How To Keep Your Creative Juices Flowing

If you are one in a creative career field, then you must have experienced a creative block at some point in your journey. To some it comes only once in a while, but to others it can be so frequent that it impedes productivity. So how can you keep you prevent these creative blocks and keep your creative juices flowing?

1. Stay Active

A study done by cognitive psychologist Lorenza Colzato, showed that people who exercised four to five times a week performed better on creative challenges than their sedentary counterparts. As it turns out, exercise flushes out cortisol which is a stress hormone that impairs creativity and problem solving. Indeed, many famous authors, including Henry James, have admitted to using exercise as a way overcome the writers' block.

2. Listen To Music

It's no news that music has the power to lift your mood. It releases feel-good hormones such as dopamine which can help you feel calm and relaxed, making it easier for your thoughts to wander into the blissful world of creativity. Music can also increase your focus making you better able to form well-developed ideas, and the poetic lyrics of the songs can be a source of inspiration. In addition, the good mood that music leaves you in can motivate you to be more productive.

3. Get Enough Sleep

To be creative, you need to be able to make connections that have otherwise not been made before so that you can come up with something novel. Sleep is necessary for your brain to go into maintenance mode so that repairs can be done and neurons can be restored and strengthened. This will make it much easier for you to be able to form connections between ideas and concepts. Moreover, sleep allows for memory consolidation to take place so that the information gathered throughout the day can become part of your long-term memory. Thus, after a good night's sleep, it will be much easier for you to retrieve ideas from you brain and make them part of your creations.

4. Widen Your Perspective on Life

Try to make a habit of meeting new people, visiting new surroundings, and learning new things. There is a theory stating that everything that can be created, has been created already. So creativity is the mere connection of old ideas and old concepts to form something new. And as you may have guessed already the more material you have to connect, the more creative you become.

5. Find Something To Laugh About

Studies have shown that the hormones released during laughter can boost activity in the pre-frontal cortex. This is the area of the brain associated with decision-making, emotion and creativity. So a hearty laughter whenever you have a creative block might be a very effective way to get the juices flowing again.

Whenever we're unable to harness our creativity, we may end up losing a lot of hours and money in unwritten songs and un-filmed skits. Hopefully, these tips can help you and your friends maintain consistent productivity wherever you happen to be working.