Why you should challenge your creativity and how to do it?

From good to better to great updates

Creativity is a process. It is a process of going from what could be to it is here. I feel high, happy and “I can do anything” when I finish something. It is always a challenge when you need to run your brain to solve a problem in a unique and divergent way.

Once the problem has been solved by the process of the unique creativity that everyone on this planet is blessed with, we discover that “it could be done this way too, a better way.” The previous process that culminated in today’s work suddenly appears to be lacking something. Is it the yearning for perfection? Maybe. On a deeper level, it is a feeling that says “It has to be the best”. There has to be a better version of my current work. Challenging your creativity is a life journey, a seemingly endless staircase.

So, why should I challenge my creative process?

If I put it simply, as a human being you’re never satisfied with what you can perceive and as an artist, you can never be finished. An artist can not stop until they have dissected the emotion and understood it on an atomic level. If you feel momentarily amazing after you’ve successfully created something, that is absolutely perfect.

You’re a surgeon for emotions. Emotions come to you and ask to operate on them. I am not saying emotions are a disease, maybe some of them are but they are ours. Some will say they’re a blessing in disguise and what absolutely matters is how you feel and project them. When we create something, we’re mostly working on giving an artistic language to our emotions and somewhere we also want to take care of what the audience will feel. Emotions and feelings evolve with time and as we grow our sense for art and environmental emotions it allows us to think holistically for better ideas. You never know what you’re capable of doing until you start doing it. Your art has versions unbeknownst to and probably that’s a crucial reason we challenge our creativity: to find the unknown.

Updating your creative content, products, thinking, etc. is an enhancement to a dual process that defines your creativity as a unique divergent way of thinking. This duality is how we can update our creativity. Let’s take a look at these two processes now.

How to challenge creativity?

There are two processes to do it but before we move on to understand them, take a moment to think about what you will answer if I ask “What do you mean by challenging creativity?”. Please think about the answer and resume reading the post.

Finally, I am ready to share the two processes that we practice to challenge/enhance our process of creativity.

1. Outer Analytics

“Clutching my pearls, is this statistic?” Absolutely not. I talked about a duality, right? That duality is with your body and mind. Outer analytics is one face of the coin. “Outer” here means outside your body, the things that you can perceive using your sensory organs. “Analytics” is the systematic understanding of your perceptions.

There are two ways your body, mind, and soul gets affected. The first way is the inputs from the outer world (the one which is outside your body) that encapsulates the data coming from your five sensory organs. If one becomes mindful of the sensory inputs and really feel their effects on one’s mind, body, and soul, inexplicable energy is felt running through the spine. That is motivation actively running through the body. After that comes the understanding. Understand your feelings coming from the outer analytics this world is providing, and use them in the enhancement of the present artistic process.

Most of our ideas, decision making, and decision-based creativity comes from this analysis of the outside forces that make us a human being.

Outer analytics answers “How my audience will feel?”. What about how you feel?

2. Inner Analytics

This is your insides. Not literally, but the way you feel about yourself. Your purpose, aspirations and what you want to achieve with your artistic process. Your emotional analysis by yourself is what Inner Analytics is. You may also call it the process of self-introspection but there is a little difference.

Self-introspection + decision making = result of Inner Analytics

Inner analytics answers “How I feel?”. The inputs to the inner analytics are your view of yourself, your emotional perception, how you feel about your current work, your aspirations, and how you want to feel about yourself.

Ask yourself the following questions (sit in a quiet place, close your eyes, try to shut down your sense organs mentally, go inside yourself, literally take a jump in the ocean of you):

How is my emotional and mental state affects me as a human being? How do I feel about my artwork? How does my present work affect me? Can my work be enhanced in the way my mind is screaming at me? (even if it feels completely ridiculous)

Asking yourself questions about yourself will give you answers about yourself. It is a tough thing to do but the answers will give you clarity and hopefully an idea for your creative update. During inner analytics, please refrain from feeling the outer senses. Your mind is a powerful piece of machine, please ask it about how it works from time to time. It may be shy, but it’s going to always give you the purest form of answers to the questions you’re going to ask it. Make your mind ask questions to itself. That’s inner analytics.

Take notes during both processes. Really reflect on them and turn it into your next creation. You have done it before. :)

We do outer and inner analytics sub-consciously but when it becomes a conscious process, it’s a game-changer.

Let us know how you felt. Take care of yourself.