How to Tap into Your Creative Genius

Why do we begin our search for inspiration outside ourselves?

The internet is a fountain of creativity.

Art and designs of all types flow from it like a waterfall.

An infinite scroll of other people’s brilliant ideas.

It’s almost too much to handle.

The sheer volume of content available for us to browse can paralyze our creativity at times.

It happens to me more than I’d like to admit.

Nine times of out 10, when I set out on a new design project the first thing I do is go to Instagram or Dribbble.

I scroll Pinterest.

Then I get the hell off Pinterest because ads.

After that I browse Designspiration or old bookmarks in a folder I aptly named “Inspiration.”

Eventually, I reach the end of my capacity for research.

Maybe I came across some cool work or something that stuck out to me.

But my page is still blank.

Damn.

Finding the right trigger to awaken creativity is hard sometimes.

The last spot I have left to look is inside myself.

It’s where I should have looked in the first place.

Tapping into Your Creative Genius

Author, engineer and consultant Dr. Ali Binazir has a remarkably easy method for tapping into inner creative genius.

I recently watched his 2009 Tedx talk aptly titled “Awaken Creative Genius.”

The idea is to access your creative genius through meditative visualization.

I’ve outlined the basic steps below, but here’s how Dr. Binazir describes it.

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Sit in a comfortable, quiet place and close your eyes.

Imagine yourself floating in a warm, calm sea.

Picture your creative idol.

Mine, for example, is Leonardo da Vinci.

Imagine your idol’s head plopping down onto your body.

Focus on seeing your world through his or her eyes for a few minutes.

What would they do with the tools in front of you?

How would they interact with your world and find inspiration?

I imagined writing with my left hand like Leonardo, for instance.

Open your eyes and spend a few minutes writing down all the ideas that come into your head.

Maybe you need to do this more than once to get some juices flowing.

Keep at it.

What new inspiration could you find if you looked inward first?