How to increase creativity and intelligence

First I want you to know that your intelligence and creativity does not stay the same.
You aren’t simply born with it and you can change it.How is intelligence improvement possible anyway?

Your intelligence is determined by the complexity of your brain’s neuronal and glial cell connections.These connections are not fixed because your brain as an organ is always adapting and changing its structure depending on the stimuli you provide it.

To increase intelligence is therefore a matter of targeting specific brain processes so that the structural density of your neuronal network is systematically increased.

There is a man who claimed to be on the verge of mental retardation, but he increased his intelligence to the level of a genius.More about that later.

                           [u][b] How to increase your creativity[/b][/u]

Being creative is very important in life.Here you can read how to become more creative.

Find a link between apparently unlinked things. For example, try to find as many links as possible between:

-A frog and a plane
-A horse and the sky
-A tree and a car

Create your own questions and try to answer them.It will be worth it.

Imagine different situation and how you would handle them.
For example, let say you and your friend drove in a plane.
The plane crashed.You ended up on one side of a huge 50 meter wide river.Your friend is badly injured and you have to rescue him.

There is nothing on your side of the river but a few rocks and trees and the plane wreck.How would you get to the other side of the river?

You could try to swim it, but you would be pulled down the nearby waterfall, because the river is so fast.

Think of other tasks like this and try to solve them.
You will increase your creativity.There is a book about increasing creativity and intelligence.It says how to draw better.I might write it down when I get the book from the library.

                          [u][b]How to increase your intelligence?[/b][/u]

There are many ways to increase intelligence.
Visit these sites to find out more:

Increase Brain Power
MemoryMentor’s blog

You can also search more about that on the internet.

I hope you enjoyed reading this.I will certainly write more about this.

Sorry for the bad English.

Your English is actually very good. :smile:

I’d be interested to know the title!

There is a book I have called “Total Recall.” It’s on how to improve your memory capacity, etc. You should see if you library has it.

OK, thanks.

There is a whole section about psychology.
I must read all those books.Then I will share those techniques with you.

Btw, I am getting newsletters about improving memory too.
Well, I am getting so much different newsletters, that I don’t even remember what they are all about :tongue:

And I am going to sign up for more. Poor me.

Creativity is the ability to change. Changing anything is creating.

When we get caught up in something, we start blocking our creativity.

You can see it in action from the simplest things to the most complex.

An average person walks into a cafe and sits exactly where he sat last time. If it’s available of course… People search for parking in the same places over and over again etc…

Think about this:

probably 99% of the things you thought, did & felt today were things you thought , did & felt yesterday…

Creatures of habit indeed.

Unleashing creativity is easy. You need to consciously let go of your fear and accept whatever comes. Then consciously try to change as many of things in your life as you can.

In addition to that, if you’re an artist of some sort and want to express yourself creatively, simply do your thing,

let’s say that you’re a keyboard player.

Sit down at your keyboard and release everything you ever did.

We automatically, as musicians or any artists have this urge to stay in familiar grounds, because of this unconscious fear of the unknown.

Let go of everything you did the last time you played on your keyboards, and really just do something completely different, regardless of whether it’ll sound good, bad, nice, horrible, fantastic or obnoxious, the key is to do something COMPLETELY DIFFERENT. I mean, don’t go around the ballpark, leave the ballpark, leave the planet, just go around space. It probably won’t sound good, but you’ll start opening your mind, it’ll probably give you lots of ideas if you really give this a shot. And if you do it consistently while you keep pushing yourself over the edge, you’re going to find that your mind just starts getting the habit of flying around instead of staying stuck.

The most important thing I believe, and the hardest to accomplish is once you’ll find something you really like, or a whole different niche and you go like : WOW , this is amazing, let that go as well. When that happens, usually there’s the fear that it’s so good that we have to stick with it otherwise we’ll lose it. But when you let those really really good things go, your mind REALLY starts to open up.

The key in one sentence is to let go of any expectations and just CHANGE what you’re doing. Also, the better you FEEL while you’re doing it, the better it’ll be.

Intelligence is a bit harder. Generally, the more Aware someone is, the more intelligent he is.

There are brainwave recordings that can help facilitate IQ increase.

In general, meditation increases IQ. And there are studies that show that.

This “intelligence” augmentation is all pseudoscience and has nothing to do with inherent intelligence. Intelligence has a very vague definition yet most people can tell intelligent people from non-intelligent.

Telling people that they will get more intelligent by “practicing” like this is just raising false hopes.

:tempted:

I have to agree here… creativity and intelligence are both two very vague terms that you can not truly define, and therefor become easy targets for people to tell you that by doing this and that you are being creative and intelligent! Watch it grow!!!

I doubt very much that meditation would increase someones abilitiy to score higher on an IQ test as well, as IQ is about as much on your general knowledge as anything else and is also proven not to be a very reliable yard stick of somebody’s intellectual abilities!

Actually, I believe intelligence can be defined as the ability to patternize - to notice patterns in our world, while using your memories as the source to it. That means - as a painter, you would do best by practicing, and looking at other people painting (Since painting has a physical measure). As a mathematician, you best be seeing how other theorems have been proved and learn from it. As an architect, you best see buildings in all levels of construction - so that you know, based on what you see, how a building could look.

Of course, this is nothing more than my view of it, but I would still like to make my point clear.

Creativity, however, is a bit different, though essentialy the same: Creativity is creating patterns that you don’t think exist. Creativity can be forced, I believe - and when forced right, it might flow naturally, just as in your example with the frog and airplane. Creativity happens when you apply patterns that are not quite related to a subject, and by using only little information on that subject. Creativity is essentialy a way to create patterns (You might notice that with artists - they generally don’t create new arts when they are old - instead, they repeat what they already know, and create similar things)

The theory is that you can’t change your ability to pattern, however you can change the “databse of patterns” about a certain subject: A painter who had learnt how to draw from different perspectives (Either by creating a pattern, IE experimenting, or by learning it from someone else) would have such bigger “database”, and might even be able to apply that “database” to another subject (Making analogies) in the future.

Eventually, you learn to patternise when only parts of the information are availible - For instance

Well, that was rather long! Anyhow, I would like to finish by saying that I approve (Hehe. I mean that I think they are useful…) of your ways to increase creativity.

I also think that the best way to learn both creativity and understand your ability to patternize, though, is cold reading. I rather like this practice - It is about realizing as much as you can about a person while that person tells you as little as possible - sometimes using outer looks, sometimes using other methods.

One important thing to keep notice, though, is that cold reading is never 100% accurate - and that you can’t realize the details (Such as: When you were 8 you went to the circus), since you don’t need them. You need to learn of that person’s personality - Sometimes even as far as what they like and what they hate.

This practice is also useful if you wish to change yourself, or mask your identity from others - Since you learn the patterns behind your and their actions, and you might therfore change them.

Anyhow, while cold reading, you must keep all options availible - Such as if you see a bagger on the street, explore as many possible ways for that bagger to become homeless and poor - Perhaps a mental illness? Perhaps some old debts? Perhaps he likes it?

Anyway, That is a rather long rant - I hope you bear through it. I started talking about intelligence and creativity and ended up praising cold reading - Oh well! Hope you find it useful, and keep it in mind those are simply my thoughts of the matter - It isn’t a universal, cosmic truth - just the ponderings of a human.

As a post script - When I say pattern I mean to all kinds of stuff: There are patterns in sound, which makes us percieve some sounds as harmonic; There are patterns in math, which can deal with everything mathematical; There are patterns in sensations - Such as whenever I do a certain action, the object I hold is thrown; There are patterns in the physical world, such as whenever I enter a cafe, I sit at the same table, if possible. There are also abstract patterns, such as every some time I wish to change something in my surroundings (Such as redecorating). To name a few, those are just examples that come to my head.

Carnun ---->

for me , it’s obvious, intelligence is directly derived from the brightness of ones awareness. Meditation brightens awareness, therefore, if you ask me, increases IQ. However, I mentioned that, not because I think it is this way, but because there have been lots of studies about transcendental meditators, and IQ is improving by an average of 10 points over a one year period I believe.

P.S. - Potential intelligence is derived from the brightness of awareness, practically, it can be damaged by all sorts of negative self images.

I think this speculation should stop, if we want a scientific, true conclusion drawn from proper use of the scientific method.

I searched for any scientific articles, published in a scientific journal, which brought the conclusion that meditation causes increased “intelligence”. I could not find a single one. Most likely because of two reasons: Either such a study hasn’t been conducted yet, or it can’t be conducted because of the vague definition of intelligence.

The only study I found was taking care of the correlation between meditation and health. A peer-reviewed and independent study of the effects of meditation was published in 2007. The study was conducted by a couple of scientists from the University of Alberta Evidence-based Practice Center. Approximately 800 people participated in the study, practicing a wide variety of meditation types. However, the study concluded that “The therapeutic effects of meditation practices cannot be established based on the current literature,” and “Firm conclusions on the effects of meditation practices in healthcare cannot be drawn based on the available evidence.”

OK, can you please move your discussion elsewhere.
This topic obviously isn’t about meditation, you should discuss it somewhere in ‘‘Beyond Dreaming’’, or the ‘‘Spiritual Corner’’.

But yeah, there are ways of increasing intelligence…
And food also affects intelligence, but temporarily.

Sugar( in chocolate and candies) temporarily decreases intelligence, and some other food like eggs and milk(I think so) increases it.

It really does help.I notice it when I play chess(on my computer or my cellphone)

I still didn’t get that book…

Bombax: (Calling me a liar ? :grin:

mum.edu/tm_research/bibliography.html

I’ve seen graphs demonstrating the changes in IQ tests performance of Transcendental Meditators during a lecture on TM. I think it was 10 points for the first year. But it might’ve been a longer period of time.

I took a look at that university’s page, and the research they conducted, primarily under the field of “Mental Functioning” as these were the relevant. There were five tests:

Increased brain coherence
Increased use of brain reserves
Increased creativity
Broader comprehension and improved ability to focus
Increased self-development

The relevant ones being the first four.

  • The first test was to show that transcendental meditation increases alertness during the day it was performed. Alertness does not cause intelligence augmentation, especially since the alertness is so temporary. This experiment is thus irrelevant.
  • The second test, to quote, “During the Transcendental Meditation program, early (sensory) components of the brain’s response to somatosensory stimuli are more widely distributed across the cortex”. In other words, during TM, the brain reacts more widely to touch. Obviously, this has little to do with intelligence augmentation. It is therefore irrelevant.
  • The third test used the Torrance Test of Creative Thinking to determine creativity. The test is, as far as I know, valid, however, I am a little unsure on how they incorporate a control group in this experiment. The control group is neccessary to determine the exact cause for the effect, and I am unsure what sort of “meditation” the control group performed to eliminate the placebo effect. Nevertheless, although creativity is one type of intelligence in the vague intelligence-definition, it does not constitute as evidence for all-round intelligence augmentation.
  • The fourth test may seem like a valid experiment to confirm increased “intelligence”. However, the activity the groups performed was the Rod-and-Frame test which actually measures perception, not “intelligence”, even though the text appended to the graph seems to suggest that it measures intelligence. Thus, this test is irrelevant.

Out of all these experiments, none have presented sufficient evidence to prove that TM increases intelligence. You’re welcome to keep looking, but I highly doubt that you’re going to find a scientific article which concludes the above. I found a lot of scientific articles about transcendental meditation, by simply searching on the online webpage for Nature, but none of these articles brought the mentioned conclusion.

To be honest, I didn’t fully read your post. But thanks anyway.

Have a beautiful day

I need the book for memory capacity. I have terrible memory. Sometimes in the middle of conversations I forgot what I just said. :sad:

Bombax and relV- I’m going to ask you again to move your discussion to another topic…
Continue it somewhere in spiritual corner…

@Mew151- Well, I’ve never had any problems in memory.
I sometimes like memorizing things…
I sometimes remember thing so quickly, that people are just wondering how I can do that.

And yeah, memory for sure can be increased…
I watched something on National Geographic Channel…
A woman with excellent memory…It’s because her dad taught her a lot during her childhood…that she remembered over 100, 000 different chess positions…She beat grandmasters in chess while she was a little girl…She also beats people in chess when she plays it over the phone…yeah…Someone plays in front of the chess board, and she is somewhere else, and plays by just saying ‘‘pawn to e4’’…

She remembers where every piece is, and she beat a guy she played with.Also, there was a truck with a painted chess board…She saw it for 3 seconds, and remembered the position of every piece…

You can learn that too, just if you try hard enough.

Very cool, thanks for posting… Let me try this.

Frog, and a plan… They boath are on, and from the earth

Both have away to make them run (Frog has organs, a plane has an engine)

Both have a struncure

Both make sounds

Both of them can land, and take off

Both have a smooth surface

Both need fuel to make them run

Both were created

Wow that was fun, now a Horse, and sky will be tough Im going to have to reach, but I love this excersice.

Both are below space

Both are above the ground

(This is a good one) both release water

Both have been seen by people

Scientist have studied both

(Sorry Athiest, but I need all I can get) Both were created by God

Both excist in time, and space

Thats about all, I can do for that one. This is so cool. Ill think about it some more, but I would like to see what others can come with too. So knock yourself out. I feel more creative allready

I screwed up when I quoted you. Hopfully you can read what I wrote. So anyone dosnt get confused my post starts out “Good advice on creativety…” Allso walking helps me alot when it comes to being creative. I walk alot, and I get alot of my ideas when Im walking. My brain dont work inless my feet are moving.

Believe it or not, walking really DOES help creativity.
I read that! (EDIT: especially when you walk somewhere in the nature)

Many people get new ideas by walking.
And nice linking, well, I guess the faster you find all those connections, the more creative you are…and of course, if you find more connections, you are also more creative.
I liked it.

My problem now is, is that for the past month, I have been feeling allmost overwhelmingly creative, and wanting to create I want to write songs record an album build a stage, make a movie. Have you ever felt the feeling of writing a song, or songs, and you take the song into your band, to record, or make it better, and there is this huge amount of creative energy bouncing off the walls. Everyone is putting in ideas, and suggestions. I miss that feeling. Its the greatest feeling in the world. I need to get me a band back togeather.