How to Be More Creative | Jim Kwik

I'm your brain coach Jim quick and in this session we are going to unlock your creativity how can you be more creative and now when I say this word some people think like oh I'm not creative I'm very logical I don't have creativity you do not have creativity it's something that you do just like you do not have motivation you do not have energy you do not have Focus you wake up and hope that you have these things it's actually something you do so it's about taking a noun and turning it into a verb that

you don't have to wake up and hope you're creative there are specific things you could do to become more creative and I'm going to talk about some of those in this lesson now the first place I want to start is the power of questions that questions are the answer I find being around a lot of creatives that creatives ask different questions and because they ask different questions they get different answers the whole point of creativity is to create something new and so if you ask a question nobody's ever asked before you're going to get an

answer no one's ever gotten before so I want to start with the power of questions what are the questions you're asking yourself to be more creative now what are the benefits first of all of being more creative maybe you're a blogger maybe you need to make videos maybe you want to be able to write music maybe you want to express yourself in new ways I believe the future belongs to the creatives in a world where everything's being outsourced to machines to automation to artificial intelligence what's not going to be outsourced is our creativity our imagination

yet it's not taught in school it's kind of interesting you can't go to somebody and say be more creative it's like going to someone again saying play the violin to somebody who's never taken a lesson on how to play the violin same thing with creativity now it's interesting because we've already discussed that children naturally are creative all the children raise their hands when you say who's an artist here A whole room full of kids will raise their hand because they feel creative because they're not limited by the expectations and the opinions of other people they're

not scared of making mistakes and when we're talking about being creative remember creativity is a state of mind it's actually a state we talked about all learning estate dependent all thinking is State dependent well creativity is State dependent when you cultivate play we talked about the power of play and how children learn musical instruments and languages they make fun of people's names that's how they learn names I don't know if your name was made fun of my last name is quick I got a lot of slack for having that name all the time growing up

because that's how kids remember things they are very playful and again learning is a state of mind and so is creativity State all learning is State dependent the power of questions in fact another great book and I recommend a lot of books the structure of Scientific Revolution the structure of Scientific Revolution wonderful book it's pretty dense but the big idea is this that most creativity and innovation in Industries usually come from somebody outside the industry let me say that again most Innovation creative ideas in an industry comes from people outside the industry because you have

to have different points of view a different perspective being outside of an industry let's say you're an Elon Musk looking at the automotive industry you're saying wow you're asking a different question if I was to create a car today with today's existing technology how would I do it now right you're asking a different question you're getting a different answer now the reason why so much Innovation comes from outside the industry whether it's fashion Automotive any kind of technology is because if you grow up in an industry you're also learning the same limitations in that industry

so it takes somebody from the outside to look inside with a fresh perspective so let's talk about your brain wave States you start at beta right now you're in beta State it's the fastest moving state right you're most awake if you're being measured on an EEG this is the beta State that's the awake state now the slowest one is the Delta State the Delta state is where you're asleep you're fast asleep so it slows down in between those states you have two states that I want to talk about one is the alpha State the alpha

state is right below the beta State the alpha State I would describe as the relaxed state of awareness relaxed state of awareness when you're in this state your critical mind is set aside and you're just absorbing information the alpha state is a wonderful state to excel the rate you're learning if you want to learn facts figures foreign languages faster in our programs when we teach memory training and speed reading we train you to get into that Alpha state of awareness it's where your critical mind is set aside and you're just absorbing information you know what

put you in Alpha State television television programming puts you into an alpha State and it's really hypnotic it's interesting because it's called television programming because your critical mind is set aside and you're just absorbing whatever's going on and you might know this if you've talked to somebody you're trying to have a conversation with somebody who's watching television they're watching sports or they're really into their show and they don't hear you and they're trying to talk to you but they don't hear you because they're so in trans with the television that's an alpha State It's a

Wonderful state to learn facts and figures in foreign languages again because your critical mind which can't handle a lot consciously is set aside and you're unconsciously absorbing it right in fact most of your learning was done in an alpha state where you didn't try to learn these things like think about how many songs you know how many lyrics to songs do you know hundreds right how many did you sit down and actually study with flash cards and outlines none of them right you learn unconsciously so unconsciously you're a genius but it's about getting into that

Alpha State now below the alpha state is a state of theta Theta it's right below the alpha and right above Delta the Theta state is that states are in and out of sleep you know that state when you first wake up and you're very creative when you first wake up you have all of these ideas in fact when I was talking about Albert Einstein doing this visualization he would do these thought experiments and he would imagine himself doing these thought experiments you know sitting on a beam of light going towards the clock but while he

was doing that he would hold a rock in his hand he'd be on his rocking chair holding a rock now why would he hold a rock because he didn't want to fall asleep deep he wanted to be right on that Brink to help him be really really creative because if he fell asleep he would stop like being creative right and so he would drop the Rock and it would wake him up and that's why he held that rock now that Theta state is a great state to promote creativity you know what puts you into a

Theta State taking showers have you ever noticed that when you're taking a shower you just have all of your ideas it's always when you can't write something down that's why we train you to improve your memory right so in the shower that water puts you in a state of creativity it puts you in such a relaxed State you have all these ideas Bubble Up I took six showers this morning before I got on camera to make this video for you so be most creative and serve you in the biggest way possible all right so you

can engineer that data State and one of the ways of doing it is when you first wake up in the morning have a journal by your bed to write things down because another way to tap your creativity is in this Delta base and when you're fast asleep now how specifically it's when you're dreaming when you're dreaming you are extremely creative now this is what I mean when you're working all day or you're studying all day at school your brain doesn't shut off at night a lot of people think it does but if anything it's more

active at night and what is it doing it's consolidating short to long-term memories trying to solve the problems of the day come up with new Solutions but the challenge is you don't remember those things first thing in the morning so you want to train yourself to be sensitized to your dreams let me give you an idea right now have you ever had to wake up the next morning specifically very early uniquely like you had to catch a plane or you had an early meeting that you had to get to and you set the alarm and

you're like oh 4 30 5 o'clock and you kind of thought about it a bunch and then you woke up two minutes before your alarm went off have you ever had that experience now that's the power of your mind you you just program your mind to wake up within seconds or minutes of when you had the intention what if you use that incredible power to set an intention to solve some big problems in your life before you go to bed What If instead of obsessing just as you obsessed about a specific time to wake up

what if you thought wow how can I solve this specific problem or how can I be more creative in this way and have your dreams come up with the solutions you know while you're sleeping we've probably spent about 20 years of our lifetime sleeping three to five years dreaming three to five years dreaming do you realize some of the most creative inventions works of art literature music came from dream states do you know Mary Shelley came up with Frankenstein in her dream do you know Paul McCartney came up with the song Yesterday in his dream

Elias Howe who's an inventor came up with a sewing machine in his dream a chemist dream dreamed of the framework of the periodic table it came from a dream so what can you program your mind before you go to bed to be more creative and again creativity can come out in any kind of expression it could be writing it could be videos it could be music or it could be just solving a problem having a creativity mindset to come about a new problem to be able to approach a new problem in a new way come

up with a third or fourth kind of solution so another thing you could do is set an intention before you go to bed dream about it and then write it down especially first thing in the morning when you wake up in the morning you're in that data State you're most creative set your intention for what do I want to achieve for today what do I want to create today that first hour of the day what you don't want to do is pick up your phone because what that does it forces you to be distracted it

forces you to be reactive it puts you on the defense you want to do this pre free input you don't want to input information for that first hour of the day by watching social media and Cat videos and everything you're in your most creative space you want to come up with the information the creative Parts in your mind and express it and express it in the power of journaling so these are just some of the ideas to help you become creative my point in saying these things is there's no one way and it's not somebody's

creative and somebody's not creative yet another way of being creative is taking walks a lot of the most creative individuals whether it's Steve Jobs or Bill Gates they no longer do these sit down meetings they didn't talk about doing these sit-down meetings they would walk around with their team they would walk out in nature because nature is a great way to promote creativity getting fresh air and New Perspectives because as your body moves your brain grooves and so to be more creative take a walk and come up with some wonderful ideas set up some white

space schedule your creative time my main message for you is this there's no such thing as a creative person and an uncreated person in this session we listed probably a dozen different ways you could tap into more of your creative potential what I want you to do now is be creative I want you in the comments list one thing you could do to cultivate more creativity in your life what's one thing you could do one idea either in a routine or something you could do like we talked about taking a walk exploring float tank meditation

something that will get you into your mind and tap the incredible potential of your creativity it is literally the only infinite resource we have on planet Earth the only infinite resource we have is our creative potential our imagination there are no limits to the creative mind and the future belongs to the creatives I hope you enjoyed this lesson I'm your brain coach Jim quick and I'll see you in our next session