BOOST YOUR CREATIVE THINKING
Use mindfulness to boost creative thought processes and open up your mind to solve problems and think better.
CREATE A MIND PALACE
Creativity is seen as an asset no matter what field you are working in. Anything from solving a mathematical equation to creating artwork, creativity is the difference between ‘good’ and ‘great’. The rising body of research shows that regular practice of mindfulness helps to boost creativity and think in new ways to solve problems.
How does mindfulness help?
In 2011, a group of scientists from the Zhejiang Normal University, China investigated the effect of mindfulness on creativity. In this study, two groups were given problems to solve in a test; followed by one group that received 20 minutes of mindfulness meditation before the test. The group that took up mindfulness meditation was able to solve significantly more problems than the previous groups, which points to mindfulness helping in gaining insight in problem solving. (1)
Moreover, in 2012, a study showed that mindfulness practice improved the ability to look at novel and adaptive ways of responding to problems, both in and out of the clinical setting. This showed that mindfulness promotes ‘out-of-the-box’ thinking, or more commonly known as divergent thinking (2). The same results were achieved in another study done in 2012 at Leiden University in the Netherlands, where divergent thinking correlated with mindfulness meditation (3).
No matter what you do or who you are, creativity always helps you achieve an edge, and the best step to take would be to sign up for our mindfulness foundation course and see the benefits yourself!
References
1. Meditation promotes insightful problem-solving by keeping people in a mindful and alert conscious state.
Sci China Life Sci 2011 Oct 29;54(10):961-5. Epub 2011 Oct 29.
Jun Ren, Zhihui Huang, Jing Luo, Gaoxia Wei, Xiaoping Ying, Zhiguang Ding, Yibin Wu, Fei Luo
2. “Mind the trap”:
mindfulness practice reduces cognitive rigidity. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22615758
3. Meditate to create: the impact of focused-attention and open-monitoring training on convergent and divergent thinking https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3328799
