3 Brain Tricks to Unleash Creativity in Your Blog Content

Restored from the Empower Network archive (2011–2017), lightly edited to meet our current advertising standards. Views are the original author’s.

I used to tell myself I wasn’t creative. I had no interesting thoughts. I had nothing new to say.

The truth is…

I was out of the HABIT of creativity.

But as a blogger, the more creative you are with your thinking, the more original your blog posts will be and the easier it will be for you to build an audience and achieve whatever you want to achieve with your blog!

(I’m not talking about creating fiction, but making connections and bringing new thoughts and content regularly).

Your brain operates like a machine, and when you understand how the machine works, it’s easier to put it into modes that give you the type of output you want.

3 Brain Tricks to Unleash Creativity

1. Input Variety

What are you putting into your brain? This is like the food that your brain can digest and churn and create new thoughts out of. Many people ONLY read about or study one topic, not realizing that you can still be niche and read stuff outside of your niche.

The more content you put in your brain from a variety of sources and niches the more connections you will make… creating new thoughts.

Basically, if you have a blog on internet marketing and you ONLY take in internet marketing info, your brain wont have a lot to play with, and you’ll find it hard to be creative.  Your content will become a bit stale and same-y.

But say you start reading up on art, or science, or how the economy works… your brain will take these concepts and put them into the melting pot of your subconscious.  You will find yourself noticing patterns in LIFE.

For me, because I mostly write about network marketing and internet marketing, I can read a neuroscience book and see how it relates to marketing, or I read a complexity book and begin to notice that the network marketing industry has some elements of a complex system. It gives me more insight and ideas.

You can even take fiction or memoirs and apply any gems of knowledge into your niche.

The more varied your input, the more interesting your output will be.

2. Relaxation

There are so many automatic processes happening in your brain. But a huge amount of CONNECTIONS between ideas (creating novel or creative ideas) happens from allowing your DEFAULT MODE NETWORK to switch on.

This is a series of hubs in your brain that start working when you stop directing your thinking.

It switches on when your mind wanders.

This is why you have sudden insights in the shower, or while washing dishes, or while sitting in your garden contemplating life.

The network is one of the best ways for your subconscious to bring ideas into your conscious thinking. When your brain relaxes the information you put in with step one will be processed and filed at a deeper level. This is where connections you didn’t notice before will start to meld together and float up.

You can’t set this as a “come up with ideas” time, but rather make sure to let yourself DO NOTHING more.

Consider spending more time letting your brain wander and do nothing. It might be hard at first, but the benefits to your creativity are ENORMOUS.

Learn more about why by reading the book: Autopilot, the Art and Science of Dong Nothing

(This is the second trick because you first need to have the input for your brain to process and churn over!)

3. Immersion

Your brain create networks to support you in doing WHAT YOU DO MOST.

This is one of the reasons it can be hard to do novel tasks, think in different ways, or be creative if you haven’t tried it in awhile.

For me, I came to blogging while working at Starbucks as a total cog in the machine. As a manager I was allowed no creative outlet, we simply had to ensure the food looked like the picture provided, the drinks were made the same every time, and nothing deviated from the handbook we would receive every few months.

Being creative felt like pulling teeth.

But the fastest way to create a habit is TOTAL immersion.

It could take you a long time to build your blogging muscle, or it could happen fast.

For me, I decided to blog 5 times a day for a month.  That was ridiculously hard at first. But I didn’t try to be creative or good, I just figured I have to just get it done.

I did some seriously crappy blogs, but my brain began to get used to putting my ideas into writing.  And it got used to looking for connections to blog about.

And because I was doing it SO much, my brain didn’t have time to reinforce the wiring around my old habits. It had to quickly shift to creating neural networks that would support the ridiculous amount of blogging I was suddenly doing.

By the end of the month I found I could go back to a blog a day and then focus on making them good. But without that period of immersion it would have taken a lot longer for me to flex my creative muscles and get used to seeing connections and ideas in everything I did.

You aren’t a “creative or uncreative” person. You might be out of the habit of creativity or not have enough variety of input, or you might not be giving your brain time to process the info coming into your world.

Follow these three tricks and you will find you are a fountain of blog ideas!

Whooop whoop!

Happy Writing!

Niamh