These selected pages are excerpted from Dilip Mukerjea's new book, Imagistix:  A Visual Synthesis of Insights, Anecdotes, and Strategies for L.I.F.E. (Leadership, Innovation, Fellowship, Entrepreneurship):

Say Keng Lee's Personal Note: As I read, I am reminded of the following elegant quote: 

"The world can only be grasped by action, not by contemplation. The hand is more important than the eye ... The hand is the cutting edge of the mind."

~Jacob Bronowski, British mathematician, writing in his classic, The Ascent of Mind;

Dilip Mukerjea shares more tips as he writes in his new book, Imagistix:

Creative Thinking As A Cognitive Process 

It is generated by making new connections across different regions of the brain. All creative work requires using your existing knowledge to help you do new things. Creative behaviour usually involves a product or response both novel and appropriate to the task at hand. Neuroscientists attest that all parts of the brain are constantly interacting, and thereby building strong neural pathways. 

According to studies conducted at the University of Texas’ School of Brain and Behavioral Sciences, engaging in creative activities can improve the strength of neural pathways to the hippocampus which in turn creates strong pathways to memories. When scientists study memory, they look to the hippocampus. This is the part of the brain responsible for the processing of episodic, working, and short-term memory. This part of the brain may also function as a mediator between many other brain processes. 

Here are some ways to exercise your creative thinking skills: 

Change Your Routine 

Challenge your brain to break out of set habits so as to inject some variation into your thought processes. Create new experiences to trigger your creative possibilities. Try changing something small or adding a new activity each day, to snap you out of the well-worn neural pathways that keep you in autopilot mode, and start forging some new ones. 

Exercise 

Exercise is good for your brain as well as for your body. Start stretching your creative muscles by stretching your physical muscles. They complement one another and soon you will become inventive and improvisational in your approach to generating ideas in diverse contexts. 

Learn Something New 

Dare to challenge yourself by venturing into fresh domains. Pick a subject, language, game, or craft; the exposure to new experiences, and your efforts to get skilled in them, will give you more fodder for future creativity

Take an Improv Class 

This particular type of comedy is dependent on making quick connections and responding playfully. It is great for creative thinking since you have to constantly come up, spontaneously, with new and interesting responses to whatever stimuli are coming your way. 

Go Dancing 

Dancing requires us to process a cascade of information and express that interpretation kinaesthetically, visually, and gracefully. We listen to the beat and the lyrics and move to our interpretation of the correct steps. To do all this with perfect coordination is an experience that is guaranteed to catalyse your creativity. 

Read a Book, Write an Essay 

Reading and writing are great mental exercises, and if you are into fiction there are all kinds of creativity involved in the genre. Reading and writing often require critical, analytical, and self-expressive abilities, as well as a sense of self-discovery: they comprise one of the best ways to foster imagination. The more we read, the better we can build up and expand our knowledge. We can be open to new and novel ideas and have an understanding of new things. Reading helps us practise imagination by letting the words describe a certain image while the reader manipulates the picture in the mind. This practice strengthens the mind as it acts like a muscle. We can then translate these skills into writing. 

Creativity is driven by memory. This means that for any given creativity task, it is crucial to find memories that will help you to perform the task The study of linking creative thinking to memory is a reasonably new pursuit and we have only just begun to understand what these benefits could entail. One thing we do know is that creativity is linked to many mental processes, and practising creativity is great for cognitive function. Without imagination, people would not be able to come up with new inventions and new ideas that help advance society. It also pushes discovery and understanding. Imagine, create, discover, beat the status quo! 

A Smart Advisory from Dilip Mukerjea, writing in his new book, Imagistix:

Stay Curious, Active, And Engaged

No matter your age, you can always unleash your imagination, and your sense of play, to stimulate ideas. The issue is not age, but usAGE! Stay curious, active, and engaged. Here are some suggestions to initiate and build creative momentum: 

• Keep track of your ideas at all times. 

• Pay attention to hunches. 

• Carry a notebook wherever you go, have one at the bedside and use it to capture those ideas, thoughts and hunches. 

• Pose new questions every day. An inquiring mind is a creatively active mind that enlarges the areas of its awareness. 

• Learn about things outside your specialty. Unrelated pieces of knowledge can often be brought together to solve problems or to create new products. 

• Avoid rigid set patterns for doing most things: Look for new viewing points and try new ways. Attempt to find more than one way to approach and solve a problem. 

• Be open and receptive to ideas, others’, as well as our own. 

• Pay attention to half-baked ideas and help to form them. 

• Observe your surroundings. 

• Look for similarities, differences and unique features in objects, situations, processes and ideas. 

• Form new associations. 

• Engage in hobbies that give you experiences that are different from your work. 

• Give the mind a break and stretch by doing puzzles and making things with your hands. 

• Loosen up and laugh easily. Humour relieves tension and people are more creative when they are relaxed. 

• Adopt a risk-taking attitude. Nothing is more fatal to creativity than a fear of failure.