January Is International Creativity Month

Sharing an article from Associated Content. Read the original HERE.

Did you know January is International Creativity Month? It was founded by Randall Munson to "remind individuals and organizations around the world to capitalize on global creativity", according to his site

Creatively Speaking. It's a great way to start the year, if you ask me.

So, what can you do to celebrate this month? Well, first of all, remember that creativity is not only at work in artistic pursuits like drawing, music, or dancing, but in scientific advances and in finding new ways of advertising or doing business. There's no better way to celebrate this month than by exploring, embracing, and enhancing your natural gifts, even the ones you aren't aware of yet.

One step to increasing your creative power is to increase your brain power. So if you don't typically do these, try doing a few crossword or Sudoku puzzles, or try playing word games when you have free time this month.

Meditate. Meditation can help bring clarity to a problem and enable you to resolve it in new ways. It can also help bring ideas that you have had buried deep inside you come to the surface. If you have never meditated before, start out by just doing so ten minutes a day.

Expose yourself to art in any number of ways. If you've always had an artistic desire, try exploring it this month. Go to art galleries. Go see art films.

Read biographies of prominent or successful people whom you admire to get an idea for the ways they used their own creativity to rise to the top of their fields.

Monitor your thoughts this month. Have you ever thought about how many ideas you have throughout the day that you don't follow through with because you're afraid of how doing so will make you look? How many of these do we dismiss without ever giving them a chance? This month, every time you have an idea, no matter how minuscule it is, whether it's related to your career, your personal life, or just your mundane everyday activities, write it down, and then think about how you might act on it. After a week has gone by, try one or two of these ideas. Why not? As long as they aren't unethical, illegal, or won't get you in trouble at work, what's the harm?

Hopefully these ideas will help get your creative juices flowing so you can make the most of this month. If all you do is honor your own creative impulses and become more aware of what you have to contribute, it will

have been an International Creativity Month well spent.