Creativity & Serendipity

Creativity is a wonderful and strange phenomenon - we need it, love it and thrive upon it. It inspires writers, poets, artists, musicians, scientists, mathematicians, entrepreneurs, beggars, thieves, you name it!

But how do we get it, and why does it ebb and flow?

It seems like a magical and strange phenomenon...there is no set way to get it..it seems random and sudden...and some people seem to have more of it than others, we think... Newton got a spark from an apple...Archimedes found it in his bath tub...Einstein found his spark in his violin... But we desperately want to find a method to creativity...a way to harness the juices of creativity so that it flows at our command rather than us being commanded by it...we wish.. Reflecting upon it, it indeed feels mystical...ideas and connections seem to come inspired from a higher source and though some may come from pre-existing knowledge, sudden connections and new insights also happen in mysterious ways... So do we just accept it as something from the beyond and have no way of regularly tapping into it? I do see a few aspects to creativity. The first is there is a certain flow to it, and we need to harness it when it is flowing, and then it flows more constantly... For example, a writer commits to a weekly habit to write, and he/she finds some inspiration or the other a similar time every week... An entrepreneur commits to meeting a set number of people every week, and different ideas flow out of these meetings on a regular basis... So I see that regular habits can be used to harness our creativity... Serendipity is also a key aspect to creativity...often our best insights and ideas come in unforeseen ways when we are looking for something else in a completely different place... For example my inspiration for today's piece came from an unforeseen meeting with a friend in a conference that gave fresh air to a completely different idea, unrelated to the conference... But what is the method to serendipity, which seems completely out of our control? Well, if I had slept in today instead of attending this conference, the serendipitous encounter would not have happened... So the answer here seems to be, to show up...to show up in places I'm supposed to be, and to show up in places I'm not supposed to be.. To widen our interests, and to widen the circles we mingle in... And hopefully with these and more practices (that both you and I will discover), we can harness the beauty and power of the magical phenomenon of creativity!