The One About Creativity

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:00:32]:
Hey. Hello. Hello. Hello. Welcome to another episode. Solo episode again this time. And we are looking we’re looking at all things creative. We’re looking at creativity.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:00:44]:
What it is? The components of creativity. And we’re gonna have a look at how our mindset can influence and impact creativity. That’s what we’ve got in store for this episode. Hopefully, you’re gonna enjoy it. Hopefully, you maybe take some notes. Looking forward to finding out what you create, off the back of this one. Just before we we dive in and get started, please do remember, give us a like, a share, subscribe on your favourite, platform. Give us a review on your favourite platform.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:01:14]:
We’ve had some lovely reviews. Love seeing those reviews really, really helps to spread the word of, the Keith Blakemore Noble Radio Show. And when you share us, use the hashtag #KBNRS. That way, I’ll be able to find what you’re saying. I might even be able to to chip in. So let us take a look at, creativity in this episode. So what is creativity? It’s it is, it’s a multifaceted dynamic capacity. So it means there’s lots of size to it.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:01:50]:
It’s not something that’s fixed. It’s not something you can you can put in a box, But it, encompasses the generalisation. Generalisation. What on earth am I trying to say? Encompasses the generation. That’s the word. It’s all about making new valuable ideas, coming up with new ideas, new solutions, or new expressions. And it kind of involves breaking away from conventional thinking patterns to bring something new, something innovative. You’re not gonna create new things by thinking the same thoughts that you’re thinking right now.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:02:29]:
If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got. Right? Creativity is about coming up with new stuff and innovation and all this sort of thing. It it creativity shows itself in various aspects of life. Art, fertile bed for creativity. Science, Massive amounts of creativity in science, and curiosity as well. It said that, some of the best scientific discoveries aren’t, heralded by or aren’t, heralded by the words eureka. The best scientific discoveries are very often heralded by the words well, that’s funny. Getting curious about stuff, creating new things, problem solving, problem solving, is a hotbed of creativity.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:03:20]:
The more creativity you can bring into attempting to solve a problem, the greater your chance of having a good solution. Communication, great form of creativity in communication. Everyday activities, most things that we do in life, either incorporate creativity or can benefit from creativity. Now, sometimes hear people saying, oh, yeah. I’m not very creative. I I I haven’t got creative bone in my body. I I haven’t got the creative touch. The thing is we all do.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:03:58]:
It’s just we may not necessarily recognise it because we we assume creativity means creating, the Sistine Chapel or or creating Michelangelo’s David or or or creating the complete works of Mozart. That is what many people see as creativity. Creativity expresses itself in so many different ways. Excuse me. Do you like cooking, for example? When you cook something, cook it a little bit differently, you’re getting creative. You’re thinking, oh, I could have some food. You know? What have we got? Oh, these are these are the things I’ve got in the cupboard. Let’s see what we can make with those.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:04:37]:
Creativity. Creativity exists in all areas of life, and it exists in all of us. And we can tap into our mindset to help to grow and expand that creativity. So let’s take a look at some of the components of creativity. We’ll look at the components, and then we’ll look at how our mindset can influence it. And from that, we look at ways in which we can spark our own creativity. Divergent thinking is a big part of of creativity. Excuse me.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:05:12]:
Divergent thinking is the ability to to create a a wide range of ideas. Lots of perspectives, different possibilities, looking at things from different angles, looking at, opening up to all the possibility. People who like buzzwords and buzz phrases will sometimes use things like, blue sky thinking or, thinking out of the box. But it’s basically, it’s don’t have any constraints on it. Think of it from all sorts of different ways. Look at it from multiple different angles. Try some some weird and wonderful approaches. The key with divergent thinking isn’t that you’re gonna think of it slightly differently and suddenly you come with a solution.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:05:56]:
No. No. No. It’s just about exploring huge realms of possibilities to come up with something different. Many of them might turn out to be rubbish, but in there somewhere will be a gem, which you’re not gonna discover unless you allow yourself to think through all the different possibilities. So it’s divergent thinking, very key part of creativity. If you’re stuck on something, try approaching it from lots of different angles, many different ways. And the opposite of divergent thinking would be convergent thinking.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:06:33]:
That’s a divergent. We’re spreading out convergent thinking, focusing in on something. This is also a crucial part of creativity. It works well in conjunction with divergent thinking. So with divergent, you’re exploring lots of different possibilities. Convergent thinking, you’re focusing what I found. You’re focusing in on that one possibility, or you’re focusing in on one one solution or one idea, analysing it, organising it, refining it, honing in on it. So you would have divergent thinking to come up with all sorts of different possibilities.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:07:10]:
Pick one that looks interesting. Pick one that looks promising or pick one that looks weird. Why not? And then really focus in on that one. Converge all your thought processes on that one idea. Looking at that from different perspectives, analysing it, organising it, sorting it, sifting it, breaking it down, building it back up, figuring out what makes it tick. 2 different aspects of thinking, bringing them together, using them in tandem. Brilliant for creativity. Originality.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:07:46]:
Originality is a is a core element of creativity. Excuse me. Excuse me. Sorry. Originality is a it’s a core part of creativity. Emphasises the the creation of something new or unique. It doesn’t have to be something completely radically totally different than you. It might just have elements of uniqueness about it.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:08:06]:
It’s doing doing something that you’ve always done, but doing it maybe in a slightly different way or with a slightly different, set of tools or or or whatever. But creating something original. It’s all about departing from the established norms or about bringing existing elements together in new and different ways. It’s an it’s one of the ways in which AI absolutely sucks, quite frankly. AI is utterly incapable of originality. AI, big buzzword these days. Lots of people using AI. It is utterly incapable of originality.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:08:45]:
AI cannot have an original thought. AI cannot think. AI is is basically like a big mishmash of cut and paste, autocomplete, all that sort of thing. It’s great at rehashing stuff, but it can’t come up with originality. Originality is a core element of creativity, coming up with something different, something unique, something that hasn’t been done before. Many elements of it may be the same as before, but there’s just a little something different in there that makes it stand out from what’s what’s gone before. Value and utility are also key aspects of creativity, because creativity isn’t solely about Noble, doing something differently, doing something you know, I mean, we we can we can all do that in ridiculous ways. But the creativity is also about producing ideas, products, express whatever you wanna set call it.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:09:49]:
But it’s about producing these things which have a value and and serve a purpose. So ultimately, create, things arising from creativity should be relevant or meaningful or functional. Now, that doesn’t mean to say that you can only create something if it’s if you can sell it for lots of money. Absolutely not. The, doesn’t necessarily mean that if you create something, it has to be functional. It has to have a specific function. Not necessarily. Creativity can can very much be abstract.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:10:24]:
Lots of art has no function as such, but it has a lot of meaning. Some might say that is its function. Its function might be to look good or to make us feel in a particular way. But the key thing is creativity, it should have it should have some relevance or some meaning or some function. It should serve a purpose of fulfilling us either in a material way or in an emotional way, a spiritual way, whatever you wanna whatever way you want want to to put it. It fills a need. It might be a need that didn’t exist before. It creates and fills that need, but it fulfils something.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:11:09]:
Creativity. And expression is the final, component of creativity that I want to touch on expression. Because creativity, it finds expression in many, many, many, many, many different forms. And I touched on this a few minutes ago when I said, some people say, oh, I’m I’m not creative. But when you look around, you find you actually are creative in many ways. Because creativity expresses itself Things like, the visual arts, drawing, painting, television, film, All of these things, very much creative. Music music is a heartbeat of creativity. All music is is, comes out of creativity.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:11:54]:
Literature, plays, books, all of these things, definitely creativity. They’re technology. Massive use of of, of creativity in in in technology. And, coming up with with, you’ve got a a problem, coming up with a way to to the technology to enable you to put a person on the moon or enable you to do something like this. Allow me to to talk and record and you to then listen to it. That all came about through technology, which came about from creativity. Scientific discoveries, Massive hotbed of creativity.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:12:35]:
Problem solving. In your everyday life, you have a problem, find a way to solve it. Creativity. Creativity exists and expresses itself in practically everything that we do. And as I said before, it doesn’t have to be a great huge thing. It can be the little things. Very often, it’s those little little sparks of creativity throughout the day, which which make life so much, so much more enjoyable. Even if it is going, oh, this is all I’ve got in the cupboard.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:13:09]:
Let’s see what food we can cook today. Or this is the only space I’ve got. Not exactly the biggest flat that I have, but let me get creative with how I use it. Let me express myself. Let it let me make it serve a function, serve a solitary, a solitary activity. You can very much be creative purely on your own. Lots of people do enjoy that. Or it can be a collaborative endeavour.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:13:43]:
A group of you working together to create something. So lots of different ways in which creativity exists, manifest itself, lots of different components to creativity. How does mindset how does mindset come into, shaping our creative potential? Well, mindset influences our creativity in in many ways. And by understanding these and working on these, we can enhance and and grow our own creativity. So first would be our mindset. Do you have a growth a fixed mindset, or do you have a growth mindset? And we explored this in a in a previous episode as well. You might wanna go back and have a look at that. People with a fixed mindset, they might believe that creativity is an inherent trait.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:14:33]:
It’s yep. Either you’ve got it or you haven’t. You’re either born creative or you’re not born creative, and that’s just the way it is. I am I haven’t got what it takes to be creative. Whereas, those with more of a growth mindset, I guess they view creativity as a skill which can be developed through effort and practice. Now, yes, some people may well or some people are born with, perhaps Blakemore natural, gifts or natural predisposition towards particular expressions of creativity. But nobody’s born being able to, compose concertos. Nobody’s born being able to to create films.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:15:14]:
Nobody’s born with them. They we have maybe a predisposition towards some aspects of creativity. But practice, effort, learning, all of these are much, much, much more important. And, when you have a growth mindset, you recognise this, you open yourself up to the possibility that, hey. I can develop this. I can get better at this. I can find my own style, find my own expression. And it it fosters a more, a more open and exploratory approach to creative challenges.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:15:49]:
So growth mindset, very important part. And some of these mindsets, we’ve looked at in previous episodes. Do go back through their back catalog, on your favourite podcast platform. Check out some of the other episodes, which will give you, a deeper perspective into each of these. Fear of failure. Now that can be a massive hindrance to creative expression. If if if, if you have a mindset that embraces failure and and thinks, oh, failure is bad. So sorry.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:16:21]:
If you have a mindset that thinks failure is bad, it doesn’t embrace it, but it it fears failure. Oh, no. I tried that. It didn’t work. Oh, I’m such a failure. Oh, it sucked. Oh, this is awful. You’re not gonna get very far.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:16:34]:
On the other hand, if you embrace failure as just a natural part of the creative process, and yes, then you start to recognise that creativity involves and indeed encourages experimenting, taking risks. And all of this experimentation, all of this taking risks, all of this exploring things which who knows how it’ll turn out. All of that enhances creativity and leads to breakthroughs and innovative solutions. So don’t be scared of failure. If if you’re held back by fear of failure, that’s gonna hold back your creativity. Develop the mindset that, hey. I’m gonna try this. It might work.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:17:17]:
It might not. Either way, I now know a bit more about it. I now have a better understanding about things. There is that apocryphal story about the, journalist interviewing Thomas Edison, the inventor of the light bulb, after Edison had, it depends on which version you listen to, had a 100 failed attempts or a 1000 or 10000 failed attempts. It’s funny how the story grows in the telling, isn’t it? We’ll say a 100 because that’s more feasible. So the journalist is interviewing, Edison after he’s had a 100 attempts at inventing the light bulb, and none of them have worked. And the journalist says to him, so mister Edison, are you disheartened that you failed to invent a light bulb a 100 times? And so the story goes, Edison replies, oh, I have not failed to invent a light bulb a 100 times. I have found 100 ways to not make a light bulb.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:18:14]:
Now what the whether that journalist ever did interview him or whatever the, regardless of what the actual number of attempts were, the reality is he attempted many different ways, failed many, many different times, and learned from those. Okay. That doesn’t work. Why doesn’t that approach work? What is it about that approach that doesn’t work? What can I do differently that might overcome that problem? Kept going. Kept going. Kept going. Ping. Light bulb.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:18:43]:
Failure. We’re so scared of failure. But failure is actually a strong indication that we are on the road to discovery. If if who is it? Was it Churchill? Somebody said, show me a man who’s never failed, and I’ll show you a man who’s never tried anything. Now self belief. Again, this is a Keith a very important part of, creativity. If you lack confidence in your ability to be creative, then you’re not going to be very creative. On the other hand, if you can cultivate and develop confidence in your own creative abilities, if you can believe in your own creative potential, if you have that self belief, or if you can develop that self belief, and you can.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:19:35]:
We all can. But when you develop that self belief, you’re much more likely to pursue more ambitious projects because you believe that ultimately you can succeed. And cut some of this is coupled with, embracing failure as part of the creative process. So you don’t allow failure to tell you that you can’t do it. You actually allow failure to help you to believe, hey. I am doing this. I am on the path. I am knocking out all the different ways it doesn’t work.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:20:05]:
Having that self belief that, you know what? Ultimately, I will create. Those who believe that they can, will. Those who believe that they can’t, they probably won’t. Again, coupled with this is resilience. As we we touched on with failures, you are going to encounter lots of setbacks, lots of obstacles. It can get tough sometimes being knocked back constantly. However, when you develop resilience in your mindset, that helps you to bounce back from those creative blocks, to bounce back from criticism, to bounce back from failures. All of which allows you to continue exploring new ideas and possibilities.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:20:51]:
Now, if you have resilience, that doesn’t that doesn’t mean that criticism doesn’t hurt. It doesn’t mean that, failures don’t get annoying. It doesn’t mean that creative blocks don’t get frustrating. By all means, allow yourself time to go somewhere quiet, lick your wounds, get over it for a bit. Allow yourself the time to to to get over what’s happened, and then bounce back. There’s nothing wrong with taking a a few moments. I had to go, oh, that hurt. Oh, no.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:21:25]:
That’s I’m not happy with that. That makes me feel a bit sad. Process it, and then let it go. The keys don’t wallow in it. Allow those feelings to express themselves. Allow them to dissipate, and then get back on. Get back on that, that path of creativity. That’s where the resilience come in comes in.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:21:49]:
It doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt. It just means you don’t allow that hurt to hold you back forever. You allow yourself to bounce back. You allow yourself to get over it. You allow yourself to grow through it. So resilience is very important in creativity because most of the stuff we create when we start, trying to create things, most of it’s gonna be rubbish. It’s only by continuing through it all that we actually get the brilliance. And one final tip, which can help with each of these things, as well as helping with creativity, overall, Mindfulness.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:22:30]:
Now I’ve I’ve talked about mindfulness a few times before. It is very, very helpful. Mindfulness is all about being present in the moment. It’s all about, being nonjudgmental. Being aware without judgment. Being aware and present in the here and now without judging what’s happening, without being held back by the past, without being concerned by the future. This enhances creativity because it it helps us to to be far more receptive. By being present in the present moment with no judgment, just intensely curious intensely curious about what we’re what we’re aware of, exploring it, almost with a with a childlike inquisition.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:23:27]:
This enables you to notice more details, enables you to make connections, and enables you to engage in deep thinking. And all of this all of this contributes to a creative insight. All of this helps you with your creativity. When you can detach from any judgment, when you can detach from the need for it to be right, when you can just let it be. Could be a song in there. When you can just let it be, it is it it is being what it is. What is it that it’s being? Let me take a look. Letting go of the past and the pre and the future, being focused just in the present, being aware of what’s going on without judgment, without making meaning.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:24:19]:
I’m just getting curious about what is it. Have you seen the blue man group? If any of you have seen the blue man group, brilliant, brilliant example of of of what I’m talking about here. They’re they’re those characters, when they’re on stage, when whatever situation they’re in, they’re just really curious about what’s going on there and then. They don’t judge any of it. They just, wow, what’s this? And looking at it from all different angles, not caring what anyone else thinks, not bothered about what’s happened before, probably not even remembering what’s happened Blakemore, not bothered about what happens in the future, probably not even aware that stuff will happen in the future. It’s just all about the here and now. Really curious, really, inquisitive awareness of what’s going on right here, right now. Hopefully, that’s given you a little bit of, an insight into creativity.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:25:15]:
Hopefully, that’s maybe given you a bit of, sparked some curiosity of your own. How am I going to use these? Which is gonna be the best one that’s gonna help me become more creative? So, hopefully, you can use these to cultivate and improve your own creativity. I would love to know what’s what outcomes arise as a result. Do let me know. But for now, as always, subscribe. Give us a review. Share this far and wide. Leave comments.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:25:52]:
Let me know what you got out of it. And I will catch you in another episode very, very soon. Bye for now.