most people think creativity is the process of coming up with something new out of thin air. think about this for a moment. wouldn’t that mean it’s mainly about luck? how would one explain guys like Einstein, Mozart etc. – were they just extremely lucky? ideas came to them rather than anybody else? of course not. today i saw a documentary about creativity – not from the beginning so i didn’t get the names – in which a professor of the university in Sydney tried to switch off certain areas of the human brain (with a magnetic device) because he was certain that this would lead to a different kind of perception, making people more creative. another man was positive that geniuses like Einstein and others only could achieve such creativity because they were some kind of savants, meaning intellectually disabled in some way. no matter if this is true or not, what i didn’t like about this documentary was the way this was presented because it seemed one had to have a malfunction of the brain in order to be creative. i’m not a scientist but i do know that this is not true. i guess they were trying to say that this might be an explanation for those people to became such extraordinary spirits (i hope this was even a sentence, my english is a little, uhm, creative sometimes…).

so were does creativity come from? as far as we know today, it’s quite simple (the principle that is). two thoughts get connected for the very first time. the more different those thoughts are or the crazier this connection is the more creative is it. but that means those thoughts were both there before, the connection of them is what’s new. so to become more creative we need more thoughts. but is it even possible to affect, manipulate or even control the amount of thoughts our brain produces? believe it or not, it is. you don’t believe it? ok let’s try something: think about quantum physics. any thoughts on that? chances are you don’t have many, if any at all. now think about something different, big cities for example. how many of them can you come up with on the spot? now think about your work and try to count your thoughts. you might have guessed it already. the number of thoughts we have about something depends on how much we know about it. think about a field in which you’re an expert…

and that leads to the conclusion: the more we know the more creative we are. it’s not about luck or about waiting for that one moment. it’s about taking action, it’s about learning. you want to be creative? go read, listen, learn, experience something new and creativity will come.

a great, creative musician is not just one lucky guy. he/she dug into it a lot, spend all the time listening, analyzing, comparing, trying, practicing, checking out and that created thoughts which created, well, creativity. that’s how it’s achieved. you don’t have to be lucky or whatever else you might think that holds you back. you just have to take action, it’s completely up to you.

and this can be good or bad news…………..