Learn to define your aims, goals and objectives in life's situations.
Make a list of all your reasons for doing a particular thing.
Even though you assume that you know what your goals are, often hidden or unconsidered goals get in the way.
Without a clarity of purpose, all actions are either reactions to a situation or matters of habit or imitation.
As a practice exercise, write down all your possible aims, goals and objectives as if you were a captain of a spaceship approaching Earth for the first time from another planet.
Did you create a long list?
Now do the same thing with something in your own life.
A tennis player that kept delivering kill shots into the net thought his goal was to win the game, but in reality it was an undetected desire to look terrific.
As another exercise, look at how you currently do your daily chores and duties throughout your day.
Now put on your creative hat and think about how you could possible perform your daily tasks but in a creatively different way.
This exercise relieves you of the habit that often restricts you to one way thinking and doing things.
The more you practice accomplishing things in novel ways, the better you get at it.
You can think wild or standard, active or inactive, open-minded or narrow-minded.
The choice is yours, but practice wearing different thinking hats.
Sometimes it helps the process by assuming a role and saying - if I were Jesus, Einstein or the President, how would I think?