So often I hear “I’m just not creative” or something akin to it.

I admit I have had my ‘seasons’ of feeling like a lump rather than a creative genius!  But the truth is, we are all creative geniuses!  It’s true!

So why do we get in slumps and how to do we get out of them?

Well, LIFE gets us into them!  We let the stressors of life pull us into a slump.  We let go of our true Self and fall into survival mode.

According to Pete Sulack, a leading stress reduction expert, “When we are stressed, we revert to behaviors that are routine, time-tested, and familiar – our ‘go to’ plan of action.  We do this because we are in survival mode.  When we are stressed, we are using an industrial, assembly-line type of thinking, instead of creative, out-of-the-box thinking.”

So to ignite our creativity all we have to do is stop being stressed.

What!?!  Is it really that cut and dried?  I think it just might be.  Yet we all know that is much easier said than done!  Oh, yes, just stop being stressed J

Let’s start by looking at some of the emotions associated with stress:

• Depressed
• Anxious
• Moody
• Doubt
• Dread
• Angry
• Overwhelmed
• Lonely
• Fear

No wonder creativity has been stifled.  Look at what we are dealing with!

Now, according to Sulack, there is a simple solution to turn all of this around.  He touts that gratitude affects the limbic system of your brain, replacing fear, dread, doubt, etc. with good images of the people and things you are personally grateful for.  “The HPA axis that is responsible for the fight/flight/freeze response in humans is stopped dead in its tracks with the introduction of gratitude.  To boost your personal happiness, learn and practice gratitude…Actively feeling grateful acts…as a counterbalance to the stressors in your life.  Those times when you work too much, don’t get enough sleep, don’t eat right, burn the candle at both ends, drink too much coffee – you know those days.  Gratitude can be the antidote to depression and stress.”

In addition, he teaches that “to be creative and get beyond…compensatory behaviors and try new ones, we must address the stress response.  Gratitude is one powerful way to do that.  When you are grateful, your stress is reduced and you experience positive emotions.  These in turn help you remember peripheral details more vividly, think outside the box, and recognize common themes among random or unassociated ideas.  All of this adds up to a more creative response.”

WOW!

Do you see the POWER gratitude carries?

You see there is a trait all humans possess called Positive Affect.  This trait is basically the experience of positive emotion.  And numerous studies show that this trait, this experience, enhances both creativity and problem-solving ability.

It’s all science!

So there you go.  You now have the answer to getting out of a creative slump and it is backed by science!

Let’s do a simply recap.

1. Life is full of experiences that we allow to get us all stressed out.
2. This stress brings us to experience several negative emotions.
3. These negative emotions keep us stuck in survival mode – zero creativity, just get by.
4. Practicing ACTIVE gratitude (really feeling it) replaces those bad emotions with positive pictures of the things you are grateful for.
5. All of the sudden, you feel positive emotions like joy, playfulness, hope and happiness.
6. Now you are experiencing Positive Affect.
7. Voila! The door to creativity has been opened!

Being grateful boosts happiness.  This kind of happiness is a place of security and growth from which we are free to explore the world and enjoy things in it – thus fostering our innate creativity.

Gratitude is the key to get you out of a slump and performing like the creative genius you are!