When we have high temperatures here in Johannesburg in the day and at night getting a full quota of sleep is difficult. It’s enough coping with 30°C during the day and up to 27° as late as 11 o’clock in the evening but the real challenge comes in the early hours of the morning.
You’re sleeping and are suddenly awoken by a sharp singing sensation on your shoulder. Then you hear a buzzing around your head. Next thing a mosquito has bitten you on the nose. That’s where it really hurts because of the many nerves in your nose. It feels like you’re in a dream on the Mosquito Coast.
With the mosquitoes buzzing around you realise that you will have to crawl out of bed and get out the mosquito repellent. After you have covered your neck shoulders and arms with repellent and start to get back to sleep even though your body is stinging in places from the mosquito bites, you hear the mosquitoes buzzing a slight distance from you but they don’t come towards your body. It’s amazing how a simple product like a mosquito and insect repellent work so effectively against these malicious little blood-sucking monsters.
Simple products that work well are always in demand. They make life easier. They help you when you need them most. And they give you peace of mind. Just think of the many products around the home, in the bathroom, in the kitchen in the living room and outdoors that enhance your quality of life.
All these simple yet effective products stem from the creative imagination and ideas to solve problems. The things that we buy in shops or online whether product or service all began their life in the mind of someone’s imagination who had enough motivation, determination and courage to bring them to fruition.
Have you ever come up with an idea that could be turned into a product or service? Did you dismiss it as not being worthy of being implemented? Were you embarrassed to talk about your idea to family and friends?
Isn’t it sad how many people come up with ideas but allow others to sneer or scoff at their concepts and thoughts and take them no further? Everyone has a creative imagination that allows them to come up with ideas, combine objects or concepts and come up with something new. But often that creative potential in us is crushed by other people, attitudes towards age and an erroneous belief system that says only people with specialised knowledge or skills can produce viable or valuable new product and service ideas.
It’s only by recognising that you have a creative imagination and putting it to use that you can come up with ideas on your own. Yet it does require that you do independent thinking for yourself and have a definite purpose or directed effort towards coming up with new ideas.
What’s the best way to kickstart your creative engine? It takes little steps beginning with listening to what other people are saying, asking them questions about their experiences at home, at work and at play and listening to their problems, complaints and challenges. It also requires keen observation of how people do certain things, processes and tasks with an eye to making them more simple and more effective.
New ideas don’t necessarily need to lead to new products or services. You can use your creative imagination to come up with better ideas for living at home, more effective ways of doing your work, streamlining processes and helping other people live better lives whether it be improved foods, weight loss, exercise, dressing themselves, beautifying their homes and gardens and even providing them with more enjoyable forms of entertainment.
You can rekindle your creative juices at any time if you have the will and motivation to do so. Yes, idea generation techniques, listening and observation as well as asking questions will help. But it also takes a self-confidence and changing your beliefs that you are capable of being more creative and then putting your imagination to work.
