A growing body of research is showing that creative habits are a pathway to resilience (Sophie Schweizer et al., 2016). Creativity is, of course, an essential skill for solving problems and generating original ideas, but perhaps more importantly, it can be a joyful habit that helps individuals build capacity to navigate difficult times. The five C’s of creativity offer a simple framework for enhancing one’s capacity for creativity as well as resilience.

1. Curiosity

Curiosity is one of the most researched elements of creativity. It can be viewed as both an engine for creativity and a product of it (Walsh, 2006). Curiosity is the desire to explore, investigate, learn, or otherwise seek new information or experiences (Dumont et al., 2019).

The simplest way to foster curiosity is to develop your willingness and ability to ask questions and observe peculiarities in your daily life. What’s making that sound? How does that thing work? Why do I feel this way? These are examples of questions that individuals can ask on a daily basis to help develop a habit of curiosity. Another simple exercise is to brainstorm a long list of questions, and then try to find the answers to a couple of questions every day.

2. Constraints

Real and artificial constraints can catalyze creative thinking. Too much freedom can stifle originality. Modest boundaries stimulate the search for new solutions. At a basic level, constraint involves a lack of resources, a state that paradoxically fosters creative thought (P. Fishman, 2014).

Operating within constraints is also directly related to resilience as it trains us to frame obstacles and challenges differently. Perhaps simply viewing obstacles and challenges as constraints is the easiest thing we can do to overcome them, or rather navigate around them. Developing the habits associated with operating within constraints also helps us become more efficient and productive with the resources we have instead of being bogged down by what we don’t have in difficult times.

3. Change

Creative change occurs when a person engages in a creative process within a supportive environment (Mamnoon, 2013). This creative practice can be fun. Imagine you are trying to solve a problem or trying to create something, but you are experiencing some sort of mental block or inability to move forward. Simply changing the way you look at the problem could yield newfound momentum. When you are struggling to be creative, change how you are thinking about your project or change where you are working on your project.

“When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.” — Max Planck

4. Curation

Curation is about filtering, grouping, selecting, arranging, and assigning meaning to ideas to create order in the face of a chaotic creative process. This is a skill that can help individuals with decision-making and risk assessment as well. Consider how you arrange the furniture in your room, decide what to focus on in a presentation, or schedule meetings on your calendar. These are exercises in curation. Being more intentional about curation in your life can lead to better decision-making and smarter risk-taking.

5. Context

Providing or designing context is about placing ideas on a stage in a way that frames perspective and understanding of the work. Context also strongly influences how curiosity and curation interact in creative practice (Vaughan et al., 2019). Imagine you are designing a building in a place. How does the place where the building is being designed impact how the building is designed? Would you orient the building to receive more sunlight? Would you use different materials based on the climate of the region? Would you have this new building look like the older buildings next to it? In your daily life, it is just as useful and important to place conversations in context and to understand events within context. This allows us to navigate our world more precisely with more information.

The five C’s of creativity is a concise, unified, and memorable framework that can help individuals develop creative habits that lead to a higher capacity for resilience.