5 Best 9 Freelance Tips to Increase Your Creativity

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We are all creative. We continuously create things, ideas, images etc. However, when discussing creativity, we do not refer only to the basic creation process. Making coffee for instance is a creative process that only requires you to follow some given instructions. The creativity representing the subject of this article requires something more. It mainly requires your capacity to see things differently from other people. It requires a deeper view and analysis of things and people. It requires unusual approaches, sometimes even absurd ones, but these are determining innovation and originality. And creativity is based on them.

1. Find your source of inspiration

Don’t you have one? Well, you should! Imagine a button you push every time you need to create something innovative. You push it and your job is done. Unfortunately, the existence of such a button cannot be but utopian, however, having a source of inspiration or a ‘muse’ is not. All great artists have something or someone inspiring them, that’s why finding yours will definitely ease your creative efforts.  If you’re a graphic designer for instance, you can try finding a mentor whose work becomes a design inspiration source, you can check some graphic design galleries online or you can buy design magazine. It may take some time until, but once you will have found your ‘muse’, it will unleash your creativity.

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2. Create

We’d all want to create impressive and innovative things with very little effort and we’re often disappointed with the final result. Good things don’t come so easy. Perseverance is the secret! So, in order to eventually achieve the result you set up in your mind, one try is not enough. Just create until your initial idea is totally reflected by your work!

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3. Think outside the box

Whenever we face a problem we have to solve, our brain searches the easy-way to reach its resolution, looking for previous similar situations and following a pattern. Thus, avoiding handy resolutions will help us increase our creativity. We must restrict ourselves from following the easy paths and expand our horizons! That way we’ll be constrained to think outside the box and come up with creative solutions we wouldn’t have thought of otherwise.

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4. Analyze the problem from multiple angles

Finding a great, unusual solution is determined by the way you conceptualize the problem. Usually, the first idea that comes up in your mind is not the best one. As stated before, easy things are not the best things. So, the issue is that you should analyze the problem from different angles and find the best approach for reaching your goal. For example, instead of thinking ‘How can I become a successful artist?`, try ‘What should I do in order to differentiate myself from my competitors, to be remarkable and appreciated so that I reach success?’

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5. Look for excellence

Reading lots of books, listening to music, studying art are good ways to develop your creative thinking and increase your originality. But choosing the greatest books, the greatest music, art, as well as great people to surround you with will get you to a superior intellectual state that will help your creativity flow. Engaging in debates with brilliant people will be like a ‘workout’ for your brain. Your reasoning will be more profound, more analytic, increasing your creativity.

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6. Powerful emotions help you create

When people experience joy, happiness, excitement, they are more likely to create something original and impressive than usually. Likewise, even though it may seem nonsense at first sight, the opposite mood is also a creativity booster. So, when you find yourself in a bad emotional mood, don’t concentrate yourself on the cause of your state, but direct your energy on coming up with something original. Even though the result may not be outstanding at the moment, it could lead later to something quite interesting.

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7. Observe

Creative people, besides thinking outside the box, are very good observers. Carefully noticing everything that surrounds you, paying attention to random ideas can be very helpful. Having the eyes and mind wide open led to some extraordinary inventions – one of them is the antibiotic penicillin discovered by Alexander Fleming.

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8. TV provides you images, not imagination

We all need entertainment, amusement, in order to relax and disconnect from work. Television is still the cheapest entertainment option and wrongly considered a source of inspiration. Television doesn’t encourage you to think, to imagine things, so you better avoid spending long-time in front of TV. Instead, you should read. As many books as you can and from various domains. Not only will you gather lots of information, but you will increase your imagination when trying to visualize it.

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9. Don’t be too critical of yourself

We all want to be socially accepted. And so we want the ways we express our creativity be. Critiques are our biggest fear. In fact, the bad criticism, that sometimes is not based on an objective reasoning, but on a subjective one (some people try to get successful by pushing others down randomly). Therefore you need to disparate between good criticism, that helps you improve your work and find more creative approaches, and bad criticism that is only meant to discourage you. The best you can do when facing such situations is to use the unfounded critiques as your source of motivation.

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