You must give birth to your images.
They are the future waiting to be born . . .
Fear not the strangeness you feel.
The future must enter you
long before it happens.
Just wait for the birth,
for the hour of new clarity.
- Rainer Maria Rilke

I often say in my writing and creativity coaching classes that your imagination is smarter than you are; like intuition it gives you a deeper, faster, more expanded means of gaining critical insights and making important connections than the more limited workings of your linear, rational mind. Whether you want to write, engage your creativity more fully or develop an ability for creative problem solving, your imagination is an essential tool. To exercise your imagination try the age old favorite of looking for shapes in the clouds; or go sit outside on a bench to watch people go by and make up stories about their lives; or go to a park and lean against a tree and imagine what it would say to you if it could talk; or lay down on the earth and ask her what simple thing you could do to help the planet. Then be open to the ideas, images or thought that arise in your mind.

One exercise I like to work with is asking advice of an imaginary mentor. You think of a question and then write the answer yourself as if you are getting a response from someone you admire. You can ask Einstein, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson or your grandmother. A woman in one of my classes did this exercise and received what was clearly really good advice. Unaccustomed to using her imagination in this way she asked, “how do I know if I am actually channeling this person or if I’m making it up”. It’s a great question because when we use our imagination it will feel and seem like we are making it up. And that’s exactly how the imagination works. We have a hard time trusting the information and ideas we get because we live in a culture that dismisses the power of the imagination but saying, “oh, you’re just making that up” or we tell our children “it’s just your imagination”.  Imagination is a tool of human consciousness that is underdeveloped in the modern world. Yet the more you engage it and play with it the stronger the connection becomes  and you will begin to feel the quiet excitement and joy that comes from expanding this ability, that will give you new ways to looking at problems and solving them.

You can even ask your imagination for suggestions on how best to cultivate it. Sit quietly for five minutes following the flow of your breath and calming your mind. Then be open to what your imagination has to say to you. Try writing without thinking for ten minutes as if you were taking dictation from your imagination. Or you could ask your imagination what it wants from you and then answer the question by writing or drawing or even spontaneous movement where you let the thoughts and feelings flow.

Imagination is one way we access our deeper mind; the estimated 93% that we don’t use in our ordinary lives. It is a place where you shed your ego, where sparks fly and time stands still. It requires a bit of solitude and idleness. It asks that you slow down and sit still with your mind clear and expectant. It asks that you be willing to play.

Whether you have a creative project in mind or you want to make major changes in your life, break your goals down into small action steps and take one each day. Then with every step congratulate yourself for moving closer toward your dream. If you try to make big leaps toward your goals you usually meet with too much resistance and fear that stops you. Small daily actions allow you to sneak under the radar of your resistance to change and stretch your comfort zone in a manageable way.

The best kind of action is inspired action where you listen to your heart or the still small voice within. You take action not out of the sense that you’ve got to make something happen but out of an inner knowing that this is the right step to take. You may have the intuition to go to a place for coffee that you don’t usually go to but while ordering your latte, you run into someone you haven’t seen in years who has a contact that will help you on your way.

Whether you are cooking a great meal, growing a beautiful garden, writing a poem or singing in the community choir, you likely feel a deep sense of satisfaction and a joyfulness that comes with being creative. Creativity draws on the best of human nature: perception, imagination, intellect, inspiration, courage, intuition, and empathy. The urge to create asks us to bask in the experience of the world, to see, feel, taste, hear, and smell the magnificence around us.  It allows us to celebrate, with the spirit of gratefulness for every aspect of our lives, the beauty and complexity the world offers. It can help us make meaning from our sufferings.

Being creative also breaks us free from our ruts and habits allowing us to look at the world anew. We are able to tell a  story that touches others, envision a unique way of solving a problem or offer counsel with fresh  clarity, even if we have struggled with the same material or ideas a hundred times before. Embracing our creativity allows us to tap a deeper more insightful way of knowing that expands beyond our conscious mind.

I think being creative feels so good because it connects us to divine imagination and when we actively participate in developing  and fulfilling our gifts it feels like a mystical experience. We intuit that we are connected to something larger than ourselves which is perhaps the greatest gift that comes from following our creative urges. Early in my work as a writer when I  became aware that I was writing from an inspired sense of flow, I would get this urge to look around the room to see where is was coming from because I sensed it was exactly coming from me. Now I am just always deeply grateful when I tap fully into that vein and welcome it with a sense of grace.

In looking for your own ways of being creative you can start by celebrating your uniqueness. There never was, nor ever will be, anyone exactly like you. In exploring your uniqueness there is often a central preoccupation, an interest or passion that runs through your life? There can also be more than one. If you can’t name it right now, think of something that you are fascinated by again and again. The possibilities are infinite, reaching from needlework to rock climbing, from bird watching to playing the piano, from English country dancing to writing haiku, from gardening to giving foot massages. Look for what brings you joy and then begin taking actions to embrace your creativity and enjoy the process.

Albert Einstein said, The significant problems we have cannot be solved at the same level of thinking with which we created them. I think that is why now more than ever it’s important for each of us to embrace our creativity in whatever form that calls to us and feels most enlivening. In our schooling we were taught to focus on the left brain activities of the three “Rs” reading, writing and arithmetic with little attention paid the right brain.

On my recent trip to Ireland I told an Australian man I met about my commitment to working with people to engage with the “I” words; imagination, inspiration, innovation and intuition which are right brain activities. He smiled, and responded, you really are from California aren’t you. I laughed and said “yes”. California especially the San Francisco Bay Area has long been fertile ground to new ways of doing things and looking at the world.

An architect I know who was born and raised in the Midwest once shared the idea that all the innovation and openness to change that is a trademark of the Bay Area might be related to the hilly topography. Our minds constantly have to adjust to new perspectives as we move through the landscape. Current discoveries in neuroscience suggest that you can enhance brain function by looking up from what you are doing and changing your focus during the day. When I work with people to help to engage creatively I recommend that they make changes in habitual behavior like eating different foods, driving a different way home from work, or changing the order that they put their clothes on in the morning. Any time you do something new and different you begin to build new neural nets in your brain. It’s also why activities like daydreaming or writing from the stream of consciousness where we let our right brain run in seemingly random directions can help us to come up with new ways of looking at a problem.

If you want get more experience connecting to the 95% of our brain/mind that scientist say we don’t use, try the practice of writing a tad faster than you can think to outrun the rational, strategic mind and let the ideas spill out on the page. Or you can try brainstorming on paper by putting the central idea or question in the middle of the page and draw the related ideas that come to you like satellites around the central idea. Also once you start thinking about a new idea notice the thoughts that pop into your head while you are driving, walking, doing the dishes or otherwise occupying the rational mind. Neuroscientists have actually shown that when you let the stream of consciousness flow our brain is actually activating more neurons and brain cells. The next time you have a problem to solve try letting your mind run and be open to all the ideas that surface. Think about some aspect of the world today that could use some creative solution and see what you come up with. Creativity is a natural human gift we all have. It just need to be tended in order to be developed.