Life is a test. It starts when you’re a creepy crawly toddler and your parents put a mountain of blocks in front of you, make cooing noises, and expect you to make a rocket shuttle. It continues through pre-school and high school and college and work and somewhere down the line the part of your brain that just wants to ‘play’ with the blocks, juggle them around, see what happens when a tower topples, just shuts down.

Bottom line is, we’re so busy being tested in a million different ways by a million different people that we forget to test ourselves! The power of creativity loses the battle to what I call the “drone syndrome”. But fear not! All is not lost! We all have an AllSpark inside ourselves. It just needs a kick start.

Step 1: Believe in your AllSpark. It’s inside you. Bring it out by experimenting – with people, with things, with yourself. Be open to new experiences and don’t be scared of the outcomes. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, right? (Caution: does not apply to incendiary devices).

Step 2: Run, Forrest, run! Once you’ve found your AllSpark don’t let it go. You may not have a Sam Witwicky to bring it back (sparkly dust and all) and regenerate. It’s up to you to find new ways to inspire yourself. With inspiration comes motivation. And with motivation you set yourself up for success, one way or another.

Flexing your creative muscle

We’re all born with one – some people just use it more than others.

Think of your creative muscle like any other muscle in your body. If you don’t use it for a while it gets flabby. If you don’t feed it the right stuff, it doesn’t grow. If you want it tone it up, you exercise. And the food for creativity is imagination. Here are some tips to let your imagination run wild.

1. Pretend to be someone or something else for 10 minutes every day. Animals are the most fun, but I once spent 10 minutes as lamp post and I dare you to name one other thing that is a source of illumination and a target zone for canine males!
2. Spend some time every day writing whatever comes to your mind. You can set your goals by time or by number of words. It really doesn’t matter what you write. The first time around might be just “quick brown fox” over and over again but after a while you’ll get into the groove and you’ll be amazed at what your brain can sprout out when you’re not consciously trying to be Einstein.
3. Invent something. Go over your day and think about what brilliant invention currently not in existence could have made your day easier or better or happier.
4. Watch fantasy or science fiction movies. You don’t have to believe in ET or the power of the “one ring to bind them all” but it will give you a healthy appreciation of the power of imagination and might give you a little nudge towards thinking out of the box.
5. Learn to draw. Don’t aim for Da Vinci – just learning about observation and perspective can give you a whole new outlook on the things around you. There are lots of sites that give free step-by-step drawing lessons for complete novices.

So disconnect yourself from the real world for a while! Earth can call you back anytime (gravity and all). Letting go will help you find your creative genius or at the very least, you’ll learn the difference between elves and fairies!