Financial Resource Center

Being creative doesn’t just happen. Sure, some people seem to be naturally innovative, but most of us can get the creative juices flowing with a little practice. Try these exercises to stimulate your mind:

Opposites – Make a quick list of some common nouns and verbs. One by one, go through the list and as quickly as possible think of three words that mean the opposite. Generating a group of opposites will stretch your mind to think beyond the obvious.

Good and bad – Select an idea—a product, a problem, an issue—and list positive and negative aspects to it. For example: pandemics. Under Positive, you might place “keeps population down” and “forces better disease control measures,” while under Negative, you’d list “causes suffering” and “economic turmoil.” As a next step, think of something that’s neither good nor bad, just interesting: A specific disease may arise from an unexpected source, for instance. This teaches you to look at questions from different angles.

Letter – Write a letter describing your day—but without using the words “I,” “me,” “myself,” and so on. You’ll get an idea of how to look at the world from alterna­tive viewpoints and take your own agenda out of the picture to see things more clearly.