Want to inspire children's creativity? Read this.

Culture shift time. When I was growing up creativity was considered bad manners unless it was in the arts or sciences.  That’s changed.  Now we want children to embrace their creativity and expect teachers to nurture students’ capacity to generate new ideas and make new decisions.

Herein begins a new movement to inspire creativity daily.  It’s simple and it’s all of our responsibility to engage children’s curiosity to make up answers rather than look for the ‘right’ one 100% of the time.

Simple steps:

1. Reinforce what creativity is when you or your children use new ideas to make new decisions.
2. Instead of asking “what do you want to be when you grow up” ask, “how would you like to apply your creativity when you get older?” The logic behind this is obvious – many of today’s jobs won’t exist 15 – 20 years from now.  This approach prepares children to pay attention to their curiosity and articulate their sense of wonder.
3. When children say they are bored, ask, “what are you curious about, and want to know more of?”  Then, find ways to help them access the information or experience they want to have.

Of course, you can do this at work too, for yourself and your colleagues, particularly if you are a team leader and if you are not.  When a new challenge is presented, ask,  “how might we apply our creativity to this?” Again, it’s important to reinforce that creativity means using new ideas and making new decisions to create a more desirable future.

What do you suppose would happen if you did?

Your creativity can be tapped into daily.  New ideas. New decisions. At home, at work, at school.  Rather than making do with what is, why not apply a little creativity juice to spice up the mundane and bring happiness through achieving even minor accomplishments?

It’s important to allow new thinking rise up to serve you instead of pushing your creativity away. See what happens when you use these suggestions. New ideas, new decisions. You may notice a difference.

Here’s some advice from Dan Pink:

Let me know what you discover.

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• Ultradian Rhythms, Music to Your Creativity and Problem Solving Skills [Phil Shepherd] (ecademy.com)
• John Kao Is Now A Daily Beast (aoprep.blogspot.com)
• 2010′s Top Five Creativity Links (my-creativeteam.com)
• Enhance Your Creativity with Mental Tools (socyberty.com)
• Get Inspired, Take Action (stacyknows.blogspot.com)
• Five Ways Creativity Can Enhance Your Career (distance-education.org)
• RPGs and the Creativity Crisis from The Escapist Blog (theescapist.com)