Improving your business creativity

Do you sometimes seem to get stuck when you have a problem that needs solving or feel you need to add a bit of spark to your approach within your business or with your marketing? It’s also usually at this time that we start 'telling' ourselves that we’re not creative and that’s always a bad start!
Remember your brain is a goal striving mechanism so if you tell it you can’t it’s happy to accept that and will stop 'having a go' at being creative.
Some people appear to be naturally creative and come up with wonderful ideas and new ways of doing things, for the rest of us all we need is a little bit of help to get us started thinking differently. So here are some ideas for you to use.

1. Take a break - get out into the fresh air, go for a walk - a change of scenery often helps clarify your thinking.
2. Vary the routes you take to or from work, the supermarket, school this will keep your brain active and alert.
3. Change your routine, did you know you usually do the same things for the first 3 minutes when you get up, start work, finish work, arrive home from work? So do things in a different order or do different things as this helps free up your thinking.
4. Find time to be a child – daydream, play, be silly, have fun.
5. Use reverse brainstorming. We’re all familiar with brainstorming as a technique so reverse the problem. E.g. “how can I stop customers buying from me?” Then brainstorm all the objections then simply reverse all of your answers.
6. Headline the problem with ‘How to’ or “ I need a way to’ e.g. “How can I find the products that will get my customers wanting to buy from me” or “I need a way to reach into the heads of our customers and get them to spill out their desires”.
7 Reframe the problem. E.g. instead of thinking “Look at all this scrap material, what a waste” try “What can we make from this”.
8. Ask non-experts whose lack of knowledge on the subject will allow them to generate different perspectives.
9. Always say 3 positive things about an idea before voicing a negative
10. Use metaphors to gain a different insight into the problem, for instance “How is this like climbing a mountain or riding a bicycle or going swimming” and see if this frees up your thinking.11. Learn from your mistakes, remember there is no failure only feedback.