Tommy Boy is a ridiculous movie and it’s awesome. It has everything you want in a comedy including the legendary Chris Farley and Dan Aykroyd. Anyway, I haven’t watched it in a good long while and the other day we had a shoot in the afternoon so I turned it on in the morning and watched it on purpose to feed my creativity. Yes, you heard right: I watched Tommy Boy to feed my creativity. Let me explain.
Creativity by definition is your brain taking in new information, making a connection with old information, and forming new ideas. So if you want to have an influence on your creativity, the easiest way to do that is to control what you are putting in your brain. Those things we take in do not have to be inherently “Creative” things like playing music or painting or photography. It could also be watching a stupid movie that you like. It could be going for a run. It could be reading. Anything that you can add to your brain on purpose can serve as an input into your creative fire.
So why add Tommy Boy?
It was easy.
One of the reasons I watched it was because I wanted to. Tommy Boy is not a challenging movie. It’s not a beautiful work of photography and acting. It’s super easy to watch and it is funny. That’s it. I mean any movie that has a scene where you get to watch a deer destroy a car from the inside out is obviously worth having on your to-watch list 😉
It was something different.
Nothing can shake up stuckness like a good dose of something different. When we do something that we wouldn’t normally do is causes a little bit of discomfort, which can cause our brain to wake up and possibly form new and interesting connections that wouldn’t have happened otherwise.
Watching Tommy Boy didn’t give me inspiration. It didn’t give me ideas for images to create or books to write. I didn’t ask for it to. It gave me exactly what I asked of it and that was to be a source of possible connection between new and old ideas. Practicing creativity is not about inspiration or getting inspired by stuff we do, It’s about doing things on purpose so that we can make better stuff when we have to.
Happy Tuesday folks! And Happy July! #itshotupinhere
Chris
Questions:
What unconventional things do you like to do to feed your creativity?
Other things I regularly use as creative inputs:
Podcasts
Music
Books
Playing Basketball or Disc Golf
Going Hiking
TV Shows
The only requirement for these things is that I do them on purpose. I’m not mindlessly watching TV (although there is a time for that and that’s ok.) I’m feeding my brain on purpose. That purpose is to feed my creativity.
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