You need to encourage your creativity to flower, especially if you’ve been in the habit of suppressing it due to critical people, self-doubt or simply because life's got in the way. Even if you’ve always been consciously creative, this side of you still needs constant encouragement to develop and grow. Here are some general suggestions to boost your creativity.

Listen to music. Everyone likes different music – don’t try listening to someone else’s choice of music. Listen to what suits you as an individual. It might be Beethoven, it might be rap.

Write down why it is that you require a boost in your creativity – what is it that you wish to do just now? Detail it as much as possible. While you’re writing it down your mind will be working on it and before you’ve finished detailing it, you’ll have loads of ideas to work from.

Go for a walk. Getting out into the fresh air and exercising your body relaxes your mind and allows ideas to flow more freely. Putting on a CD and dancing about can do it, too (preferably without an audience).

By the same token, if you can do whatever it is you want to do tomorrow, then when you go to bed you can think about it, try to plan out what you intend doing (in your head), try to work out the details of it - by which time you’ll be asleep. The following morning you’ll wake up full of enthusiasm to get going because you’ll be full of ideas that have worked themselves out overnight.

If you’re trying to write a story, read one that is a good example of what you’re aiming at. If you’re trying to paint a picture, look at some you admire. Whatever it is you’re trying to do, check out good examples. And then put them away and let your mind sift through the information it’s been given. Your own ideas will soon turn up.

Or to take that last point further if you’re still feeling at a standstill, take an example and deliberately make it your own. If you’re looking at a spring landscape, paint a winter version. If you’re reading a poem about loss of a loved one, write one about gaining a new lover.

Try to work out what you’re thinking at the time and if any of it is negative or self-critical, turn it to the positive side to let your creativity out of its self-imposed cage. Creativity needs a positive environment in which to flourish.

Don’t allow fear of failure to affect you. If you find it’s crippling then don’t attempt the whole job. Take a small part of it and do that. And then the next bit. And the next bit…

Always bear in mind that most situations have several ways of dealing with them. There is seldom only one answer, so don’t necessarily settle for the first thing that springs to mind. Explore other options even if you end up coming back to the first thing you thought of and using that.

Just trying out these ideas will exercise your own creativity and get it rolling. We will revisit the subject of boosting our creativity in future articles to keep it rolling.