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The importance of creative thinking lies in the involvement of this thinking in all areas of life around us and its impact on our success and progress. And its obstacles and expansion by explaining everything related to the subject.

Define creative thinking

Creative thinking is defined as the ability to think differently to see a problem or issue from a new angle or perspective and to find new ways to solve these problems, in addition to the applicability of these solutions while identifying the possibilities of non-success or incompleteness of the idea and the need to develop it differently. Develop alternative plans and quick suggested solutions. Keep in mind that creative thinking is not restricted or conditioned by the things that govern it either within or outside of logic. Our need for creative thinking arises in that our brains naturally tend to fall into certain shortcuts to reach a solution.[1]

See also: Steps to Critical Thinking

The importance of creative thinking

As we mentioned previously, creative thinking is the ability to look at things differently to overcome their difficulties, and this definition allows us to learn more about its importance to us, which is the following:[1]

• Self-awareness: We start to think authentically and use our thoughts, feelings and beliefs and this may create bias in our thoughts, but creative thinking teaches us to put these thoughts aside and get to know ourselves deeply, which stimulates confidence in our thoughts and awareness.
• Absolute freedom: When we create something we have the opportunity to interact with the world without judging ourselves, and this is like our feelings when we were children in that we don’t care what people think of us but we think and act with our freedom and complete will.
• Courage: In our daily lives, we are prone to falling into embarrassing problems and situations and making difficult decisions that cannot be ignored. Creative thinking teaches us to deal with them with art and professionalism in creating solutions, and this gives us the courage to implement and accept the results, whatever they may be.
• Do not give in to failure: As creative thinking makes you far from giving in to failure, it gives you the motivation to develop your thinking and master modern skills in order to help you in creativity in a different way.
• Stress Relief: Practicing creative thinking on a regular basis helps relieve stress and pressure on people due to routine and multiple responsibilities and teaches us to deal with stressors in a different and more creative way.
• Getting rid of fear Frustration: Repetition of daily work or responsibilities with the same mechanism leads to feelings of frustration and fear of failure, but creative thinking helps you get rid of them by creating more creative and intelligent ideas.
• Better productivity: When you introduce new and innovative ideas or different solutions, you will inevitably overcome obstacles to advance professional productivity so that the smart approach becomes the secret of your success and not repeating the loss for a long time.
• Interdependence and teamwork: it helps to create a spirit of cooperation between the work team and to generate social cohesion among them in order to achieve the public interest through participation and creative ideas and their development in line with the nature of work.

Creative thinking skills

Creative thinking is usually expressed in many different ways, and after we have learned together the importance of creative thinking, we will present to you below some of the most important creative thinking skills that you may see in multiple environments, which are as follows:[2]

• Analytics: This job requires the ability to examine things carefully to see what they mean whether you are looking at a text, a data set, a lesson plan, or an equation that you should be able to analyze first.
• Creative writing: The ability to write in a persuasive and innovative way will help you a lot in marketing, sales, journalism, etc. clearly, and will also be useful in all other situations that require writing such as reports and presentations.
• Openness: You should put aside any assumptions or biases you may have to think creatively and look at things in a completely new way by facing the problem with an open mind.
• Problem Solving: Employers want creative employees to help them solve work-related problems. Creative thinking helps you to suggest solutions rather than just presenting problems.
• Organizing: Organizing is an essential part of creativity. While you may need some clutter of information when trying out a new idea, you need to organize your ideas so that others understand your vision and follow through on its details.
• Communication: People will not appreciate your creative idea or solution unless you communicate it effectively and this requires that you have strong written and verbal communication skills.
• Listening: You need to be able to fully understand the situation before thinking about it creatively and this means that you need to be a good listener so you can ask questions and listen for answers.

Ways to stimulate creativity

Creativity is not a gift or a mystical power born with man, but rather a skill that everyone can develop and improve if they want to, and the importance of creative thinking lies through motivation through the following ways:[3]

• Practices and techniques: that motivate you to improve and develop your creative skills whether you are self-employed, employed or an employer.
• Creative energy and challenge: In any field you work in, the inner creative energy and challenge motivates you to work more effectively and stand out from your competitors.
• Embracing the unknown: Many feel fear when facing challenges, which stems from the uncertainty of themselves and their abilities, and this reinforces failure, but by delving into the unknown, we will rise to the level of challenges, free our minds, and stimulate the opening of channels.
• Reading: As reading gives us a place to go when we have to stay where we are, reading a book, for example, stimulates the human brain to focus and eliminate any distractions around it and works to relieve stress and anxiety and promote good energy.
• Eliminate boredom: Constantly working on the same tasks that do not allow the experience can be exhausting and disheartening, so get out of the cycle of boredom and make something of your own, such as a small project, for example, this motivates you to work on something that interests you.
• Breaking the routine: which is very motivating, such as going outside the work environment, going on a trip, etc.
• Relaxation: Relaxation helps relieve work pressure and makes room for meditation, thus stimulating the mind to return to creativity in a stronger way after this period of rest.
• Brainstorming: Brainstorming is a method used to solve problems and stimulate creative thinking, which creates many ideas and flips them in your mind and selects the best, and this will stimulate your mind for more creative and innovative solutions.
• Frequent breaks: After working in an activity for a certain period of time, you may feel bored and uninspired, so you should take a break to stimulate your brain to be productive again and recharge your energy.

characteristics of creative thinking

The concept of creativity occupies a very important place in educational psychology, as the progress of any country depends on the development of creativity among its citizens. Therefore, progressive countries in the modern era seek to develop creativity in their new generations, and after we mentioned to you the importance of creative thinking, we will present to you in the following we present to you the most Required characteristics of creativity are:[4]

• Know-how: To be creative a person must be well aware of the problems in his circumstances and do his best to find new solutions to these problems.
• Dynamic Thinking: A creative person does not only think creatively, but must have dynamic thinking and greater adaptability and this is required through new groups.
• Divergent Thinking: Divergent thinking involves continuity, flexibility, and originality and these qualities can be seen in the works of great scholars, philosophers, and literary thinkers.
• New ideas: The new idea often gives the thinker great pleasure, because creativity always impresses everyone. The creative person is absolutely involved in his work.
• Flexibility: One of the important features of creative thinking is the flexibility of thinking and behavior. A creative person is always ready to adopt new situations, ideas or behavior.
• Originality: which is one of the main characteristics of creative thinking. A creative person’s work is not limited to familiar ideas and experiences, but also uses and develops new ideas, attitudes and methods.
• Curiosity and Discovery: In order to achieve the traits of creative thinking, a creative person must have sufficient curiosity, as curiosity makes a person eager to learn and discover new things in any field.
• The creative person: The creative person has the ability to directly transcend circumstances and show novelty in thinking and behavior, while the average person in general is confined to his environment and circumstances and therefore cannot surpass them.
• After consideration: In order to find new solutions, it is necessary to look at the problem from a new point of view, and for the subject of thinking to be new and valuable, the thinking must be complex and continuous.

Obstacles to creative thinking

Everyone has an amazing talent and creative skills that are buried inside and you just have to learn how to unlock and extract your abilities and overcome the obstacles that stand in the way of your creativity. Knowing these obstacles is important to move forward in removing them, which we will mention to you the most important of which are the following:[5]

• Lack of purpose: One of the most important obstacles to creative thinking is the lack of clear goals and objectives accompanied by detailed, written action plans, and when you become crystal clear about what you want your creative mind comes to life.
• Fear of failure: which means the fear of error or losing money or time. It is not the experience of failure that hinders your creativity and progress, but rather your own feeling that makes you not develop and therefore you have to overcome it.
• Fear of rejection: Fear of criticism, fear of ridicule, contempt or rejection is very frustrating, so this fear must turn into a positive energy that pushes you forward and becomes the desire to be liked and accepted by others.
• Inability to adapt: ​​Also called equilibrium, it is a deep subconscious desire to stay consistent with what you did or said in the past and the fear of doing or saying something new or different from what you did before.
• Negativity: It is not thinking proactively. If you do not constantly stimulate your mind with new ideas and information, it loses its vitality and energy, just like muscles that are not exercised for exercises.
• Rationalization: We know that humans are rational creatures and being rational means that we constantly use our minds to explain the world to ourselves, so that you can understand it better and feel more secure you need to constantly rationalize your decisions and learn how to improve performance.

See also: The subject of critical thinking, who is studying it?

Examples of creative thinking

After we got acquainted with creative thinking and deepened our knowledge of its skills, we must clarify these skills by mentioning some examples that help us understand them better, some of which we will present to you as follows:[6]

• Go on a trip: The team can go on a trip out of the office to explore a local park or walk around downtown to see new ideas or concepts the group is discovering through a change of scenery. Even a meeting in a new place can spark innovative ideas.
• New readings: For example, you can go to a library and explore a new section that is completely unrelated to your work or books you usually read, and read this book to find out what new knowledge you can acquire, learning about specialties that are different from yours can offer you new ways to run your business .
• Freewriting: Where you can take a few minutes each morning to write in your stream of consciousness, this type of free writing that allows you to write whatever comes to your mind constantly without stopping is a great way to discover some of your subconscious thoughts that may lead to creative solutions to work challenges.
• Storyboarding: Storyboarding can be a particularly useful creative exercise for creating new procedures or improving existing processes. Instead of writing down the steps of the procedure, you can draw each step in a series of small, rectangular squares like a comic strip. You may discover a useful new step in the process that you haven’t thought of From before.
• Assumptions in a group: If you create a list of assumptions about the product or idea in question regardless of whether they are good or bad, work through the list and think about how to mitigate any negative assumptions and take advantage of the positive ones.
• New out of two: You can take two separate products and find a way to combine them. For example, you can use two of your stationery tools like a stapler and a tape dispenser and create an interesting new product and then design a marketing strategy and target market for this new product you have created.

In this way, we come to the end of our article, which was titled The Importance of Creative Thinking, through which we defined the concept of creative thinking, mentioned its skills and ways to stimulate this thinking, in addition to mentioning its characteristics and obstacles, and we presented some practical examples of it to enrich the thought of our dear readers.