People often associate innovation with a light bulb. Forget that. Creativity isn't an on/off switch or a sudden burst of light. It's a process, and you can learn to control it and master it.

615 lightbulb shutterstock.jpg

Tom&Kwikki /Shutterstock


Eventually, I became a journalist. For many years, I told other people's stories. I was successful, but I rarely felt truly creative.



Where great ideas really come from. A special report

From an early age, we're taught in school to develop the logical, language-based, rational capacities of the left hemisphere of our brain, which is goal oriented and impatient to reach conclusions.

The left hemisphere gives names to objects in order to reduce and simplify them. One nose is like another, for example, so when we're asked to draw one, we retrieve the symbol we have for "nose" from our memory, reproduce it and move on.

The right hemisphere, by contrast, is visual rather than verbal. It's capable of seeing more deeply and subtly than the left, immersing itself in what's actually there, in all its richness. Once you learn to do that, Edwards told us, drawing what you see is -- relatively speaking -- a breeze.


But what did that have to do with creativity?

A little more than a decade ago, I switched careers, and began collaborating with a sports psychologist, to define what makes it possible for people to perform sustainably at their best. Over the years, working with other colleagues, I've turned these ideas and strategies into a curriculum that my company, The Energy Project, delivers today in corporations, government agencies, schools, hospitals and public workshops.

Our curriculum is grounded in a series of ancient and enduring universal principles and it's buttressed by the findings of modern science. But it's also been profoundly shaped by a series of insights and intuitive leaps I've had about how to work in ways that are more productive, sustainable and satisfying.

To nurture and sustain my own creativity, I've followed a systematic process and it's one I believe anyone can learn.


1. Saturation: Once the problem or creative challenge has been defined, the next stage of creativity is a left hemisphere activity that paradoxically requires absorbing one's self in what's already known. Any creative breakthrough inevitably rests on the shoulders of all that came before it. For a painter, that might mean studying the masters. For me, it involves reading widely and deeply, and then sorting, evaluating, organizing, outlining, and prioritizing.


3. Illumination: Ah-ha moments - spontaneous, intuitive, unbidden - characterize the third stage of creativity. Where are you when you get your best ideas? I'm guessing it's not when you're sitting at your desk, or consciously trying to think creatively. Rather it's when you've given your left hemisphere a rest, and you're doing something else, whether it's exercising, taking a shower, driving or even sleeping.

4. Verification: In the final stage of creativity, the left hemisphere reasserts its dominance. This stage is about challenging and testing the creative breakthrough you've had. Scientists do this in a laboratory. Painters do it on a canvas. Writers do it by translating a vision into words.

The first key to intentionally nurturing our creativity is to understand how it works. I've found the stages often unfold in unpredictable sequence, and wrap back on one another. Still, keeping them in mind lets me know where I am in the creative process, and how to get to where I need to go.

Ultimately, the highest creativity depends on making frequent waves - learning to engage the whole brain by moving flexibly and intentionally between the right and left hemisphere, activity and rest, effort and letting go. That's also a pretty good prescription for how to live.