WHY I AM NOT CREATIVE?

Socrates gave a long speech and his friends killed him. Friends, I am already insured so
be ready for it.
Because today I am goanna attempt something different. Yes.

VII (show)
As everybody knows this is roman letter SEVEN, so the idea is to convert this VII into VIII
with minimum changes.
Its very simple, unanimously we all think to add one vertical line and make it again
roman letter VIII. Good.
I know we are all brilliant people. So we can go for one more exercise, this is roman letter
IX and the idea is to convert this IX into VI with minimum changes.
A conservative personality like me put a horizontal line through the centre, turns it upside
down, and then covers the bottom. This gives me a roman numeral six.
But cool guys like Arvind think something different and put an S in the front and make it
as SIX easily. Ok, any other possible approach?
Yes, Man of simplicity but highly creative people like joshi put 6 after IX and make it IX6
or one times six.
Like these solutions still there may be few more creative ideas can exist. Well.
The lesson learned from this exercise is everybody has a lot of knowledge; by shifting
the contexts in which we think about it, we will discover new ideas.

Fellow toastmasters, guests and my dear friends, Good afternoon.

In my ice breaker session I answered the question who am i? But today I am here to
discuss and address another important question.

Newton invented gravity force when he was sitting under an apple tree, Archemedies
found buoyancy force when he was talking bath. Last week sensational news,
A sixteen year old Anmol Turkel, an Indian-origin Canadian citizen has designed a
personalized search engine that claims to be as high as 47% more accurate than google.
No wonder if GOOGLE new CEO mr.sundar pichai will hire him immediately with more than
his salary.
The great newton or young Anmol Turkel, one key process which is common in all these
great success is creativity and creative thinking.
So my dear friends, the mysterious question which I am dealing since my childhood age
is,
Why I am not creative? People like Newton, Einstein, Dr. kalam and young Anmol Turkel.

If I have to address the reason for this question then before that I have to ask two more
questions?

What is creativity?
A Great philosopher says Creativity is the act of turning new and imaginative ideas into
reality. So

Why I need to be creative?

Change, it is no longer possible to solve my todays problems with yesterdays solutions. If
I have to be successful in todays competitive world I need to be different and creative.

So why dont I think something different? more often?

When I tried to find the reason for this question I found a wonderful book A whack on the
side of head written by creative giant Mr. Roger von oech. He address few reasons,
The first is that we dont need to be creative for most of what we do. Another reason we
are not more creative is that we have not been taught to be. Most of us have certain
attitudes that lock our thinking into the status quo and keep us thinking more of the same.

Author calls these attitudes mental locks. Example: My approach towards converting IX
into VI.
Roger lists out several mental locks and I am goanna explain few of those.

1. The right answer:

Much of our educational system has taught us to look for the one right answer. This is
unfortunate because often its the second or third, or tenth right answer that is what we need
to solve a problem in an innovative way

2. Follow the rules:

We always used to follow the certain rules which somebody already created.

3. Thats not logical:

When our mind comes up with the creative idea, we first think that whether this idea is logically
correct or not.
Like these there are few more mental locks,
Ok. Fine. Somewhat we understood mental locks are the main reasons but how do we open
these mental locks?
Let me tell the answer from the simple story.
A creative teacher invited one of his students over to his house for afternoon tea. They
talked for a bit, and then came time for tea. The teacher poured some into the students
cup. Even after the cup was full, he continued to pour. The cup overflowed and tea spilled
out onto the floor.
Finally, the student said; Master, you must stop pouring, the tea is overflowing- its not
going into the cup,
The teacher replied, Thats very observant. The same is true with you. If you are to receive
any of my teachings, you must empty out what you have in your mental cup.

My dear friends and toast masters, without the ability to temporarily forget what we know,
our minds remain cluttered with ready-made answers. So the key to opening the mental
locks is to temporarily unlearn them to empty our mental cups.
Coming to the conclusion, whether creativity can be learned?
Yes. I can. we can.
The real key to being creative lies in opening my mental locks and what I do with my
knowledge. It may happen six minutes later or six years down the road. But I have faith it
will happen one day and I will become creative.

Over to you MC. Thanks.