Creative approach to achieving goals

Creative approach

The goal of a creative approach is to overcome automatic thinking and develop alternative solutions. There is one significant difference between creativity and problem solving. Solving problems means destroying them, and creating means bringing something new into the world. When you get a big and tasty problem in your hands, you no longer need to think - you have an obsession. What if you suddenly had no problems? What would you be thinking about then? What did you do? The Creator is always focused on what he would like to bring into the world.

The primitive tribes living in the jungle consider the passing plane to be a miraculous sign. For them, airplanes are, if not gods, then chariots of gods. The unknown often seems incomprehensible. Due to the lack of information, creativity is perceived as a mystical matter - in the same way, the inhabitants of the jungle lack knowledge of modern aviation. In reality, creativity is a skill that can be learned and developed like any other: through hard practice. To become a creator, you need to create regularly.

What is an activity

Activity
as the process of active interaction between a subject and an object of reality, in which the subject purposefully influences the object, achieving a goal and satisfying his needs.

Activities can be either constructive or destructive. Often both components are present, since often in order to create something, you need to destroy something first, and vice versa (for example, create a weapon to destroy the enemy army). The activity of a person or organization can be called any activity that is given a certain meaning - that is, the activity is somehow connected with the external world or the internal state of a person or organization.

Algorithm for achieving goals in creator mode

Below are the basic steps of any creator. You may have some skills, but others may not come easy.

Imagine the outcome you want to achieve

First, the creators have an idea. Sometimes it's just an outline, and sometimes it's something specific. Understanding what you need is a real art. The education system does not teach us to understand what we want from life. We are trained to choose the “right option” from the limited options that life offers. This meager assortment has little in common with our true aspirations, and many begin to doubt their desires. Before the invention of the airplane, the steam engine and the telephone, scientists believed that this was impossible.

Answer the question: what do I want? Try asking yourself this question in different situations. If you get into the habit of thinking about it, you will develop an instinct and you will be able to determine what you want without thinking. Every time you feel confused, ask yourself this question and answer it. Much will become clearer.

Create a vision

The Chinese have a saying “a picture is worth a thousand words.” A creative person knows how to draw in his mind what he wants to create. The form, structure of creation, impressions and sensations that make up the vision - all this immediately appears, even in the simplest picture. Let each new creation appear in your mind as if out of nothing. Don't take into account everything that happened in the past, focus on what you want to see come to life. Start from scratch, from an empty field. Imagine the result. Try adding elements. Take the risk of removing some of the old ones. Examine the imaginary creature from the inside, outside, up close, from afar. So, by changing your perspective, you will accumulate more and more knowledge about what you want to create. The task is to draw several pictures of what you want in your head. Then try to describe them in words.

“It is an incredible human gift to see beyond the present and the past and from that distant, unknown, to extract something that did not exist until now.” Robert Fritz

Don't think about the implementation process

If you try to decide what you want based on how you will achieve it, you will limit your ability to determine the desired outcome. So you reduce everything to what you can do or know how to do it. But the creative process is full of discovering what you don't know—yet. So just focus on the goal for now.

Make a choice

First, you look at ideas and try them out. This is how you accumulate knowledge about what you like and what you don't. After that, you need to make your choice, weed out the options in order to ultimately settle on one thing. Great creators know what to let go of and what to avoid.

The more you practice making decisions, the more you develop the instinct for making the right choice, leading to the implementation of creative plans. What do you think: who has a better chance of success - the one who is careful about making decisions, or the one who was able to develop a sense of making the right choice? Give the choice an official form by saying the words: “I choose...”. You don't have to say the words out loud, say them silently. By putting the vision into verbal form, you will give it concreteness and mobilize energy. Choosing your outcome is a powerful force.

Feel the birth of an idea

Origination is a special stage of the creative process. The main thing that distinguishes it is the incredible energy that characterizes a new beginning. Have you ever experienced a burst of energy when you started a new project, started a new study, or when you met your soulmate? Composer Roger Sessions describes genesis as “the impulse that sets the machinery of creativity in motion.” For film director Alfred Hitchcock, the making of a film was the sweetest part of the filmmaking process.

Determine what has already been done

When drawing a picture, the artist must understand how much he has already done and at what stage his work is at. It is very important. If he is not aware of what he has created, then he cannot add new strokes or change what he has drawn. Knowing what stage you are at is also an art. This is not so simple, because we perceive reality subjectively. Therefore, the next stage is important.

Realize reality

Many people have to get used to reality. You can lie to yourself, come up with explanations. But as you learn to create, you gain the ability to tell yourself the truth. Whether she is good, bad or indifferent to you - you want to know her. The truth makes us free and helps us create. Only by recognizing and accepting the facts of reality can we harness the power of structural tension.

Appreciate structural tension

The discrepancy between what you want and what you currently have forms the most important element in the creative process: structural tension . Creators don't just tolerate differences—they value them and encourage them. Divergence contains energy that helps create. As a creator, you can learn to create tension even in undesirable situations and hold it until it releases naturally.

Direct the energy of tension in the right direction

The tension tends to discharge. You, as a creator, create tension, use it, manage it, and release it in the direction you choose. Movement causes even more movement. Even if you are moving in the wrong direction, it will be easier for you to change course and turn towards the outcome than if you do not move at all. By moving away from your vision, you increase structural tension. It begins to generate more and more energy, pulling you more and more in the direction you really wanted to go. When you move in the direction of what you want, you accumulate inertia, and getting closer to the goal becomes easier and easier.

By embodying your creative process, you accumulate inertia. It is easier to learn a new foreign language if you already know one language. By learning a language, you not only assimilate it, but you also assimilate the ability to learn languages. If you already speak two foreign languages, then the third one will be even easier for you.

Do it by your own rules

The education system teaches us to play by someone else's rules, and few people know how to invent their own. Inventing something of your own is an important skill for a creative person. The main strength of the creator is that he knows how to experiment and evaluate experiments.

Don't stop there

Professional creators don't believe in luck, but in evolution. The creative process doesn't just produce the desired results - it contains the potential for growth. Who do you think has a better chance of creating what he intended - a master or a beginner? Even Mozart, perhaps the most gifted composer of all time, evolved and grew in his work. The music he composed at age 30 was superior to that he created at age 20. The experience gave him the “acceleration” characteristic of the creative process.

Each completed work is the basis for the next creation. The nature of creative energy is such that it does not wear out, but only accumulates and multiplies itself. Once you create one culinary masterpiece, it will be easier for you to create another. If you create a beautiful garden, you will do it even better next year. Completion pushes you forward.

In short:

Step 1: Describe where you are.
Step 2: Describe where you want to be.
Step 3: Make a formal choice of your desired outcome.
Step 4: Move.

Distinctive features of activity

The activity is characterized by the following distinctive features:

Consciousness, that is, conscious goal setting.
Productivity, that is, focus on obtaining results.
Transformative character, that is, in the process of activity a person transforms the world around him and himself.
Social character - the need to communicate with other people to achieve results.

Decisive factor

Many feel hostage to the past, believing that childhood events predetermined how their lives will turn out in the future. Some are convinced that they have become victims of improper upbringing or attitude on the part of their parents. Others believe that their behavior style is determined by their genes. Others believe blindly in astrology. And they all believe that the future is largely predetermined, and only a little can be changed.

The creative approach, on the contrary, suggests that the main decisive factor in your life is yourself. In creating his symphonies, Beethoven may have been influenced by his upbringing, education and social status, but he needed

the man Beethoven to write this music. By your presence on the planet, you make possible the emergence of creations that the world would not otherwise see.

Experiment with the principles described here and begin to work with the creative process in a variety of areas. Every person can become the main creative force in his life. And once you discover this idea, there is no turning back. Your life will change forever.

Based on materials from the book “The Path of Least Resistance.”

We also recommend reading:

Storytelling
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Demystifying the Muse
Techniques for developing creativity
Entrepreneur Skills
Personal goal setting
Deadly sins of creativity
The best blog content in 2021: developing creative thinking
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Key words:1Time management

Forms of activity

1.Labor

Labor is a type of activity that is aimed at creating material and spiritual products to satisfy certain needs of man and society.

Characteristic features of labor as a type of activity

Feasibility (necessity, necessity)
Having goals aimed at achieving a certain result.
Availability of knowledge, skills, abilities that allow you to perform certain actions.
Utility (that is, the results of the activity must actually satisfy needs)
Personal development (work transforms the person himself, forms the moral qualities of the individual)
Focus on results and getting them.
Transformation of the world, society and man himself.

Types of labor

Physical – characterized by the fact that there is a load on the human body, on its musculoskeletal system.

Physical labor can be: manual, mechanized, assembly line labor, or automated.

Mental – associated with processing, assimilation of information, requires attention, memory, and activation of thinking processes.
Mixed – work that requires a combination of both physical and mental effort.

A game

A game is a type of non-productive activity for which the process itself is important, not the result.

Play for a child is one of the ways to understand the world; A game for adults is both relaxation and entertainment, and at the same time, business games help model the type of behavior in a given situation, for example, when applying for a job.

Classification of activities

In social science, there is more than one classification of activity, but we will consider the most popular one - according to objects and results of activity.

Depending on what the result is - material wealth or cultural values - activity can be material (practical) and spiritual.

Material activity involves the creation of things and material values that are needed to satisfy human needs. It is divided into material-production , associated with the transformation of the surrounding nature, and social-transformative , aimed at transforming society.

Products of spiritual activity - ideas, images, scientific, artistic and moral values. Spiritual activity is:

cognitive - related to the reflection of the surrounding world in mythological, religious, scientific or artistic form;
value-oriented - expressing a person’s attitude to the phenomena of the surrounding world;
prognostic - involved in forecasting possible changes in reality.

Human actions

Depending on the motives that prompt a person to be active, M. Weber divided actions into 4 categories:

affective, which are committed under the influence of emotions and are not controlled by reason;
targeted (actions that are guaranteed to lead to achieving a positive result);
traditional - actions that are performed out of habit, due to their repetition over many years;
value-rational (caused by a person’s confidence in the significance and importance of his goal).

A person chooses the specific actions that are necessary to achieve a result independently, at the stage of planning his activities. In some cases, in order to achieve a goal, it is enough to use only one means; in other situations, a set of measures and consistent actions is required.

Main spheres of society's life

Any type of human activity (work, play, communication, etc.) can take place in any area.

There are traditionally four such areas:

Social
– peoples, classes, gender and age groups, etc.
Economic
– production relations, productive forces.
Political
– the state, parties, socio-political organizations.
Spiritual
- religion, morality, education, art, science.

In this case, each person is affected simultaneously by all four spheres. Each of us belongs to a certain nation, social class, has a certain age and gender, enters into economic relations, has a certain level of education and a certain worldview.

However, not all types of human activity in each of the spheres are equivalent. Thus, in the spiritual sphere, science occupies a dominant position, its “reflections” are education and art; morality depends on the level of collective awareness of society, and religion is a consequence of an extremely low level of this same awareness. The nature of social activity can change over time: in one era the average person can work for the prosperity of his nation, in another his work can be aimed at meeting the needs of all humanity as a whole, because there is no division into peoples and nations.

Activities and communication

There is no consensus in the scientific and educational literature about whether communication is an independent form of human activity.

Communication is usually understood as the process of interaction between people, in which they get to know each other, establish initial contact and develop it, exchange emotions and knowledge.

Communication certainly facilitates the implementation of any form of activity, be it work or study. In addition, it has a beneficial effect on the individual, making him more socialized and developed. All means of communication are usually divided into two large categories:

Verbal, which includes written and oral speech;
Non-verbal, which include gestures, postures, and facial expressions.

It is important that communication does not always require a real and tangible subject. Thus, a person can communicate with an animal, conduct an internal imaginary dialogue with a friend who lives far away, or mentally reproduce the communication of two or more book characters.

Communication in a person’s life performs a number of important functions. Among them it is customary to highlight:

Emotional. Communication helps you understand the experiences of another person and broadcast your own thoughts and emotions to the world;
Integrative, expressed in uniting people;
Socializing. Communication allows you to form a personality and, therefore, be more successful in society and interaction with other people;
Translational, which is expressed in the ability of communication to transfer one’s experience and knowledge to other generations, and not just to one’s real interlocutors and contemporaries;
Identification. Within the framework of communication, a person manifests himself in one way or another, which allows him to be assigned to one or another social group and exclude communities that are alien to him.

Communication is often considered a type of communication. However, from the point of view of social science, these two concepts are not homogeneous. Of course, communication is also related to the transfer of information. But this information is transmitted unilaterally - for example, through the media. When communicating, on the contrary, a person has the opportunity to receive feedback or react to information from his interlocutor.