When in doubt, be creative

Associating creativity only to art is partly due to a narrow way of thinking. Creativity is everywhere and in everything

Indu Khurana, UK-based Counsellor and Life Coach

Years before moving to Thailand, we used to spend our holidays on one of its more remote islands. As a diver’s paradise, the island was empty and silent during the day, since the lion’s share of its tourist population was underwater. The first time I set foot in its doll-size harbour it was a cloudy day and I was welcomed by the merry confusion of pick-up trucks, colourful locals, and hotel agents looking for clients. My partner knew his way around and within a few minutes, we were sitting in the back of a pick-up truck that drove us up the hill on the main road. Soon after, we were cruising along rows of tall coconut palm trees, the occasional chickens pecking on the side of the road. We rented a very (very) basic wooden hut at the foot of the hill on the opposite side of the island. A wooden staircase led to a terrace overlooking the beach where we hung our hammocks, one blue and one pink. In the tiny room, there was a bed with its green mosquito net. Being guests in nature, we were unfazed by the occasional rat trying to steal, in the spotlight of our torch, a packet of biscuits we had left on a shelf.

The atmosphere on the island was absolutely laid back and our routine totally bare: breakfast, diving, lunch, reading, dinner, and repeat. At sunset we drove a rented motorcycle in the warm tropical air to the village and dined with our feet on the sand. At lunch, we sat at the restaurant with no name on the pier near our “villa.” There were no chairs, but the traditional triangular Thai pillow with mattress and low tables on a polished wooden floor where everybody walked barefoot, included the tourists who walked through the restaurant to reach their rooms. A cat used to doze the day away and we sat on a corner overlooking the bay, eating shrimps, and feeding grains of rice to the fish in the clear water below. Milan felt as far away as the Moon. 

Floating in the water with diving gear on is a very particular feeling. A belt of weights pulls you down while an inflatable jacket keeps you on the surface. Your body distinctly perceives the opposite forces as something unusual and pleasant. Every morning, the diving boat took us to a pinnacle some eight miles off the Western coast of the island where, following a chain anchored to the bottom, the teams of divers reached an underwater paradise. The place was home to inquisitive batfish, a school of barracuda that spun around us in a mesmerizing vortex and some families of black tip sharks. As experienced divers, during one of these dives, we were asked to follow an aspiring diving master who came from the UK and we welcomed the option to be in a small group of three. Once we left the boat, instead of following the chain as was customary, the British girl counted on her compass. We dutifully swam behind her and soon discovered that the colorful pinnacle was nowhere to be seen. Instead, we were swimming in a dream-like space at the bottom of the sea. As far as our eyes could see, there were three layers of color: the luminous transparency of water sandwiched between the golden hues of sand at the bottom, and the joyful turquoise of the sea under the surface. Carried by an invisible current, without any visual reference to make sense of our position, I marveled at the immensity of the ocean and was taken aback - when not concerned by an unintentional encounter with a predator  - by being utterly and silently lost. It had happened many times in my life outside the water to feel lost. Instead of swimming to the surface as we did in those tropical waters, embarking myself into some sort of creative endeavor - like writing in this space - helped me to find the thread I thought I had lost. I knew the creative “trick” worked with invariable precision, but until I talked with Indu Khurana, I didn’t know specifically why. Indu is a Hertfordshire-based Counsellor and Life Coach who puts creativity at the heart of her practice. She explained why it plays such a pivotal role in our aging process. 

Tell us a bit about yourself and your background.

I am a British Indian woman who was born in India but has lived in the UK since the age of seven. Whilst both cultures continue to influence me on a daily basis, they also enable me to see both sides of a single coin on many issues; or to put it another way, having more than one cultural influence has given me many lenses to look through on a daily basis.

My first career was in Information Technology – in the early days of the world-wide web, emails, and laptops; before smartphones were even thought of. This was not a good fit for me vocation-wise, although it gave me many other skills and value systems that remain with me still. I retrained to be a Counsellor over twenty years ago and have never looked back. This, along with Life Coaching, and Supervision have continued to be my place of professional belonging.

I’ve been surprised to notice that creativity is like a hinge and it has the power to turn our life around. Can you explain why creativity can open up new paths?

Creativity is like a magic power. When we give ourselves up to this activity fully and without judgement, it weaves a cloak around us that both separates us from the world but also connects us to the universe around us. If you think about most hinges, they open for 90 – 180 degrees. But there are also those that open further than this. The more they open, the greater the scope for other, interesting things to come in – whether that is large furniture when a hinge opens 180+ degrees or the contents of a cupboard when it opens only 90 degrees. More air, more space, more potential is invited as the hinge opens wider. In a similar way, the more open we can become to creativity, the more open we are to potential. 

On a physical level, what happens is that the brain waves change from our usual Beta states or waves that are required for logical and reasoning activities, to the Theta wave or state.  It is this Theta brain wave that accompanies a deep relaxation state, where we can access our subconscious and intuitive selves. 

Many people will dismiss things like intuitive states, but these are the states (and powers) that combine the logical and the subliminal pointers from our environments to give us a more holistic picture of something than logic alone can give us. This is why true leaders value creativity and intuition as well as logic rather than just one or the other.

It is when we are in the Theta state that we can access neural pathways in the brain that are usually out of reach when we are in heightened states of emotion or in Fight / Flight mode. It is in the Theta state that we can better access ‘blue sky thinking,’ which is when new paths start to open in our minds and the possibilities start to open up to us.

How can creativity challenge our thinking subconsciously?

Our conscious minds – which most of us use predominantly – like routine and familiarity. They have deeply ingrained neural pathways in the brain by virtue of being used most constantly. And we do get into the habit of using the same neural pathways day in and day out.

Because creativity takes us into a different state, we start to use – or even form for the first time – new neural pathways. This different pathway and different thinking will inevitably challenge our usual thinking because it is unfamiliar. We may ourselves view it with suspicion, relegating it to a leisure time hobby rather than the amazing side effects from its use on a regular basis. But if we are open to considering other ways of thinking, creativity will be our best friend.

When somebody says creativity, we tend to think about an artist’s work and generally feel excluded from it. Can you help us to frame creativity as a part of our everyday life, instead?

Associating creativity to only artwork is, I suppose, in part due to the narrow way of thinking that the conscious mind thrives on. But creativity is everywhere and in everything in life. Nature itself is creative – how else can you have so many varieties of flowers or trees or creatures on one planet?

Taking a different route to the shops is creative – you will see different things, different people. Let your mind wander and imagine a story for the new person you pass on the street. Take a random picture on your smartphone and then zoom into a part of it to see the detail – any detail; blur it; see what emerges, see what your eyes see. Putting one different ingredient into a familiar recipe will make it unique, and will be an expression of your creative spirit. 

These are all examples of creativity, as is the act of walking without focusing your thinking on anything specific, as is cooking without following a recipe, as is stirring the pot without rushing, as is painting the wall. All these activities will put your brain into that Theta wave. These are everyday activities that can be full of creativity.

I learned that you consider meditation, mindfulness and creative visualization as creative techniques. In what way are they creative techniques?

All these activities allow the mind to be in the Theta wave state. All of them allow the mind to stop its logical or rotational thinking activity. All of them allow the mind to rest and then to shoot in alternative directions and hold the potential for new thoughts and ideas to emerge. That is why I consider them to be creative activities.

What role can creativity play in our aging process?

I think creativity can help us to learn to relax, deeply. It can promote a peacefulness, a slowing down, a greater ability to listen to our bodies and to our needs as we get older. It can promote a greater self-acceptance. These are all things that are much in need as we age and can continue to elude us as we pedal on the cultural hamster-wheel of a lifestyle that demands us to be ‘doing’ over and above ‘being.’

Aging is intrinsically about slowing down as our bodies slow down. Our modern culture however doesn’t let us slow down very easily. There is a stigma attached to growing old in the western world, and so there is to slowing down. But creativity allows us to slow down in a playful or elegant way so that we can better listen to our bodies and rise above the cultural chitter chatter.

What suggestions would you give to add more creativity to our life and what results can we get as we get older?

I think doing and being open to doing new things is the way to bring in more creativity at any age. As we get older, we generally get more set in our ways. Therefore, making a conscious effort to do something different is bound to bring in creativity. I have seen time and time again that whatever we experience a resistance to, is usually what we need to pursue and because it feels challenging, it will invite creativity in. Sign up for a short course, read the type of book you would previously not have dreamt of reading, write with your non-dominant hand, sleep on the other side of the bed. Allocate one day – or even half a day – or an hour to doing something creative and see what happens. Be curious.

The results will vary from person to person; they will also depend on what you choose to do and how consistently you do it, for how long. But if you keep doing this new and challenging thing, you might find you like it. Even if you don’t, you’ll learn something about yourself. Don’t be afraid to try several different things if the first thing doesn’t fit even after a few attempts. 

But I think our comfort zone will start to expand again; more interesting things will enter our lives, we will learn about ourselves and we will have something else to talk about. This is as a minimum. 

Can we see things from the opposite perspective? I mean, what would we see if we look at aging from the creativity’s point of view?

I think creativity has the potential to re-connect us to our youth. Play is essentially a creative activity. We might reconnect to our younger self whilst simultaneously accepting the stage of age we are currently at, in a more graceful manner. At another level, if we look at aging from the perspective of creativity, our brains will continue to grow and expand, neural pathways will continue to be created, our cognitions will remain active and our courage will expand.

Culturally, we tend to consider aging in terms of deficit, of what we cannot do. I have the feeling that a broader perspective on creativity makes it accessible until the end. Do you agree?

The western culture certainly sees aging as a deficit in different ways. In a linear and limited sense, this may be true in terms of some qualities, but it can also be a time of gaining many things. Creativity is an activity that can accompany us to our deathbed. We can make our crone or wizard stages into highly creative and therefore interesting times. We can even get creative with the plans we put in place for ourselves when we reach our eventual ends.

As I’ve already mentioned above, by having creativity in our aging lives, we can promote a greater sense of wellbeing, we can slow down the shriveling up of our brains, we can introduce activities that utilize our experience and the ensuing wisdom, to benefit others as well as us. We can start a process of self-acceptance and even emotional and mental growth. There is much to be gained by having creativity in our lives as we age.

How is your journey as a counsellor/life coach influencing your aging process and what are the unexpected discoveries you made along this journey?

My journey as a Counsellor / Life Coach is inextricably linked to creativity. It was my Masters training that reconnected me to creativity and since then, it has been a process for me to include it in some shape or form into my life. I have learnt about the breadth of creativity for myself over the time since I started this portion of my life and of course my aging has occurred in parallel. 

Like many, I rejected creativity when I was younger, but then thirsted for it too. I saw it as a narrow spectrum of activities until I too learnt that it is in everything we do – or can be. I struggle at times to make space for it because life does get in the way. But when I do engage in it, I can viscerally feel the benefits of it. Creativity helps me to connect more deeply with who I am, my intrinsic spirituality (non-religious), the calm and healthy part of me. It helps me be still and to link into the part I play within nature. It reminds me of how I connect to the greater ecosystem. My self-awareness grows, I gain ideas, I feel rejuvenated. These are all things that I had no idea I would gain. Nobody warned me. I hope I can share my experience with others so that they do have some warning, so they can engage sooner and reap the benefits of creativity at a much earlier stage than I did.

Are there any other things that creativity can help with?

Our health is one big area that creativity can help with. Creativity in all its forms can help to slow down the heartbeat, lower the levels of adrenaline that accompany our ‘doing’ so that the ‘being’ state becomes more accessible. Visualization is used by Olympic Athletes and can help promote healing – think about the famous study where athletes were split into 2 groups; 1 group did exercise in a gym, and the other group visualized doing the exercises in the gym. Both groups had comparable levels of fitness. If this can happen, who knows what else we can make happen with our creative minds. There is already a lot of evidence for creativity being beneficial in improving our health – physical and mental. That is why hospitals of both sorts (physical and mental) have creativity classes: it is a healing activity.