Today, Dec 30th, marks the sixth day of Kwanzaa, where we celebrate the principle, Kuumba (Creativity). As a brand, we believe the key to creativity is aesthetic freedom. We believe that aesthetic freedom, the ability to design your life, requires time and space. Our relationship to time and how we define our spaces is riddled with cognitive biases.
Are We Creative of Imaginative ?
We have lost our way. We have been led into the rabbit hole of identity politics and social economics. Overall, we are spending a lot of time and holding space for big picture ideals, without first considering what we can and should be doing for ourselves. Personal development is often coupled with career development. Self-care is a buzz word in wellness, however it's absent of self-mastery. We have created digital identities and kingdoms that don't match our own realities. We use our imagination to escape our realities. Imagination is not the same thing as creativity.
Imagination is very individualistic and can be defined as a personal collection of objects, ideas, events, and stories. Imagination is only accessed in the mind of the creator.
Creativity, often relies on imagination to manifest ideas, products, and processes in our shared world. A key difference in creativity is that it can be individualistic or collectivist. Creativity doesn't have to rely solely on the imagination of one creator and can be a collaborative manifestation of ideas, products, and processes in our shared world.
How to Extend Your Creativity ?
Creativity is one of the greatest qualities any of us can be blessed with, yet many never allow their true creativity to be expressed. It is fully within your capability to practically engage your mind in creative thoughts. You need to unleash your creativity and understand how important it truly is to have it flourish throughout your life and career.
To make this a habit, try the following:
1. Think with Your Brain – Not Memorize Memories are not perfect reproductions of events or things. It is far easier to preserve past emotions, memories, and ideas by only jotting them down.
Your mind becomes less burdened to process information once you freed up your brain from memorization.
Two great ways you can achieve this are:
- Engage in Meaningful Learning: This will help you make the most of your memory. This is needed to make information applicable such that it becomes you don’t need much effort to assess it when needed. For instance, you don’t need much effort to speak your mother tongue – it is a knowledge that flows naturally as it has become a part of who you are.
- Develop Your Brain in handling Information: Design a system to organize and store possibly useful information. The brain can function like a computer as a great tool for accurate storage and reliable retrieval. Rather than trying to stuff your brain with information, it is a great idea for you to become a skilled information handler.
2. Get Rid of Distractions - Free up your brain to focus on the things that matter most. The human brain is incredibly powerful. Despite its power, the brain has a limited amount of functions it can perform at a given time. As soon as your brain had to focus on multiple things at once, your ability to do any of the tasks severely decreased. The same thing happens when you have a lot on your mind, you can’t focus, and as such, your mind and brain becomes less able to work creatively and dynamically.
How do you clear up all these physical, mental and digital clutter? The best way is to prioritize what is most important to you. This can be generally or on a smaller scale (such as focusing on and resolving an important task). When you know your priority on what is important, you know what to keep and what to discard to free up brain energy.
3. Give Voice to Your Imaginations - Challenge yourself to think up lots of ideas around a topic or problem. Allow your mind the freedom to fantasize. Don’t discount some of your more lateral ideas before they reach the stage.
4. Improve Your Capacity for Creativity by Following a Routine - Like everything else, being creative is a matter of practice and intention. Research on implementation intentions has shown that it is easier to make a habit consistent if it is built upon an existing chain. Implementation intentions support goal plans – it defines when, where, and how you want to act on your goal(s).
What this means in essence is that “Task A” becomes easier to achieve consistently if it is always followed or preceded by “Event B”. And because “Event B” will happen unfailingly, it is easy to follow it up with the next task.
For example, you can try planning specific activities, such as daily breath meditation, around regular parts of your day – as soon as you wake up in the morning, before/after your lunch break, coming home from work, etc.
5. Surround Yourself with Models of Excellence - Don't limit yourself. You cannot develop your creativity when you are surrounded by people who keep on discouraging and distracting you. Surround yourself with real talented people, and learn from them. This is not only about having talented people around you – it is about knowledge. This can help activate and sustain your creativity.
These simple practices will free you up to think in more lateral, creative ways. Learning to think creatively will enable you to take charge of your life’s goals and direction. It will help you fuse ideas together in order to generate novel and innovative solutions.
Some Ideas for Expressing Creativity in Everyday Life
Creativity is no longer considered an exclusive attribute of the artists and musicians alone. It is a vital skill for professionals in all fields. The following are some ideas to help you express creativity on a daily basis:
- Replicate the real world – Take time to find inspirations in the world around you and try to bring this into your work. This may lead you to your next novel idea.
- Do something new – Sing in the shower. Play chess. Read a book. Watch television. Go for a walk. Attend a concert. Etc.
- Meet new people – from different walks of life. Strike up a conversation while commuting. Gain insight into their perspectives on life.
- Carry a camera with you – Look for interesting things in your everyday setting. Set a quota and force yourself to make it. You don’t need to go to new places to do this – just force yourself to find new outlooks based on old information.
- Create a framework – As many writers have said, the blank page can be the biggest show-stopper. Instead of trying to rely on pure inspiration, set your topic or theme and start creating within confines. Think within the box you create for yourself.
- Keep a journal – It can get your mind working, and in a month, or a year, when you’ve gained some distance from what you’ve written it can give you new ideas.
- Take breaks – Don’t be a workaholic. Your brain needs to be rested periodically so it doesn’t overheat and crash.
- Exercise every day – Prior to starting any creative work, endeavour to exercise your body to avoid creative burst which usually occurs if the exercise is done afterwards.
Here are some products in our product catalog, to assist you with accessing your creative potential :
Find Serenity In the Temperate Forest, DIY Crafts, Gift Set - $60
It is inspired by the temperate forest and rainforest of America, where nature is fertile, renewing and resilient.
Use the kit to make your own holiday ornament, potpourri basket or table centerpiece. Add a few drops of Sunsum® Home Fragrance Oil to add fragrance to the dried flowers in the kit.
The Stone & Metal Chickadees are handmade from serpentine stone and recycled metal by an artist in Zimbabwe.
The Soapstone Reindeers are hand carved by Kenyan artisans from soft Kisii soapstone, then hand dyed and etched.
Each Gift Set contains :
- 1 The Temperate Forest, Serenity Kit
- 1 Mini Bolga Basket
- 1 Sunsum® Home Fragrance Oil
Spirit Number - 411, Transmutation Set - $36
The spirit number 411, is a message from the spiritual realm that the outer world that you see is a reflection of your inner world. Your existence is your signature creation and that you should focus you attention on harmony and balance.
Oblige your spirit guide, with the Spirit Number 411 Gift Set. Enhanced with handmade products from the No. 4 - Victory collection and the No. 1 - Kingdom Collection. Fill your space with the sweet and clarifying aromas of amber, vanilla, and palo santo (no. 4 - victory); lavender, patchouli, oud (no. 1 - kingdom).
There are 4 gift set options to choose from :
- Transmutation Set ( 1 candle (4 oz), 1 body oil, 1 wax melt)
- Fire Elemental Set ( 3 candles (4 oz) )
- Water Elemental Set( 3 body oils )
- Earth Elemental Set (3 wax melts )
Tan Ceramic Electric Wax/Oil Diffuser - $40
The Tan Ceramic Electric Wax/Oil Diffuser is a stylish addition to your home decor. It comes with a 3-6-9 hour timer and "on" button to control the intensity of the fragrance.
Temperature Settings: Control the intensity of your fragrance with low, medium, and high temperature settings.
“On” Setting: You asked, we listened! You can now leave your warmer on for as long or as little as you please with the new "On" button.
3-6-9 Hour Auto Shut Off Timer: With settings for 3, 6, and 9 hours, our automatic shut off timer feature allows you to easily manage the duration of your fragrance delivery.
No-Scrape Silicone Dish: Flexible silicone allows you to remove used wax from your melter quickly and easily—wax pops right out of the dish, no clean-up required!
"No Bulb" Melting: This elegant, ceramic wax warmer comes with a printed-on design and features a built-in ceramic heater. (Translation for veteran melters: no more replacing light bulbs!)
Warm Soft Glow: The steady glow from the built-in LED light strip illuminates the warmer and creates a calm, relaxing atmosphere.
Temperature Settings
Low Setting = This setting is the best option to make your fragrance last longer
Medium Setting = This setting offers a traditional electric diffuser experience
High Setting = This setting warms your wax or oil the fastest and will burn off the fragrance the quickest.