“When you invite people to share in your miracle, you create future allies during rough weather.”
- Shannon L. Alder
Once you become comfortable enough with your own creativity, why not spice up things and work in groups? So grab some of your “pen-friends”, play together and see how can you inspire and help each other become more creative.
These exercises can be also performed in the business setting, they’re fun and can be a great way to break out of the ordinary working routine.
Inspired by discovered
Each of you, players, has to write down a rare fact about yourself that most people don’t know about on a piece of paper, fold it and exchange it with others randomly. Caught by surprise about unknown facts you may find your own fountain of creativity! Write a poem about it and see where it takes you.
Pantomime
Let one of your friends or coworkers gesture with hands: your task is to describe what you see, what you experience and jot it down in words in the form of poem. This can be quite intriguing way of stimulating our creative capabilities, as is discussed in this article, using two hands to explain something prompts the brain to consider issues from multiple perspectives. To spice up a bit, try everything that you write to put in rhyme (in the prompt 14. on the page 26, I explained the benefits of putting boundaries during our brainstorming sessions and how that can stimulate creativity further).
What’s wrong with this picture?
Visual stimulation can unleash your imagination in the most exciting ways. You can pick some random picture and each of players has to make a story in the form of poem, inspired by the picture. Afterwards, you can all debate and see whose story is the most interesting or you can take it step further and compile all stories into one: it has to be believable and follow some logical structure. It’s best suited for groups of two, three people.
With certain moderation you can use these ideas for your own creativity exercises, as well.
Somebody said that it couldn’t be done,
But, he with a chuckle replied
That “maybe it couldn’t,” but he would be one
Who wouldn’t say so till he’d tried.
So he buckled right in with the trace of a grin
On his face. If he worried he hid it.
He started to sing as he tackled the thing
That couldn’t be done, and he did it.
Somebody scoffed: “Oh, you’ll never do that;
At least no one has done it”;
But he took off his coat and he took off his hat,
And the first thing we knew he’d begun it.
With a lift of his chin and a bit of a grin,
Without any doubting or quiddit,
He started to sing as he tackled the thing
That couldn’t be done, and he did it.
There are thousands to tell you it cannot be done,
There are thousands to prophesy failure;
There are thousands to point out to you one by one,
The dangers that wait to assail you.
But just buckle it in with a bit of a grin,
Just take off your coat and go to it;
Just start to sing as you tackle the thing
That “couldn’t be done,” and you’ll do it.
Edgar Albert Guest