The Monthly Aspectarian: Lorraine, when I look over the material I have about you, it seems to me that one of the important things you're saying is that creativity requires courage.
Lorraine Denham: Maybe even more than courage, creativity takes commitment to being open to the very great possibility that though something hasn't happened before, it doesn't mean it can't happen for you in the future. A certain amount of life is based on what you make it. Part of what makes some people more successful is their ability to embrace challenges, embrace problems, look at them from a different angle . . . just like a scientist solves a very difficult problem they don't just keep tackling it from the same angle. They go under it, around it, behind it, they invert it . . . and that's what you have to do in every situation in your life. It's not creativity to just make prettier pottery or to be a painter. It's creativity in your life.
I think most people have this thought: "Other people are creative and I'm not." I hear that a lot. What people don't understand is that you need to think of creativity as a muscle. It's the kind of muscle that needs exercise; it's using a part of your mind. What I have found is that there are some techniques that are repeatable and easy to practice so that you can enjoy the advantages of creativity. Because when you are creative, the world of possibilities opens up to you and truly, you can make just about anything happen.
TMA: So you're saying that everybody I hate to use the "s" word, but should strive to be creative.
LD: I think there are advantages to being creative. I don't know if you "should," but I think creativity is challenging and exciting. You can do something the way it's always been done, you can go to work every day the same way, you can eat the same lunch, you can call your mother every Sunday you can do everything you've been programmed to do all your life and probably be pretty happy, content and in my estimation, a bored person. And that might be okay. I don't think everybody has to go the dynamic route of being creative.But there are big advantages to being creative, and that's what I talk to people about.
It's just like an explorer going on a journey: you can take the safe route and you're probably going to enjoy the experience. But if you go the adventurous route you might learn more about yourself because you've peeled back more of the layers of the onion, taken a deeper look at yourself. There's a certain amount of enjoyment that comes from risk and challenging yourself.
TMA: You'll have more to talk about when it's over, anyway.
LD: [laughs] Yes, that's true.
TMA: So when a person make a commitment to be more creative when they perhaps haven't been quite so creative, what kinds of techniques are there for unleashing it?
LD: Well, the first thing is, we don't want to be just sitting around in our house or our office, coming up with ideas. We have to look into our world and see where there are needs. Such as, Southwest Airlines was very creative when they came up with leveraging the fact that a lot of people like short-legged trips. Now they are one of the few successful airlines based on a whole new concept. There are a lot of examples of that. So you have to look around the world, look around your job, your family . . . look around your situation and see where there are problems and where are there needs. And then when you have a concrete problem or need, you can start brainstorming, thinking of ways that it can be handled. It's hard to come up with those ideas in a vacuum.
So the first thing is, you look at the need. Then you do a little research and thereby you enter into a world of exploration because now you have a need that you think there can be an answer to. Now you need to do a little homework to find out who would use this, what's been done before, how has this been handled and you start to learn. And then you start to have an attainable goal. You start to be able to have a plan.
You work with the various stages of creativity: you create, you explore, you expand ideas . . . and you have to detail the many ideas you come up with. Then you have to take it even further and be able to convince others or sell this idea.
TMA: I think one of the benefits of the exploration process is learning things you didn't even set out to learn. Sidney J. Harris, the columnist from the Chicago Sun-Times of several years ago, every once in a while he'd run a column that was titled "Things I Learned En Route to Looking Up Other Things."
LD: That really is the beauty of creativity. Let's say you took a trip and you realize, "There isn't a resort for what I want to do." Maybe you want a resort that's based on psychology, where all these different psychologists could get together whatever, I'm just brainstorming and you start coming up with a variety of ideas and you find more ideas than you'll ever be able to use, but bits and pieces of all these ideas get borrowed from and applied to your first idea. So in the brainstorming process, you make enormous discoveries; and then you can create a file for other ideas that you'll come up with in the future. In that way, you become a much more proactive person in the world because you are really a part of life, a part of making things better. It's a really good feeling. And like you said, in the process, you learn a great deal about many, many other things.
TMA: Aside from people who are just naturally creative I mean, I fall into that category myself; it's implementing that gets in my way. But aside from people who are naturally creative, do you think that almost everybody else can be more creative than they are, or are some people just other types?
LD: Oh, I think there are different types of minds. It's documented that certain people have certain strengths. The point is, you cannot be a successful analytic or a successful scientist without realizing the value of using the creative side of your brain. I sense that imagination is more powerful than knowledge. But a lot a people pooh-pooh and look down on and disregard creativity because they think it's daydreaming or it's fluffy or it's wasting time. But there is value in sitting in a chair and looking out a window and thinking.
As I said before, I see it as a muscle that needs to be exercised. No matter what you're doing in any job, you need those creative muscles. Bill Gates needs those creative muscles. Any CEO running a corporation whose job is largely looking at numbers needs those muscles. Accountants need to be creative in how they get around the laws and look at loopholes . . . it's all a part of it. It's a mindset. It's a way of thinking, of approaching your work and your life.
TMA: Do you have any specific suggestions or techniques for tapping into the creative level of mind?
LD: In my seminars, throughout a three-hour course, we actually do some exercises that are playful. The first tip is to be playful. Don't take everything so seriously. Another is to start a journal. Just start writing what comes into your head. It doesn't even matter if it makes sense. Another is to start collecting ideas and things you see that are neat plays on words. Because I'm in the advertising marketing field, I collect ads that I think are really clever. I just saw one that said "Go Configure" for a new car manufacturer. You need to just get into that frame of mind where you start absorbing more of the world's input. And then certainly in your job, if you're in a position to encourage people when you're in a meeting when everybody's in a hurry and there's always somebody saying, "No, we can't do that," instead of just sitting solving problems the same old way, see if you can create an environment for creative ideas.
Or have your meetings in a park, just to be different. One of my clients does all her planning sessions on a Dixieland boat. She just takes everybody out in the bay so they can't get away, and that's where they come up with their best ideas.
TMA: Do you take any sort of meditative approach such as asking the question and going into the silence and listening for answers?
LD: Well, I think when you ask the question, the answer will come and it comes in the form of an Aha! Like you're in the shower and all of a sudden you have the answer to your question. I don't think enough people ask their mind questions. I think they just go, immediately, "Oh, I don't know what that would be. That's a problem."
TMA: They think, "Gee, I can't do that."
LD: Right. "That's a problem. It's been a problem for everybody else before me" . . . and they shut their thinking down. The mind can work on many different levels; the subconscious is always churning. If you say no to your subconscious, it will believe not what is true but what it hears.
The most important thing is just taking your own handcuffs and restraints off yourself and being open to all these possibilities. Your mind is such an amazing instrument, and most people use only 2% of it. So often we're stifling ourselves and saying, "No, don't do that, don't go there, that's never been done, that's never been tried. What makes you think you can do that when others haven't." It's a matter of using constant encouragement and positive input. You just say, "I can really think of or accomplish anything I want."
TMA: It's a matter of giving yourself permission.
LD: Exactly. Giving yourself permission to be creative by looking at things a new way. Without ideas, without creativity, the world as we know it with all these wonderful things the Internet and modems and so many other opportunities would never be here. It's someone saying, "Hey! People don't have to buy groceries at the store, they can call us up and we'll deliver it." Or they'll go online. That is the lifeblood of our world.
TMA: There are some people who say we would be better off if we were still hunter-gatherers, but I'm not one of them.
LD: We're not mechanisms. We're designed whether it's to the ultimate destruction of human beings or not but we are driven to innovate and we are driven to think and invent and grow.
TMA: So we might as well throw ourselves into it and be as positive as we can?
LD: Absolutely. Ultimately, the people who are most successful in life are the ones who are doing what they love. And most people can't do what they love if they aren't creatively looking at how they can make money doing that. I know lots of people who have jobs that they don't love doing and to me, it's because they don't have the creativity and the follow-through and the gumption to do what they truly love. It's all tied together, I think, starting with having an open mind and looking at things creatively.
Lorraine Denham is the co-founder of Unipro Marketing Services, a company specializing in creative marketing programs for companies such as IBM, Xerox, Honeywell and Siemens.
Lorraine started out as a professional dancer, singer and actress before becoming an on-camera spokesperson in commercials for McDonald's Ford and Hyatt Hotels. She has won numerous awards for her creative work and continues to be a mediator between the corporate and creative worlds. For the past five years she has taught a program in creativity all over the world.