You're not boring : How to awaken your creativity

When it comes to creativity, for some reason, most people take creativity as something that you're born with, as something like a talent. Most of us think either we haven't or we don't. But in reality, creativity is something that you've worked for and that's just something developed, not something you're born with.

You may be thinking about child geniuses who have been really talented from the day they were born and created amazing arts and amazing stuff, and they created so many things that you've never ever thought of. But most of the time, those people were born in such a privileged position where they were allowed to develop their creative skills and creative thinking.

Yes, maybe some of us have a creativity tendency a bit more than the rest of us, but in most of the scenarios, it is not because you're born creative, but you grew up in a place where you were able to develop your creative thinking.

So, in my opinion, and in a lot of other creative people's opinion, creativity is something that you can develop. In today's video, I'm going to talk about some of the ways that will help you to develop your creative thinking and creative outcome.

The first tip that I can give: whatever you want to create, the important thing is consuming. Pretty much for everything in life, if you want to create something, you need to do an enormous amount of input in the first place. What do I mean by that?

Let's say you want to become a YouTuber and you want to create a lot of videos which will attract loads of people around the world, and you can make money and you can make a living out of it. In order to create great videos, you need to first fully understand what a great video is, and in order to understand that, you need to consume an enormous amount of YouTube videos to identify what makes a good video.

It also depends on your liking, too. Some people like slow-paced videos; some people like really high-paced videos or maybe the background, the type of the lens. By consuming loads of YouTube videos, you will understand what is the type of content you want to create. The only way to understand this is consuming an enormous amount of content in the first place and then creating content.

I've seen so many people sign up for a YouTube course on how to become a YouTuber, tough courses, but most of them don't really consume YouTube in the first place. So they don't understand what a YouTuber is and what type of value they bring to the table.

But how are you supposed to write a book if you don't read books, right? The first thing you need to do is input. Just inputting will not help you, so at some point, where you understand what great content is, you should switch to outputting, where you actually create some content.

By giving yourself active feedback and understanding the parts that you can improve and maybe the parts you need to change, you will create great content over time. If you look back to my older videos, maybe from five years ago, where I wasn't really cool at consuming YouTube that much and where I didn't know actually what a YouTube video is, my videos weren't really engaging and they really sucked. My channel from five years ago didn't really grow.

But for four years, I dedicated pretty much all my free time to consuming YouTube videos and trying to understand what type of YouTube videos I particularly like, and what type of YouTube videos that I can create, so that I can build a YouTube channel and sustain my life out of that.

Because I knew I'm not the most creative person on the earth, but I also wanted to pursue something that is really creative, such as being a YouTuber. So, in those four years, I even had a YouTube notebook actually somewhere in my room, where I've watched so many videos—more than hundreds and maybe even thousands of videos—where I've written the points that I liked from that video.

For example, I like this transition, or maybe the phrases that she uses. Over time, the more I repeated it, the more I understood what I liked in the video, and I slowly implemented those things in my videos. If you have been following this channel for a while, you probably noticed that my videos are getting maybe a bit better.

Of course, they're not perfect at all because I'm not a perfectionist, and I believe in one percent improvement each time. We're still improving, hopefully. So if you want to become a creator, first consume the type of things that you would like to create.

For that, I highly recommend Skillshare online classes to consume high-quality content. Skillshare is an online learning community with thousands of classes across the members in over 150 countries across the globe who came together to find inspiration and take their creativity journey to the next level.

If you have a specific skill you want to learn, Skillshare is the perfect platform to do that. From productivity to making YouTube videos, storytelling, or maybe even drawing on iPad, there are tons of classes that you will find very helpful.

For example, if you want to find a new hobby without using social media, there are cooking classes, driving classes, even classes like playing piano. If you want to become more productive, check out all the “updos" courses. And if you want to learn languages, next month I'm releasing my language course on Skillshare.

Now is the time to do the thing you always wanted to do. The first thousand people who use the link will get a free one-month trial Skillshare subscription. Check out the links down in the description below, and thank you Skillshare for sponsoring this video.

Okay, so tip two is going to be a more scientific approach to waking up your inner creativity. In my favorite author's book, from Cabo Salvation, which is a Japanese book and unfortunately doesn't have an English translation, however, it explains the correlation between acetylcholine levels and creativity.

When your acetylcholine levels increase, it kind of activates the creativity in your brain. How can we increase acetylcholine levels in our brain? A really easy way to increase your acetylcholine levels is trying something new and doing something new each day.

It can be actually something really simple, like talking to new people, or maybe eating something new, trying a new recipe, going to a place that you have never been to. Trying maybe different types of a book even can really help with increasing your acetylcholine level.

A great way to increase your acetylcholine levels is writing out your thoughts. Whenever a new idea comes to your mind, you need to write that down, or you need to talk and discuss with somebody else about this idea. When you're writing it down or discussing that new idea, your brain gets more activated.

When you're sleeping, your acetylcholine levels increase more, but for that, great sleep is a key factor. In this book, Cabo Salvation recommends four easy ways to increase acetylcholine levels, and it is using the four B’s in your life.

What are they? Bad, boss, bar, and bathroom. What does it even mean? So the first B is bent. Before going to bed, read something. Read a new type of a book that you have never read. If you are always reading productivity-type books, maybe try out reading something mystery, or maybe a book about romance.

The second B is boss. Oftentimes when we are commuting, most of us just maybe listen to music or watch YouTube videos aimlessly. If you're watching a YouTube video with a clear purpose in your mind and if you're actively learning something, it is amazing. You don't need to change that.

However, I've seen so many people on the bus just watching maybe a bit more meaningless types of YouTube videos, where you don't necessarily learn something new, and they also don't really pay attention to it. They just watch it for the sake of watching it and spending time.

If you're doing that, a great way to change that is maybe using services like Audible, where you can listen to books. If you're getting a bit nauseous when you're reading something on the bus, you can listen to some new types of books. Maybe there is no need to stick in your comfort zone; try something new. For example, listen to books that you probably never ever listened to. Naturally, give it a try and use your commute time wisely.

The third B is bar, but I don't think this really applies to most people. When you're drinking, maybe try different types of alcoholic drinks. If you're always drinking beer, maybe give it a try to red wine or give it a try to different cocktails and all that. But I don't think this is the most important tip, in my opinion.

The other tip is bathroom. So actually not thinking about anything, just relaxing at the moment, is a very important way to increase your acetylcholine levels. Also, I've realized that most of us really consume and consume and consume all the time, but we don't really give ourselves, give our brain time to actually think and rest.

If you're into meditation, it is an amazing hobby, keep doing that. But if you are hesitating with meditating, the great thing that you can do is just not listen to any music while you are having a bath or while you're showering. Just allow your thoughts to come in and just observe them. Don't try to stop them or don't try to narrate them; just let them.

You have been doing a great input on the bus, in your bedroom, and also in the bar. For bathroom, use this time to just really calm down and let go.

So let's talk about the conclusion. When I was reading this book, I was actually really surprised how simple it is to awaken your inner creativity. I was expecting something like a bit more drastically life-changing tip or something. But when we think about it, actually, most of the things that we want to achieve in our lives are not that complicated; we are the ones who make it complicated.

So if you want to be creative, the things you need to do are basically consuming loads and loads and loads of things until you understand what a good thing is, and then practice and practice and practice. Give yourself feedback, consume more, create more, feedback, create more—this loop. It is that easy.

Then the other thing is trying out new stuff every day, and don't stick in your comfort zone because creativity and growth doesn't come from a place where you're comfortable; it comes from a place where you are uncomfortable.

So with time, expand your comfort zone and try out and experience more things in life, which will allow you to bring new ideas and maybe see things from a new perspective.

So actually, being creative is not that hard. The things you need to do are really simple; however, putting them into practice is much harder than it sounds. If you spend every day consuming great content and applying them into your life, you will be actually unstoppable and probably one of the most creative people you have ever met in your life.

But don't forget, just watching this video will not make you creative. The actual putting the work in will make you creative. Thank you guys for watching this video, and I hope it helped.