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Let’s begin with answering the critical question: What in fact is creative thinking?

It is the ability to use your imagination and lead your mind to think outside of the box. It is an unique approach that bears fruit such as life-changing ideas and unconventional solutions that couldn’t be generated without escaping from traditional thinking patterns. Creative thinking can be applied to the situations that tend to cause trouble to a lot of people such as making important decisions, solving critical problems or breaking artistic stagnation.

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But why is creative thinking so important?

Creative thinking leads to the exploration of perspectives that in other cases we would never think of and because of that it opens a palette of new possibilities and chances. Thinking outside of the box encourages us to challenge social stereotypes and our own assumptions and may even tell us something new about ourselves and our habits in terms of coping with difficult situations. Additionally, being a creative thinker makes us stand out on the job market, which is validated by the fact that in 2020 creativity has been acknowledged as the most in-demand soft skill by LinkedIn. In the long run, creative thinking stimulates our brain to work harder so that it allows us to stay mentally sharp and quick-witted even when our body is slowly getting older.

What are two easy-to-apply techniques of creative thinking?

Reframing is an approach that requires reconceptualization of a problem by looking at it from various perspectives. Reframing means changing perception of the given problem and reinterpreting it in new ways. To make reframing easier we have come up with a list of questions that you can ask yourself when you feel as if you have came up a wall while solving a problem:

- How do other people involved perceive this problem?

- What are the positive sides of this situation? Can I learn something from that?

- How would my role model act if they were in my shoes?

- What will I do when I solve this problem? Can I already start doing those things?

Insight – it is a technique that enables you to reach a creative breakthrough by following five simple steps.

Phase One: The process starts ordinarily with gathering all necessary information and accessible knowledge regarding the problem in question.

Phase Two: The second step is analysing results of our thorough research, combining various components together and generally putting yourself through the hoops in order to come up with a decent, applicable solution.

Phase Three: Subsequently, what comes after that is a phase called incubation which means making your conscious-self rest and drawing your attention to other engaging activities such as a movie or a boarding game while your mind is doing a titanic work behind the curtains.

Phase Four: At this stage there are two possibilities that may occur. The first one is that you experience a so-called Eureka Moment which means that the idea comes to you suddenly out of nowhere!  The second possibility is that although you didn’t have the pleasure of experiencing this wonderful breakthrough, you have a fresh, rested mind which allows you to come back to the problem and approach it from a slightly different perspective which should end up in reaching a convenient solution in no time.

Phase Five: The last but definitely not the least step is exploring the idea/solution further, working on it and finally, putting it to real life!

If you are interested in the topic and would like to delve into the topic of creativeness, critical thinking, empathy, problem-solving and other critical soft competencies, feel free to check out our other articles and our social media accounts, where we also write about self-development.

Our sites and social media accounts:

https://www.projectcreativemindset.com/

https://www.facebook.com/creativemindsetka2

https://www.instagram.com/creativemindseterasmus/

Further reading:

Creative Mindset

The Power Of One: Change Your Footprint

E-Active

Sources:

https://lateralaction.com/creative-thinking/

https://www.betterup.com/blog/creative-thinking#why-is-creative-thinkin…?

https://www.artsacad.net/what-are-the-different-types-of-creative-think…