Anthony Robbins, a popular self-help guru and author, has explained that tests prove a person's ability to sink basketballs into a hoop can be improved by the repetitive visualization of successfully doing just that. In fact, visualization practice is actually more effective at improving the number of balls sunk into a hoop on a court, than physically practicing shooting hoops. Visualization practice while physically mimicking the activity movements (sans ball thrown toward hoop) is even more efficacious.
So when it comes to improving creativity, maybe improv is one of the answers.
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What happens if we step out of that belief long enough to practice (visualize) being a graceful person? We improv gracefulness: we borrow the belief we are graceful, we act (practice being/visualizing) more graceful, we believe more strongly we are graceful. We are graceful.
Belief is key. What we believe is what we tell our minds to create.
Belief is key. What we believe is what we tell our minds to create.
Michael Michalko writes in Psychology Today Online:
"People do not believe they are creative. We have been taught that we are the product of our genes, our parents, our family history, our personal history, our I.Q., and our education. Consequently, we have been conditioned to have a fixed mindset about creativity and believe only a select few are born creative and the rest not. Because we believe we are not creative, we spend our lives observing only those things in our experiences that confirm this belief. We spend our lives knowing and living within the limitations we believe we have. We listen to our "inner" voice that keeps telling us not to pretend to be something we're not."
When I was a child, someone asked me how I did a thing I had done. They seemed astounded that I had accomplished that particular activity. I no longer remember what the accomplishment was, but I remember the strong positive and surprised reaction the person gave to my answer: "No one told me I couldn't."
As we grow up, the world begins to inundate us with what we "cannot" do, have, or be.
I have at various times been told I cannot do, have, or be something because I was: female, too young, the wrong class, didn't make enough money, made too much money, had too little education, had too much education, wasn't smart enough, was too smart, wasn't the "right" ethnicity or race, was the right ethnicity or race, was too skinny or too fat, had too little experience or too much, had the wrong experience or the right experience at the wrong time, had too little or too much of what it took, was too old.... In fact, I don't remember ever being just right at just the right moment in my entire life.
Which may be why I learned to improvise. Sometimes we just have to stop listening to the "cannot's" and start living the "what ifs"....
As we grow up, the world begins to inundate us with what we "cannot" do, have, or be.
I have at various times been told I cannot do, have, or be something because I was: female, too young, the wrong class, didn't make enough money, made too much money, had too little education, had too much education, wasn't smart enough, was too smart, wasn't the "right" ethnicity or race, was the right ethnicity or race, was too skinny or too fat, had too little experience or too much, had the wrong experience or the right experience at the wrong time, had too little or too much of what it took, was too old.... In fact, I don't remember ever being just right at just the right moment in my entire life.
Which may be why I learned to improvise. Sometimes we just have to stop listening to the "cannot's" and start living the "what ifs"....
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