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Creative thinking activity depends on the energy level of the brain. This article discusses the ways to enliven the brains just by using the five senses.

The five senses, namely sight, hearing, taste, smell, and touch bombard the brain with millions of pieces of information every second. A mother is barely aware of the noise her children are making until a neighbor asks them how they put up with it. The fact is that we quickly get accustomed to our environment, making it the norm. Therefore, we fail to notice details and the seeds of creative ideas.

Therefore, the challenge is to get the senses to break out of the box, so that we start noticing things again. This “aerobic brain exercise” gets creative “oxygen” to the specific senses: Select in your mind something familiar. For this example, we will choose a book. Think of a familiar book that you enjoyed reading. Just close your eyes, activate your five senses around this object in your mind, and truly live the experience.

SIGHT
What catches your eye as you look at the book from the other side of the room? Is it the size? The color? The title? The artwork?

HEARING
What kind of sounds do the pages make as you turn them? Is it a rustling sound due to fine paper, or a stiff one caused by thick paper?

TASTE
While not suggesting we take a bite, does your imagination suggest a certain taste? Our brain can make some amazing associations. We often associate a certain flavor with an object. What flavor is your book?

SMELL
Does the book have a distinctive smell? If it does, does it have the smell of an old library, or the certain smell of a freshly printed book?

TOUCH
As you touch it, what does it feel like? What is the texture of the cover? Glossy or grainy? Are the page thick, or thin?

After you ran it through your 5 senses, that familiar object, your favorite book, will now take on a completely new representation in your mind!

Skeptical? Just try it! It will only take a minute or two. The images your brain is left with will remain with you indefinitely. That is the power of concentration.

When engaging in creative thinking activity, a great deal of sensations and thoughts need to be input. By linking the most unlikely brilliant ideas can pop up. Applying these imaginary associations to the task in hand usually produces great results.
In conclusion, you can try this “aerobic brain exercise” before doing any project or facing any problem involving the need of creative thinking. You will never view familiar things with the same eyes again, and you might just give birth to a new solution or improve an existing one. Everyone possesses this creative mechanism.

However, sometimes we are “stuck in a nut” or “start to see blank” or “hit a brick wall”. These are called “stuck states” Their mind is unwilling to go anywhere else.
The question is what this state of mind is and how we can swiftly ease out of it, directly into inspired and creative states of being.

If we were to look inside the mind of a person that suffers from this “stuckness”, we would see that it is in fact a bit like a video loop. It would be just as if they were repeating a short clip of a movie repeatedly.

So how can you snap out of these loops? First, try noticing “where” and “how” you feel the specific stuck state. Where “in” your body is that feeling? Giving that feeling a color is the first step. Right now, you just switched the representational system.
As you notice that feeling, what color represents it best?’ Just go with the first color in your mind. Now if you would want to give that feeling a sound, what sound would it be? Again, just go with the first sound in your mind. Just for fun, you could even associate the feeling with a smell or a taste.

With that, you have instantly accessed multiple resources form different brain centers, allowing the creative process to emerge.

With the help of specific mental strategies, creativity can be easily triggered, and it can also be enhanced by exploring other perspectives. The good news is that the more you practice creative thinking, the more creative you become!
Only by learning how to use our brains in more diverse ways, we can unlock the power of our creative imagination!

Edward de Bono, renowned expert on creative thinking, talks about creativity and about thinking outside the box…

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