joins in the creative research process. Listening elevates the voices of the people we’re solving problems for and ensures that their dreams and worries are the starting point.

5. Meditate in order to create

One of the biggest misconceptions about creativity is that creative people always wake up feeling compelled and energised to create. The truth is that this compulsion is often blocked by insecurities or external pressures. In The Untethered Soul, Michael Singer describes these as “samskaras,” or energy blockages, which can be cleared by acknowledging them and focusing on your breathing.

Eckhart Tolle suggests that when you want to be creative, you should go back and forth between breathing and the task at hand every few minutes. Only when you’re clear headed can you open up to possibilities of creating something new, untethered to what has been before.

From an original article published by IDEO, read the original article here

Image source