Creativity is not something some people have and others don't have. It is a skill that we can work on and improve. Here are five suggestions to do just that.

1) Become aware of the 6 hats, an idea by Edward DeBono. Each hat symbolises a state to go into. The strategy focuses attention on each state in such a way that each state is created seperately from each other.

White Hat: This hat symbolises facts and reason.

Red Hate: Feeling and Intuition

Black Hat: This hat symbolises negativity and cynicism.

Yellow Hat: This hat symbolises optimism and positivity.

Green Hat: This hat symbolises the creative state.

Blue Hat: This hat symbolises organising and overview.

What this means is that you can go into each state and get the benefits of each state. That way, you learn to use your brain in a more intelligent way.

Most people are not very creative because they censor themselves when they have a good idea because they feel it won't be good... so they are wearing three hats (green, black and red) at the same time. By seperating them, you learn to optimise your thinking.

2) Get into the habit of letting your ideas run free. By this I mean, get into the habit of letting your imagination go anywhere. This can be while wearing the green cap or simply when in a creative state. Start developing the skill of suspending judgement and logic and purely letting your imagination create. It is important that your imagination is nourished like that.

3) Practise making different connections. Practise making connections between objects that aren't connected with eachother in any reasonable way. For example, a tea cloth with a game of backgammon. Let your brain get used to making absurd and strange connections.

4) Practise using similies, ambiguities and metaphors. Your brain's linguistic skills can improve your brain's ability to create. The faster connections you make through improving your linguistic skills, the better you will be able to create. Similies are descriptions using 'like' or 'as' (green like the grass, as stubborn as a tree) and metaphors are descriptions in which you map one thing on another with a description (he was the hurcules of chess) while ambiguities are words that sound the same and have different meanings (realise/real eyes/real lies).

5) Practise looking at everything from a different angle. Get into the habit of asking the question: 'HOW ELSE COULD THIS BE DONE?' Begin to start pushing yourself towards coming up with as many different ways of doing things as you possibly can.