A Quick Walk on Creativity

Science reminds us just how well simple things can work…

You might right now be stuck on a problem? Trying to think of something new? Or wanting to do a new beBee buzz. You want to be creative but that magical idea or inspiring new insight simply does not come to mind.

Creativity draws on the sub-conscious and intuitive parts of the brain. While conscious thinking entails directed and deliberate thinking that one is aware of, the intuitive mind refers to autonomous and often random information processing that one is not aware of.

The conscious mind is limited in its processing capacity while the intuitive mind has a vast capacity to absorb impressions, form memories and combine fragments of information in new and novel ways. It is this ability of our intuitive that leads to the Eureka! combination of concepts and a novel idea. Albert Einstein said: “The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant”.

As good as we are in directing our attention, often the conscious volume needs to be turned down for the new idea mix to emerge from the intuitive. Our slower deliberate thinking needs to get out of the way of the super-agile intuitive mind.

One way of doing this is to turn down the volume of deliberate thinking. We need to give the minds’ music director a rest and allow the orchestra to do its own thing and compose spontaneously. Once the attention consuming director is out of the way, the ensemble members can each focus only on their own instrument and combine with the others in new harmonies. Rhythms induce a light trance; rhythms as basic as your own footsteps winding down a path.

In a recent experiment researchers instructed graduates to complete a test designed to measure innovative thinking. Some students were randomly assigned to do this while sitting inside a square box. The rest sat outside and next to the box while completing the test They came up with 20% more creative solutions than the hapless graduates who were squeezed inside the plastic box. Our physical environment and awareness of space (or lack thereof), has a determining influence on how creative and innovative we are.

Evolutionary psychologists contend that our thinking, thousands of years ago, evolved in a state of motion. John Medina says in his book Brain Rules: “The human brain evolved under conditions of almost constant motion. From this, one might predict that the optimal environment for processing information would include motion.” Thinking happened while hunting or scavenging – which is to say a large part of the day. Being stationary was for resting and for socializing – not primarily for a deep contemplation of the inner life of the saber-toothed tiger.

So,  turning down deliberate thinking,  accessing open spaces physically and being on the move all spark our creative and divergent thinking ability.

Where and how can we find all three in one easy technique? Go outside for a walk! A stroll of only a few minutes is the simplest and one of the most effective ways to tap into the creative and intuitive mind.

Great thinkers who were great walkers include Aristotle who would walk around while lecturing his students, Charles Dickens who would easily do a ten mile walk in an afternoon, and Soren Kierkegaard who walked the streets of Copenhagen every afternoon. William Wordsworth, the poet, walked many miles throughout his life, mentally composing his poems while doing so. For Wordsworth the act of walking was indivisible from the act of writing poetry. Both were rhythmic and both employed meter. He needed to walk in order to write.

A walk is a reset of the sub-conscious which allows for the concepts and information floating in our heads to reconfigure and in so doing produce a novel idea.

One caveat, a creative idea-burst does not walk-on-bye unless you have immersed yourself in the problem and conscious thought process first. The intuitive mind needs raw material to work with; it does not easily invent in a vacuum. After you have wrestled with a problem and still not found an answer - go for a stroll and watch how the intuitive magic develops.