4 Cornerstones to Foster Creativity and Remember Your Spark

A majority of us are locked into a world of routine. As we slot away our work hours and worry about what each day brings, we decide to give up a part of ourselves in the process. It's quite demoralizing and can lead to somewhat of a dull gray mental space; each day blends into the next, and the novelty and wonder of life we remember from our youth fades away. Eventually, holding onto any spark of creativity or meaning becomes difficult as we sink into an ocean of expectations and anxieties.

Enter the world of medical school. When I applied for my 7-year BS/MD program, I aspired to help people and wanted to use my curiosity and analytical brain to eliminate and minimize pain. Most medical students can relate to this. To strive to be a physician is to take the utmost responsibility in caring for others and understanding the human experience, and these students often have a wealth of compassion fueled by personal experiences with physical suffering and empathy. However, as I continued to grind flash cards and practice questions, learning all the right answers and how to solve the diagnostic puzzles of illness, everything I once looked forward to in studying medicine began to congeal into a boring soup of routine. Simultaneously, my drive to increase my performance made me reduce how often I talked to friends, less engaged in writing, and less able to just be. But my drive to pursue this path did not come from the routine I put myself in, and my motivation was quickly fizzling out.

Each of us find and create meaning, and its important to remember how to keep connecting with that part of ourselves. For me, I had to realize that my truest self needed to be nurtured and rediscovered so that I could remember how to feel alive. I came to focus on how creating meaning is a creative process, and that whatever brings us to be creative allows us to therefore feel more alive. Eventually, I came to identify several cornerstones to foster this creativity.

4 Cornerstones to Foster Creativity and Remember Your Spark

1. Prioritize what truly matters and prune your life. There are so many easy ways to waste your time and attention now that everyone is constantly competing for it. For instance, social media has thrived both due to the benefits of its use and also due to the addictive engineering behind it. Because of this, I took stock of how I used my time and what I got out of it. I cut back hours of meaningless time scrolling through Twitter and reddit by installing an anti-distraction extension to encourage myself to be more mindful of my time. As a result, I was once again spending more quality time with the friends and family I loved and cared for. The changes you decide on may look different, like spending less time with toxic individuals or reorganizing your work schedule, but the fundamental purpose is to evaluate what you want to prioritize for your health and well-being.

2. Make time for yourself to be bored and do nothing. This seems counterintuitive as a remedy to routine, but hear me out. As stated in Manoush Zomorodi's TED talk, there is a scientific basis to how boredom is extremely important to creativity. Our brains begin wandering and automatically connecting ideas that would normally not come up together. As a result, things occur to us that we would have never considered. In my own life, as I filled up my days with ways to maximize productivity to accomplish my goals, I was simultaneously killing my ability to synthesize and create new ideas. As a result, I would set aside time and conditions to let myself be bored: I no longer take my phone to the bathroom, and I occasionally work out without listening to music or a podcast. As a result, I have occasionally been able to make myself laugh, recall my studies better, and have more unique ideas to share in conversations.

3. Externally contain and express yourself. Ultimately, creativity is a muscle that can be strengthened, and strength entails practice. In my case, I began to reconnect with writing as my primary form of expression. I made a point of journaling each day to allow myself space to contain and express whatever ideas came to me in my times of boredom, frustration, and joy. This gave me a way to externalize and edit my understanding of my experiences for the better. Also, it was a cool way to make sure I wasn't letting time slip by without providing significance to its passage. The form your own representations of expression may be visual, auditory, or some other personally crafted idea, but the most important thing is to put part of your experiences outside of yourself.

4. Always be vulnerable and kind to yourself. In my job as a writing tutor, I often run into an issue where a student is reluctant to write. They may say things such as "I'm not a good writer" or "I need to make sure it comes out just right." Our results-based society deprives us of opportunities to be vulnerable with ourselves, which therefore keeps us from engaging in creative trial and error; we're less likely to try new things, throw words on a page, or even think new ideas. We stop ourselves before we leave the gate because we think everything lies on a single attempt or moment. Because of this, above all else, I want to let you know that there is no wrong way to engage in yourself and your limitless creativity, and that being gentler with yourself is a powerful path to allowing yourself to be more.