How to Improve Your Creativity?

Joseph R. Kan
Professor and Dean Emeritus, University of Alaska Fairbanks

You can train your mind to enhance your creativity by:

Learning from nature through interactive feedbacks.
Developing creative habits.
Improving personal character
Energizing your mind through meditation.

What is creativity?
Some say creativity is a novel combination of existing ideas.
Creativity can come from conscious and subconscious
mental activities. Creativity need not be logical, often
unpredictable, sometimes mysterious, .

Where does creativity come from?

Creativity comes from within an individual interacting with
Nature (physical world and biological world) in solving a
real-life problem, understanding a phenomenon, or
expressing a feeling.
Creative work needs to be communicated, recognized
by a community of experts, and appreciated by the public.

Cultivating creative habits you need:

Imagination

Vision - A Mental Picture

Courage

Taking risk

Patience

Exploring

Playfulness

Positive thinking

Book learning increases your knowledge.

Experiential learning improves your understanding
to improve your creativity.
Learning from Nature through interactive feedbacks is the
scientific method of learning. It is equally applicable to
all fields of study.

Creativity is
plug in for more energy

Drawings made by Nancy Martin in 1985.

Creativity is everywhere in all walks of life.

For examples:
Chinas Deng Xiaoping created the new socio-economic
system by combining communism and capitalism,
resulting in the rapid development in China.
The 2006 Nobel Peace Prize winner, Muhamad Yunus,
put to practice a simple idea to help poor people in his
country Bangladesh. He started a bank of micro-credit
loans (~$200 each). Now his banks are helping more
than 100 million poor people making a living.

Academic Talent

Creative Talent

Totem poles for academic talent

and creative talent:
The Nature of Creativity by
Robert Sternberg
Cambridge University Press, 1988.
(Copyright 1984, Calvin W. Taylor)

Academic talent excels you

in schools.
Creative talent excels you
in the world.
Creativity depends on both
IQ and EQ

More IQ than EQ

More EQ than IQ

EQ = Emotional intelligence
IQ = intellectual intelligence

A Balanced Development of IQ and EQ:

Creativity: Imagination

Courage

Risk Taking

Humanity: Compassion

Kindness

Integrity

Wisdom:

Common sense and patience acquired

through living experience.

Leadership: Serving people with wisdom, creativity,

and humanity.

Creativity is the ability to produce new intellectual

property from your own ideas stimulated through:
Interactive feedbacks with Nature.
Balanced development of IQ and EQ.
Courage to put your creativity to practive
Seek not the comfort of life. Seek instead to
experience the challenge of life.

Thank You!

How to attain liberation of oneself?

To liberate oneself is to set oneself free from traditional,
cultural, social, political or self-imposed constraints.

Creativity produces new products using what is available

to you. Learning by interacting with Nature. Working on
new ideas motivated by Nature.
For example, creativity in:
Science (driven by Nature, products people admire).
Business & Technology (market driven, products
people need and want),
Arts & Literature (feeling driven, products people
enjoy and admire).

Summary:

Creativity is driven by imagination and courage.

Creativity takes place through interactive feedback
loop between the individual and Nature.
Interactive feedback loop is a methodology of
systematic learning for all fields of study.
Creativity produces new knowledge or products
using what is available to you.