The blank page. Total possibility, and also total terror.We’ve all been there, whether it’s sitting down to draft an important document, standing on stage as the crowd grows silent in anticipation, dealing with a thorny business problem that has no clear solution, or staring at a blank canvas whose painting is yet to emerge from your brush.
These moments demand our creativity, and they are everywhere. The problem is, many people aren’t ready to respond to these moments in the best possible way. Why is that?
Want to hear the biggest, most pervasive lie of our times? Here it is: “I’m not a creative person. I’m not an artist.”
Now that’s simply not true. It couldn’t possibly be. Step back for a moment and consider how you came to this moment. I mean step way back.
You are a process of 14 billion years of unbroken evolution, continuous creativity and perseverance, matter with a purpose, the very embodiment of innovation and problem-solving. The simple fact that you are drawing breath and reading this post is a testament to the creativity and love of life that is in your very own cells.
If you have a soul, you are creative. If you find yourself wanting to make the world a better place and wanting to become a more fully human being, you are in the presence of your own creativity.
This illuminates the solution to our problem of how do we best respond to the increasing demands of our time. How do we unleash our creativity more and more each day? How do we become a fiercely creative person who is able to usher in the future for ourselves and those around us?
Erin and I have a few thoughts on this, and we’d love to hear yours too.
First, lower your standards. I know, it sounds crude, but it works. If you drop the idea that your creative output has to be something that will be featured in the MoMA or at Carnegie Hall, suddenly you’ll find a lot more space to spread your wings and experiment.
Being creative doesn’t mean it has to be good. It just has to be something that enriches your life and gets your juices flowing.
So the small tweak for this week is to create something every day. What’s important in your life that could use a creative infusion? Have that as your focus for the week.
Here are some of the most effective methods we’ve used to open up new ideas and possibilities for challenging situations:
- Run a thought experiment. This is when you step out of your current reality, with all the emotional baggage and personal investment, and you run different scenarios as though you are an alien engineer. Let yourself see a situation from every possible perspective, and you’ll find that possibilities that weren’t immediately apparent become clear.
- Smash things together. There’s no such thing as an original idea. As Sir Isaac Newton said, “If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.” So come up with creative solutions or new ideas by bringing together things you already love that may not have been combined before. Your special sauce will turn those two “knowns” into something new. The examples of this are so plentiful it boggles the mind. Some of my favorites are the iPhone, Cirque du Soleil, David Byrne’s performances, and Integral Theory.
- Work things out with other people. The idea of the lone genius toiling in isolation is more a romantic myth than any kind of truth about creativity. I’ve found more amazing ideas emerge from casual conversations and hang-sessions than any amount of staring at a blank screen would ever produce. And the combined knowledge and passion that you and your partners will unleash will also lead to far greater outcomes.
- Whiteboard and sketch your ideas and fragments. Sometimes you just need to see something in front of you to start working with it. So if there’s a problem you are tackling or a germ of an idea you want to pursue, put it down on paper, or whiteboard, or some other medium that you love to work with and go from there.
- Capture your random “moments of genius.” We’ve all had the moment when we’re walking down the street humming a tune and think, “Hey that’s pretty good, I’ll write that down later,” and proceed to completely forget what the tune was. Same with a brilliant idea for a blog post or article. So stop letting those fragments escape into the ether, and start capturing them. Record your tunes by singing into your iphone voice memo app, jot down an idea that just came to you on a small pad of paper you carry with you, or collect your topics for blog posts in a google doc as the inspiration hits.
- Turn off the judging mind when you’re in creative mode. Don’t edit and create at the same time. These are two different functions and they actually counteract each other. The more you can let your ideas flow free from any judgment during a creative session, the more material you’ll have to work with during an editing session.
- Create a lot! When you listen to a fantastic album, or see a beautiful film it is so easy to forget that you are seeing the finished product. The finished product is the “best of the best” for that particular group of people at the time. What you don’t see is the band writing dozens of songs, and recording demo after demo. You don’t see the months of prep work by the film crew, the execution of scenes that may or may not make the cut and the process of putting it all together. The point is that you have to create in large volumes in order to have enough content, art, or practice time under your belt to distill it into something you can share with the world.
- Surround yourself with art. Erin and I were just at Hamilton’s Super Crawl and I was reminded of how enriching it is to be around actual art; things created by humans to express something important. When you’re in a creatively designed living or working space, you realize that there’s no reason NOT to have an inspiring, alive space. Surrounding yourself with art (whether fine art or simply lovingly crafted furniture) is not that much more expensive than living with things that are mass-produced. All it takes is the intention to live an aesthetically alive life. Once you have that intention, the opportunities to act on it start to emerge. Valuing creativity in this way can help you value and unleash your own creativity.
These should get you started in the domains of Living and Working. Since this post is already so full, we’re going to save our thoughts on creativity as it relates to Being for Wednesday’s post.
