Kevin Ashton, in his inspiring book on creativity entitled “How To Fly A Horse,” makes the simplest and best case for creativity as a primary driver for innovation when he writes, “We beat change with change.” In other words, we need to create the necessary change—aka innovate—that will allow us to keep up with a changing world.
Here’s the good news. As a living, breathing member of the human race, you are born with the innate urge to create. This creativity can take many forms from childhood finger painting all the way up to designing skyscrapers. The bad news is that the older and more entrenched in your life and drive to be productive you become, the less room you allow for creativity at its most fundamental level.
Songwriting can provide you with the means to rediscover your creativity. Writing songs— and specifically the details required in verse writing—serves as an important reminder that you are—at your core—a creative being.
Another way to look at this is that writing verses is a concentrated form of storytelling. One of the wonderfully unexpected benefits of this songwriting exercise is that the realization of your innate creative impulses is deeply motivating. I’m convinced that with practice you can absolutely rekindle your natural born creativity using the storytelling inherent in writing your song’s verse.
In his 1959 paper, “The Processes of Creative Thinking,” noted computer scientist and Turing award winner, Allen Newell put it best when he wrote, “Creative thinking is simply a special kind of problem-solving behavior.”
One of the things I love most about teaching my songwriting workshop to executive teams is that I’m working with smart people— unconditioned to thinking of themselves as creative—and showing them that all they’re missing is a little direction. And once you begin the process of learning to write songs in the service of your creativity, you’ll see that this applies directly to you.
-Cliff
Find out more about Cliff’s songwriting/innovation workshops for business teams.