To increase creativity, you need to do two things. First, youneed to encourage it. Second, you need to train your brain.Start on both of these right now, and you can experience greatercreativity today.

Encourage creativity and you'll increase creativity. This istrue of most things you want to see more of in your life.Encouragement can work wonders. How do you encourage creativity,though?

First, by paying attention to it. Your subconscious mind tendsto give you more of what you pay attention to. If you ignore thecreative aspects of your life, you are telling your subconsciousthat they are unimportant. If you consciously note when you arecreative, and you look for opportunities to be creative, yoursubconscious mind will start feeding you more creative ideas.Look for it and you'll find more of it.

Another way to encourage and increase creativity, is to writeyour ideas down. Keep an "idea journal." If you do thisregularly, you'll notice that you often start having more ideasthe moment you start to write. A so-so idea may normally beforgotten, but by writing it down, you may remember it, yoursubconscious works on it, and it can transform into somethingvery creative.

You can also encourage greater creativity in yourself by puttingcreative ideas into practice. If you paint or write, forexample, try anything new. Even just driving a different routeto work to see if it is quicker can help. The point is to getyou mind working outside of its regular patterns.

Just changing your surroundings can encourage creativity. If youwant more creativity in your love life, go hike up a mountainwith your partner. If you write, try sitting on a roof to write.If you need new ideas for your business, take a notebook to thepark and sit by the duck pond. A change of enviroment can getyour brain out of it's ruts.

Creativity Training

If you want to dramatically increase creativity, developcreative habits of mind. Watch a good comedian and you'll seethat she has trained her mind to look for the "different angle"on everyday things. You can train your mind to do the same.

Challenge assumptions, for example, until it becomes habit.Looking for ways to get customers into your store? Stop and say,"Do I really need more customers?" The question suggests othercreative solutions, like finding ways to make more money offexisting customers, or ways to cut expenses. These may lead tomore profitable ideas. Challenge assumptions to increase thecreativity of your solutions.

As you drive to work, randomly choose anything around you andask how it may be connected to whatever problem you are workingon. A helicopter overhead might make you think about a way totrack where the car goes when you loan it to your kids. A palmtree may lead to a new design for patio umbrellas.

The above techniques are called "Assumption Challenging" and"Random Presentation," and are two classic creative problemsolving techniques. There are dozens more. Train your brain tohabitually use these, and provide it with a littleencouragement, and you really can increase your creativity.