The prefrontal cortex of your brain is a very tricky place. This section helps with decision-making and moderating social behaviors, or what physiologists call “executive functions”. While most of us hold such functions as highly important, studies have shown that this particular part of the brain can actually inhibit creative or imaginative thought. These executive functions are what we use to rule out irrelevant possibility. In other words, they’re what tell us that a golf club is a golf club, and not a cane; or that a bicycle has two wheels, and could never have one.

There in lies the barrier that keeps us from our most imaginative thoughts. Creativity can only happen when we make the choice to explore irrelevant possibilities. The idea of a unicycle was completely irrelevant until someone decided to take one of the wheels off of a bicycle. It seemed crazy. It was scandalous. It certainly wasn’t “right” or “socially acceptable.” But neither were people like Henry Ford, Steve Jobs, Martin Luther King Jr. and Jesus of Nazareth.

When we’re seeking to harness the power of imagination, more often than not what is right or socially acceptable will actually get in our way. I’m not saying that we need to become completely uncivilized in order to be innovative. But we must remember that creativity is not the ability to do things right or follow the rules. Creativity is the ability to see things differently and make your own rules. Creativity is the active choice to rebel against our executive functions from time to time and to throw down the status quo. Creativity is creating our own status quo.