Are you aware of how creative you are when you make certain decisions in everyday life? Right from choosing the next meal to planning your weekend, creative thinking is crucial to leading a happy life. Creative thinking is a process wherein an individual incorporates creativity, innovation, and the generation of unique ideas. Though this concept is widely used in the corporate world, your everyday life is no less than a challenging business environment. You have to plan your day, schedule your daily tasks, meet people, arrange meals and balance work, make decisions, and also be involved in social surroundings.
A creative person can always find alternative solutions to a problem. That’s what life requires you to do! When stuck in difficult situations, it is your creative thought process that decides the outcome. Most individuals always feel stuck because they do not find hidden opportunities in the circumstances. On the other hand, a creative mindset can lighten up celebrations and fix problems just with their quality of thought.
In this post, we will talk about the various examples of creative thinking that can help an individual understand the various aspects where these are used in an everyday life.
Creative thinking and its stages
Much different from creative intelligence, creative thinking is your thought process that can see the beauty of monsoon and it is also your thought process that can crib about waters disturbing the environment.
There is strong science behind world-class artists, innovators, and scientists. Humans do not automatically make wonders on a canvas. Creative thinking is a process-oriented skill that is acquired over a period of time. Check out how creative thinking abilities are developed in a step-by-step manner.
Stage 1: Preparation: Here, you need to acquire knowledge of the situation, analyze the pros and cons, and gather relevant information. This stage involves internal deep thinking and engaging with multiple ideas.
Stage 2: Incubation: In this stage, you are supposed to forget the idea or problem at hand while shifting your focus to some other project/work. This is specifically done to activate the subconscious mind where you’re partially involved in the idea.
Stage 3: Illumination Stage: As the name suggests, the illumination stage is when everything brightens in your mind and you find the solution to your problem. This is the moment of relief when all ideas come together and settle down at the desired result.
Stage 4: Evaluation: In this stage, the entire thought process is evaluated from the beginning. It is rather a time of reflection and revisiting the core idea.
Stage 5: Verification: Now that you have decided on the major parts of the idea and have things ready in hand, the Verification process begins. This stage involves the application of creative thinking to real-life situations.
Examples of creative thinking in everyday life
The following examples stemming from daily life activities shall help us gain an insight into the process of creative thinking and how it can be used in unique avenues of life.
1. Problem Solving
Life brings new challenges that require you to think critically as well as creatively. Remember the time you were stuck waiting for a friend who is always late. Now, that’s when your creative thinking can help you communicate your concern to your friend without bothering your bond. Whether it is communicating your needs in a relationship or deciding the color of your room, creative thinking reduces stress.
Certain small tasks in everyday life also require you to think out of the box. Let’s say you’re unable to lift a homemade plant to be placed on the balcony. With creative thinking, you could rather take the pot to the balcony and then start with adding soil and seeds thereby eliminating the burden of lifting it all the way!
2. Dressing Up
You might not have noticed it until now, but dressing up involves creative thinking in our lives. With multiple outfits, you have managed to create a new look every day. Just like you cannot be eating the same food, you also cannot go on with the same dressing sense. A pinch of creative thinking makes a significant difference in your styling, personality, and aura.
Creative thinking helps you combine different outfits to create a new unique style. You can accessorize them and try new color combinations and that goes with the attire. Let’s say you’ve paired your formal shirt with a tie or scarf. Now, the same formal shirt can look fantastic if you pair it with different colored bottom wear and hairstyle. Such thinking boosts your confidence as you learn to restyle and end up saving money!
3. Communication within Social Circles
You are bound to be caught in certain uncalled situations when interacting with people out there. Humans are truly different with distinct personality traits. It is not necessary that your views, opinions, and values match with the other person. What do you do then? Well, that’s where you should apply the skill of creative thinking. It helps you communicate your concern in a manner that’s respectful and appreciative.
Let’s take a practical example. You are invited to a party wherein your friend offers you a certain food dish out of love. You do not prefer that food dish. Here, instead of straightaway denying the offer, you can say, “Hey, we eat this often, let’s try that nice cuisine this time.” Such statements not only save you but also help you maintain the bond with your social circle.
4. Building Positive Attitude
Attitude is defined by the set of values an individual follows throughout life. However, an attitude can be highly significant when it is positive and empowering. Though it might be difficult to be positive at all times, creative thinking helps you do that. When you’re stuck in negative situations, your thinking helps you come out of it. That’s how it affects your attitude. You tend to become confident, high on self-esteem, and a role model for others.
Additionally, a person who can analyze situations and use a creative mind to solve problems tends to gain attention from others. This helps you receive attention from people thereby growing your network with varied individuals.
5. Spending Time with Oneself
Monotony and continuous work are both conclusive of boredom and fatigue. Thus, as social beings, your mind requires a sacred time and space that does not involve stress and allows it to relax and function at its own pace.
It can be done through indulging in art, going out for a coffee by oneself, or even meditation. Thus, you tend to indulge in divergent thinking to figure out ways that can help you relax and bring out safely of the monotony of life.
6. Cooking
Just like working, you are also thoroughly involved in the cooking process. You cannot be eating similar cuisine or even drink the same fruit juices. Creative thinking helps you come up with different recipes with ordinary ingredients. Today you might be eating in an ordinary but a particular dish can be plated in a specific bowl with wooden spoons or something.
Such processes enhance your thinking abilities and you learn to innovate different flavors in your kitchen. Some kitchen hacks can also prove to be useful in everyday life. For example, instead of labeling the spices, you use transparent containers to see the quantity and quickly take them during cooking.
7. Brainstorming to plan a party
Do you remember the last time you chose a different color of balloon specifically to surprise your loved one? As humans have different choices, planning a party is indeed a creative task! You have to look for the perfect cake flavor, decoration, guest list, and all the drama that goes around deciding the theme of the party. Let’s agree that you cannot simply have the same arrangements for parties.
That’s where creativity comes into the picture. Creativity thinking helps you create events into memorable moments of life. Whether it’s a birthday or an anniversary, creativity helps you make sophisticated arrangements. Your thinking boosts your knowledge of how a kid’s birthday and how an adult’s graduation ceremony requires completely different party planning.
8. Learning New Skills
When you indulge yourself to learn something new, which can be called a creative skill; whether it is knitting or learning how to ride a bike, you expose yourself to new experiences, and allow their absorption and learning to create even newer experiences for the future. A creative mindset helps you be open to learning different skills and applying them practically in all areas of life.
Thus, whenever you choose to learn something new, from as small as learning the spellings of a word, to bungee jumping, you indulge in creative thinking.
9. Teaching
Can you literally read the same book? It eventually becomes monotonous. So is the case with teaching; creative thinking is the essence to engage with your students or subjects. Each subject requires different teaching approaches and if you’re creative, you’re already winning the game.
With creative thinking, you can make each topic interesting for students to pay attention to it. Let’s say that rather than reading about the historical monuments, you choose to show pictures and disclose unknown facts to your students. Now, that’s when you can engage with them, know their interest levels and equally do something extraordinary for your routine teaching approach.
10. Choosing Your Adventures
The urge to take on new adventures and experience life is in itself a characteristic of being a creative individual. However, a creative person will always be cautious about choosing any adventure. Creative thinking enables you to decide the right adventure, time, and purpose in life.
Let’s say you love to spend time with your social circle but also have important work to be completed. While meeting friends is crucial, you choose to meet them sometime during the noon thereby saving the night time to get done with work. This is a small example but when life throws you crazy adventures, your thinking is sure to save you.
Conclusion
The race of life might be never-ending, and tiresome but what makes it worthwhile is the experiences and exposure that come along. Creative thinking and its components are the major aspects of being that allow you to experience them, develop the ability of divergent thinking, create new ideas, deepen the thoughts behind them and eventually work on them.
Additionally, creative thinking is never restricted to one area of life. Whether it is a formal office setting or arranging an upgrade during your flight, your creative thinking boosts your communication, confidence, and problem-solving capabilities. Creativity thinking is a skill used in day-to-day life to not only make it easier but also enjoy it with smartness and paving your desired ways.
An engineer, Maths expert, Online Tutor and animal rights activist. In more than 5+ years of my online teaching experience, I closely worked with many students struggling with dyscalculia and dyslexia. With the years passing, I learned that not much effort being put into the awareness of this learning disorder. Students with dyscalculia often misunderstood for having just a simple math fear. This is still an underresearched and understudied subject. I am also the founder of Smartynote -‘The notepad app for dyslexia’,