Last Updated on September 2, 2024
The benefits of sleep are best known to those who enjoy it. Sleep is a basic need to every living creature. It is a natural way of rejuvenating our energy, relaxing our minds and improving our productivity. It is the best way of rewarding yourself after a long day’s work.
Did you know that sleep can boost your creativity? It is a topic most researchers strive to understand. The relationship between sleep and creativity manifests as natural occurrences our bodies go through during and after sleep. Have you been faced with situations where you can’t make a vivid decision? Has anyone told you to ‘sleep on it’? Well, that is how important sleep is to creativity. Let us first learn about creativity.
What is Creativity?
Creativity is the art of changing newly learned ideas into reality. These opinions come as a result of obvious inspiration from a new experience or object. Creativity is also a psychological characteristic that allows you to think beyond the ordinary. Creativity results to acquiring new skills and ideas on various niches. It lets you have a different perception towards certain things either positively or negatively.
The Importance of Creativity
We need to apply creativity in our day to day lives. It is what helps us function more in the activities we carry out.
- Creativity helps you diversify. You can easily come up with solutions to new experiences you may face; especially in a field you don’t comprehend. Being creative therefore will help you overcome your fears in overwhelming situations.
- Creativity enables you to express yourself in the best way possible. It becomes possible by new ideas you learn each day.
- It gives you a fulfilling emotion knowing that you have solutions at the tips of your fingers. The joy that comes with facing unexpected scenarios is marvelous.
- Creativity helps you discover hidden abilities. A new experience helps you realize how much you can face inevitable problems.
- Your actions, as a result of cultivated creativity, portray your thoughts and ideas.
- Creativity is the top builder of self-esteem and confidence. You become proud of the value you add to life each day.
- Creative people never fear about being judged by their peers. It is because they are aware of their powerful and weak points.
- Creativity is a lifelong process that you will practice entirely. Being creative remains part of you in your entire life.
Relationship Between Sleep and Creativity
Sleeping Patterns
Studies show that people who have proper sleeping routines tend to be more creative compared to those who suffer from sleeping problems. A good sleeping schedule offers a good night’s sleep and in turn, makes you more productive when you wake up. Enough sleep allows your brain to relax and stimulate cells for creativity.
Memorizing Dreams
People who remember what they dreamt about go through a successful REM phase of sleep. Recallable dreams only happen during the REM stage. When you dream, you steadily involve your mind about previous experiences. Therefore, you are more likely to develop creativity over time.
Early Morning Creativity
During early morning hours, the brain is fresh and can be able to think fast and more sensibly. The most involving activities yield better results when done first thing in the morning. This reminds me back in college, during the exam period, we would wake up early to revise and memorize our notes.
The science behind this is that the longest REM phase of sleep happens just before we wake up for most people. This is the key factor as to why we function more in the morning as compared to other times of the day.
Insomnia
People may attribute the lack of sleep as one of the contributing factors to creativity. While occasional insomnia leads you to engage in learning activities, it affects sleep negatively. In fact, sleepless nights will result in reduced performance the following day.
Practical Ways of Boosting Your Creativity Through Sleep
Strive for Early Morning Activities
As learned above our minds are the most active immediately when we wake up. Your mind is a pacing situation at this time thereby leading to the imagination, new ideas, and thoughts. According to bbc.com, a certain study was carried out to determine conscious connections at different intervals of the day. Individuals who did the test the next morning after training gave excellent results. It explains that creativity takes time to build up. You are likely to remember something you learned today if asked about it tomorrow.
Create a Good Sleeping Schedule
Among the other benefits of a good night’s sleep is creativity. A relaxed mind is essential when coming up with ideas. A creative mind helps solve problems you face on a daily basis, without necessarily having to source for help. Eat healthy, exercise, and have enough sleep.
Lucid Dreaming
This situation is whereby you consciously comprehend what you are dreaming about (while asleep). According to AsapSCIENCE, the YouTube video explains that you can induce lucid dreaming in your sleep. The first step is keeping a dream journal. Here, you write about your night time dreams as soon as you can remember them. In situations where you don’t remember anything, you note down that you can’t remember.
Secondly, perform reality checks when you are awake. You can count your fingers, look away, and count them again. You create a situation explained as ‘second nature.’ That way when sleeping you will end up performing the same checks only to realize you are asleep.
Lucid dreaming enhances your creativity ability by exploring new possibilities without following the usual rules of reality.
Using the Hypnopompic State
The hypnopompic state is the immediate period of waking up. In this state your brain is packed with imaginations of dreams you may have experienced during sleep. It is the stage after your REM phase of sleep that occurs towards waking time. Your creativity at this state is at a high level as you relate to whether you dreamt or not.
Pay Attention to Your Dreams
Listening to other people talking about their dreams and how terrifying that monster was, or how the goat said it was their mother can be boring. Dreams, in most cases, appear less understandable. They fail to make sense at all. But, your dreams could be an interesting problem-solving strategy that you could be overlooking.
Your thoughts are unique to you and gear towards making a positive decision. As we all know, dreaming is a manifestation of what we face, think, or imagine. Over time, several dreams will prove to have helped us in deciding on critical issues.
The Final Word
Isn’t creativity a trait we should all strive to achieve? It defines who we are at the end of the day. You will be able to make solid decisions without the fear of doing things the wrong way. Creativity brings about a learning curve in our lives with new experiences and situations. So be bold to try new ideas every day. Do you have a trick for tapping into your creativity? Share with us in the comments below!
