Creativity and its Flow State
As far as we know about humanity, one thing that really makes us who we are today, that’s Idea. Everything around us started as an idea in someone’s head and surely someone else believed in it. Without mentioning that some more others helped in bringing it to life and actually benefit from it. Ideas throughout history shaped our life today as we know it, to an extent that we barely have the opportunity to shape it back. Global warming knows better regarding this.
For instance, we will never argue about how creativity and imaginations are the main components for producing new ideas. However, when we talk about ideas throughout history, some of us may assume that needs and wants played a major role. It’s completely rational. However, let’s keep in mind that human beings are troublemakers with an A class. First, we wanted to get dressed then, it wasn’t enough for us. Today we have multimillion fashion industry. After that, we wanted to choose shelters’ location by ourselves, why caves not pyramid next to the river!
We created the needs and wants to generate even more and more ideas. We knew that we can do it. Nobody in the 70’s missed smartphones, we were doing just fine with land line telephones until the mid-90’s. Today, we are asking for even smarter phones. Which is again creating a need that wasn’t there in the first place.
Moreover, creativity today is so essential that it becomes the ultimate needs and wants for us. Our population is growing, therefore, more and more brains are thinking and imagining possibilities today than any other time in history. Creativity is no longer associated with an elite group of artists, writers and poets only. Today, doctors, hairdressers and even farmers need creativity in their field. The number of people in any given field is growing, so why shall we use your outputs when someone else thought about it differently. We are running out of resources, we need to use them wisely and in creative ways.
Creativity today is profitable, problem solver and a door of endless possibilities. Human beings had satisfied the biases long time ago, yet we believe we can colonize other planets and again creating even more sophisticated needs and wants that wasn’t there originally.
But how creativity is working? Creativity needs the most complicated machine on earth, a functioning human brain. It doesn’t really matter if it’s functioning rationally or insanely. People with different brain injuries have the ability to generate “creative” ideas. Although we don’t have a clear definition about what is a creative idea and if is it different than an original idea, somehow, we know when we encounter one. Some of us may say it’s hard to come up with original ideas because everything is already there, but we have a room to play in the creative part. This isn’t exactly the case, let’s take a moment to realize this example. In the early 60’s humans were able to go to space and orbit Earth, 10 years later they invented wheels on luggage. Just imagine if the first man to go to space had to take luggage that day?
For decades, scientist had study creativity using brain imaging technology. Creativity works in 40 different parts of the brain. Please, don’t assume that it’s in the right side of your brain. There is no such a thing. Creativity works in the conscious and subconscious level. It uses your whole brain. Except the part that responsible of self-editing.
Shutting down your self-editing functions in the brain results in that Flow State. Which makes you lose track of time and the present of the surrounding objects. People in the music industry know better about that. Functional magnetic resonance imaging(fMRIs) had concluded that rapper during the performance of freestyle rap shut down their frontal lobe completely. The frontal lobe is where your decisions are made. So, how could they say a bunch of meaningful rap lyrics without really deciding to say this or that? Technically, they just let it go. Freestyle is all about creativity. So, ask yourself what makes you achieve that flow state, taking a shower, riding a car alone or in the middle of a meeting? Whenever it happens, just enjoy and take notes.