How to be both Creative and Disciplined: 7 Habits to Unlock your full Potential

We all know how crucial creativity is for us, as human beings, to improve our personal and professional life, but only few are aware of the drawbacks that come with it. In one of his psychology lectures, the well renowned clinical psychologist Dr. Jordan Peterson has described creativity as a “High risk high return strategy”. He argued that creative ideas, even when so brilliant, are too difficult to get recognized and monetized due to their unusual nature, which explains why a lot of people with high creativity give up struggling and end up broke.

I myself, have somehow experienced this kind of feeling at times, and I believe many of you also had moments in which you thought your idea was perfectly brilliant but nobody seems to understand it. According to Dr Peterson, the best and only solution to highly creative people struggling with industriousness is to structure their creativity into a discipline of strict daily habits allowing them to keep their psychological balance and gradually make concrete their creative ideas.

And to help you achieve that goal, here are 7 daily great habits that are proven to be highly effective for creative people:

1- Clearly Write down your Aims, Goals and Ideas

Since creative people usually tend to be visual day dreamers who focus on the big picture and dismiss the details, they sometimes end up dealing with foggy and vague ideas which lead them to have uncertain goals.

To overcome this issue, they need to write daily notes in which they state and clarify their major daily thoughts and ideas, so they can keep track of them and use them at any future time.

2- Practice Mindfulness

That is to practice being fully present in the moment and strictly avoid dwelling in the past or anticipating the future.

This exercise may seem difficult at the beginning because your brain is continuously pushing you to think about past events or to simulate a desired future, but as soon as you get used to focus on what currently matters this practice will become a simple autopilot.

3- Embrace the morning’s power

Mornings, with no doubt, are the most influential time in the day.

What we make or achieve during a certain day is generally a reward of what we did in that morning, that’s why a set of productive and positive morning habits is a must for everybody especially highly creative fellows.

Some major daily morning habits that are proven to be very effective are:

• Getting out of bed at the same time every day.
• Make your bed and organize your room.
• Have 5 minutes to 10 minutes morning movement exercises.
• Have an energetic full of calories breakfast.

4- Engage in an established system with like-minded people

By an established system I mean a job, a club, a political party or any kind of routine-based society. This engagement will give you the opportunity to test your creativity and apply it to solve daily social and professional problems, but make sure you are surrounded by like-minded fellows when committed to such societies.

5- Have daily refreshing cold showers

This habit may seem difficult or shocking at first but it is scientifically proven to increase self-discipline by boosting your alertness levels and improving your blood circulation along with many other psychological and physical benefits which you can check in this article on medicaldaily.com titled: “benefits of cold showers: 7 reasons why taking cool showers is good for your health”.

6- Set small measurable goals and inventively reward yourself for achieving them

Each night before you sleep specify 2 or 3 main tasks that you want to finish tomorrow and if, for a whole week you complete all the tasks you have set for each day, then you should AMAZINGLY reward yourself, as an example you may go to the best theaters or opera in the city or spend the weekend in a nice hotel or even allow yourself to cook your favorite international meal using the most expensive ingredients available in the market.

7- Think about death regularly

This last habit sounds a bit shocking but when done the right way, it may significantly add a sense of urgency to your life and make you do and achieve more by increasing your time efficiency and reducing procrastination, which can lead to more productive lifestyle, thus more success.

Thanks for reading.

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