Cultivate Creativity With Curiosity

Have you ever thought of yourself as a “creative”? When we think of creative people, most of us tend to imagine someone in the arts: a sculptor, a writer, a musician. Yet teachers, scientists—even midwives—also require creativity to do their jobs, and live their lives, as effectively as possible.

Statistics show that only about 40% of people consider themselves to be creative. This may make you wonder: Is creativity something we’re born with, or is it something we can learn? And if we can learn it, how? Believe it or not, the key to tapping into your own creativity is no big mystery. It’s simply a matter of cultivating curiosity.

Creativity Defined

What is creativity in the first place? It can be hard to say exactly. In some ways, it is the mixture of many related factors. Just as mountains are made of rocks that are made of minerals, artistic creations and scientific innovations emerge from the skills, knowledge, and experiences that their creators have acquired throughout their lives.

Margaret A. Boden, professor of philosophy and psychology at the University of Sussex in England, says some scholars think of creativity as “novel combinations of old ideas.” Boden uses the example of Beatles legends John Lennon and Paul McCartney’s surprising use of the cello in their iconic hit “Yesterday.” Who else at the time, she wonders, would have thought to include a classical instrument in a recording of a rock ’n’ roll ballad? A novel combination indeed.

Creativity is also useful in a wide range of activities outside the arts—from business to medicine to human relationships and beyond. It allows us to develop new solutions to old problems. It can even save us from disasters. In the 1985 American television show MacGyver, it was the lead character’s creative problem-solving that led him to use a simple paper clip to defuse a bomb!

The Curiosity/Creativity Connection

A little more than 30 years ago, Julia Cameron produced a bestselling book called The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity. In it she posited that to be human is to be creative, and creativity is the “natural order of life.” So how do we tap into ours? Creativity is a matter of combining existing ideas, but it also requires curiosity—that is, the strong desire to know or learn something. After all, how can we know which ideas to combine if we aren’t interested in acquiring a storehouse of knowledge in the first place?

Biologists tell us that all living creatures can exhibit a sense of curiosity, and humans are among the most curious. For example, Adele Alexandre, a member of The Toastmasters Club at FAU (Florida Atlantic University), enjoyed a lifelong career of midwifery, first sparked by her abundant curiosity. Since the births of her younger brother and the siblings of her friends, she yearned to know more about the process of childbirth. As a young girl, she found very few resources for acquiring the information she sought. When she was an adult, however, Alexandre found a classic text on the subject, which she read cover to cover. She went on to train in her chosen profession, and has brought 1,300 babies into the world.

Alexandre’s curiosity came from internal motivation—she wanted to learn for learning’s sake, not simply to satisfy an external goal, such as a task she was given. Without that strong internal desire, we have a harder time being creative, because we don’t care as much about finding new ways to do things. Curiosity leads us to be open to new experiences and meet new people, which enhances creativity, particularly when we collaborate with those we meet.

And it should come as no surprise that curiosity enhances learning, because we are inspired to seek out information. It even releases the feel-good neurotransmitter dopamine, reinforcing the urge to be even more curious.

Four Types of Curiosity

Brittanica’s Curiosity Compass is a kind of test where, through answers to a series of questions, you learn about the four curiosity types: intuitive creators (artists), inquisitive creators (inventors), intuitive discoverers (explorers), and inquisitive discoverers (scientists). If you see yourself in one of these categories, you can more easily determine the path to access your own creativity.

• Artists reflect on the meaning of art and human experience, engage with the work of others, imagine different ways of being, and produce art that expresses who they are and what they have imagined.
  
  
• Inventors envision innovations with an eye toward the future, to problem-solve, and to reproduce existing things to learn how to improve upon them.
  
  
• Explorers leave their comfort zones to engage with new people, places, and ideas, with the goal of understanding and connecting with others.
  
  
• Scientists seek to learn why things are the way they are through focused research and observation, in order to advance human skills and technologies and share their knowledge.
  
  

Where do you place yourself in this list—within one category or several? How can it help you reach your creative goals?

How to Nurture Curiosity and Creativity

If we are all born with curiosity and creativity, the key for many of us is to revive these dormant abilities. Here are some tips for nourishing both curiosity and creativity:

At the start of Cameron’s The Artist’s Way, which is a 12-week program for enhancing creativity, she introduces two tools, the first to be done daily and the second to be done weekly.

1.

Every morning, fill up three pages by writing down anything that comes into your head. Cameron dubs this ritual “morning pages,” and it is an opportunity to drain your brain of whiny, negative, self-censoring thoughts. What you write may be fragmented and make little sense. There is no wrong way to write down your thoughts, as long as you do them every day. Think of them, Cameron says, as a form of meditation that will help you free your creative brain.



2.

Then, once a week, block out about two hours to nourish your inner artist by going on an “artist date.” That may mean going to a museum or a play, but it could just as easily be a walk on the beach, a bowling outing—anything to feed your open-to-experience inner child. You will soon see that this step helps enhance your curiosity as well as your creativity. What is out there to do? What would you like to do? How do you go about doing it?

According to business coach and marketing expert Jason Hennessey, even CEOs must enhance their creativity in order to develop the vision they need to move their companies forward. His recommendations pertain to burnishing curiosity as well as creativity:

1.

Keep stress levels down—exhaustion and burnout prevent us from thinking clearly.



2.

Like Cameron, Hennessey suggests carving out time for creativity in your day or week so creative thinking can become habitual.



3.

Stay focused on your creative goals—discipline yourself to stick to whatever creative endeavor you have chosen.

Curiosity and Creativity in Your Club

What’s a good source for tapping into these two qualities as a Toastmaster? You almost can’t help but nurture both curiosity and creativity in Toastmasters.

“When I write Toastmasters speeches,” says Alexandre, “I tend to look inward to my own history. That’s because I am very curious as to why I did what I did, what I learned from it, and how that can be useful to others.”

Every Ice Breaker speech introduces a new club member to curious strangers—some of whom may go on to become colleagues and friends. Every speech requires curiosity on the part of the writer, who seeks a topic, as well as the listeners, for whom it opens up a new world of skills or information.

Add to the educational sessions, the Word of the Day, contests, and conventions, and you see how Toastmasters can be a curiosity/creativity factory par excellence. One of the most creative aspects of Toastmasters is Table Topics®. I have always been curious to see how the speaker will creatively answer a question off the cuff!

Stuart Pink, the author of Brainarium: Exercise Your Creativity, is a member of the Achievers Toastmasters Club in Foxboro, Massachusetts, and the third-place winner in the 2012 World Championship of Public Speaking®. Pink notes that speakers always need to determine how to stand out. Like Alexandre, he recommends focusing on your own unique experiences or stories. After all, anyone can look up statistics. But we are the world’s foremost experts on only one topic: ourselves. To keep your speech interesting to yourself as well as to your audience, consider what you want to know about yourself, and what you think they will.

Pink agrees that creativity doesn’t mean making things out of thin air. If you want to be original, he says, try looking at something from a different angle and seeing value in it that someone else might not see, perhaps through humor. And if you decide to be creative in your delivery, he cautions, be sure your choice is related to your speech in some way. Otherwise, it’s just a gimmick, and it probably won’t work.

He points to the example of 2001 World Champion of Public Speaking Darren LaCroix, who “fell” on the stage and delivered part of his winning speech from the floor. Something different, to be sure. The technique worked because it was directly related to LaCroix’s topic and message.

As you see, we are all creative enough to think in unexpected ways—not simply to be different, but to be better. That’s our human legacy. Aren’t you curious to explore yours?

---

---

Share this article