Jumpstart Your Creativity (9 page)

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What specifically do you have to do or what thinking do you have to change to truly release expectations for the best outcomes of your creative process?

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What specifically do you have to do to create the time and space for creative thinking? Alone? When doing this with a group of people? What resources and support do you need to protect this time and space?

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Make a list of all of the benefits of letting go and accepting the imperfection of the creative process. If I just let go I would…

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INDIVIDUAL CREATIVITY

My future starts when I wake up every
morning. Every day I find something creative
to do with my life
.

—M
ILES
D
AVIS

IN
this chapter we give you some ideas, strategies, and tools for developing your own individual creativity. As we have pointed out in previous chapters, you already have the ability to be creative; in fact, we believe you have the ability to be a creative genius because you were born with it! Now the idea is to take your creativity, wake it up, slap it around, shake it up, and put it to good use.

The first question you have to ask yourself is, “How do I spur my own creativity?” Think of creativity as a magnificent horse. You are using your spurs to motivate it to higher levels of performance. A spur is a pointed device secured to a rider's heel used to urge on the horse. We want you to urge on your creativity stallion!

How? Let's explore some of the techniques you can experiment with to discover what your specific spurs are for kicking
your creativity into high gear. For example, one of the activities that inspires Shawn and stimulates his creativity is visiting art museums. Another element is being able to talk to a very creative and innovative person and bounce ideas off of that person. Steven loves attending conferences and participating in webinars where people are talking about new strategies and unique ideas. He also enjoys reading articles in magazines or on websites that have unique approaches to something that greatly spurs his creativity. The key is to find out what it is for you, and there is no one, right answer because the answer is different for each person.

There is a well-known story about Edwin Land, who one day was walking with his daughter in the woods. He took a picture of his daughter with his camera and his daughter then said, “Daddy, can I see the picture you just took of me?” He patiently explained to his daughter that she could not see the picture right away; she had to wait for it to be developed. As a child she did not understand why she had to wait and found the idea to be somewhat ridiculous. This got Land thinking, “Why can't a picture be seen right away? Why do we have to wait to see a picture?” He immediately began working on what would eventually become the world-famous Polaroid Instant camera, released in 1948. The spur for his individual creativity was words from a child. The spark or the stimulation can come from any source. (Incredibly, sixty-one years later, in 2009, Polaroid announced their new Z2300 Instant Camera that prints a 2” × 3” smudge-proof, tear-proof, full color photo print.)

The question you need to ask yourself is (after careful observation), “Both in the past and in the present, what are items, events, or processes that stimulate and spur my individual creativity?” For some people it may be gardening. For others, it may be cycling. And for others, it may be watching an old movie or walking along a river or swimming in the ocean. Notice when you feel you are being your most creative and look back to see what it is you're doing at the time. Then of course the idea is to recreate that circumstance as much as possible.

Make a list of things you feel spur your creativity and try to do them more and surround yourself with those kind of materials and experiences. The key is to be conscious of what makes you creative. We find in our speaking and training programs that a lot of people can be creative, but they don't know in which circumstances they are the most creative. You need to find out what it is. Now.

In addition to finding out what your creativity spurs are, you need to work on and foster your creativity. We find the most creative people are people who continue to develop and foster their creativity throughout their entire lives. They just never stop.

How do you foster your creativity? We believe there are several techniques for fostering and improving your level of creativity. Here are some ideas (wow, can you imagine in a book about creativity we're going to give you ideas?):

No this is not a misprint! We're sure the last thing you expected to find in a book about creativity is a mention of fitness and health. We know that people who are more fit and eat a healthier diet have a tendency to be more creative. Why? The main reason is they have more energy, they think more clearly, and as everyone knows, when you work out many helpful chemicals (endorphins, serotonin, dopamine, and BDNF) are released into your brain. The number of positive emotional effects gained from regular exercise is surprising. These effects include improved self-esteem, enhanced mood, better memory and mental functioning, and decreased stress. The decrease in depression is significant, as depression is one of the mental blocks to accessing your creativity. If you want to be more creative, a regular routine of fitness can enable you to stimulate your creativity to higher levels.

There are four forms of reading that can dramatically improve your level of creativity. The first form of reading is reading books (physical or electronic) that contain how-to techniques. These books give you models, tools, and techniques to create ideas and evaluate them. This book you are reading right now is an example of a how-to book. The second form of reading is to read books about creative people. For example, you could read a book about Steve Jobs, Gustave Eiffel, Thomas Edison, Mary Kay, Picasso, or Dolly Parton—any person who is considered highly creative. The advantage of reading biographies about highly creative people is you can
learn from their life experiences and liberally steal their techniques for coming up with ideas. The third form of reading is to read any books at all whether they are fiction or nonfiction. The idea here is that when you're reading your thinking is stimulated generally, and can often lead to great ideas, which are unrelated to what you're reading specifically, but your mind was stimulated somehow. We are often shocked by the number of people we meet in society who never read. We don't say this as a form of judgment, but we do believe those people are limiting their creativity. The fourth type of reading is not in book form, but reading online articles, websites, or electronic versions of magazines. Because the Internet is in real time, there is often more current information online. For example, Seth Godin, the marketing genius, posts a daily blog. Check it out at
www.sethgodin.com
. Go to your nearest bookstore and wander through the magazine racks. Check out the article titles for inspiration.

There are many organizations (both for-profit and nonprofit) that have internal training departments. Many more organizations are now offering programs on creative and critical thinking to their employees. In the single or multiple-day creativity programs we offer, most people find them to be extremely valuable because they learn techniques they never knew for developing ideas and evaluating ideas. Contact people in your Training or Human Resources Department to find out if this kind of training is offered. If this kind of training is not offered in your organization, don't let this stop
you. Invest your own money in seeking training on how to be more creative and innovative. Yes it will cost you money on the front end, but you will recoup your money by being more creative and innovative.

Training programs are most likely available through your local colleges and universities or through training companies that travel around the country with open enrollment courses. Additionally, there are many online resources for learning about and fostering your creativity. One example is our product called
Creativity Launchpad
, which you can see by visiting
www.creativitylaunchpad.com
. If your current company does not offer it for you, then do it for yourself. It is an investment in your future.

Practically any topic you want to learn is available in a video format somewhere, someplace, somehow. Do some research online and locate DVDs or downloads you can tap into online. One example of this is Ted. What is Ted? Ted is a conference held across the country where highly creative experts get on stage and deliver fascinating keynote presentations about different topics. Ted's tagline is “Ideas worth spreading.” One quick glance at the Ted website, at
www.Ted.com
, gives you thousands of videos to look at—and they're all free. Free you say? Boy, that's a shock! It's not a shock in the world of the Internet. If you want to learn to be more creative and you want to foster your creativity and study creativity, simply go online and look for video clips about creativity. There are tons of them.

We often get calls from people who want to be professional speakers. We are willing to spend about half an hour with someone on the phone who wants to be a professional speaker. Here however is the big issue—during our discussion we ask them if they have read any books about professional speaking. They answer “No.” We ask if they have watched any videos about professional speaking. They answer “No.” We then ask if they have read any articles about professional speaking. They answer “No.” At this point we're more than a little frustrated with the person who has not sought out any of the resources available at their fingertips.

Just by pressing a few buttons, you can learn a great deal by tapping into the web. Take advantage of it!

People go to a gym and work with a personal trainer. They take lessons from a golf coach to be a better golfer or from a tennis coach to be a better tennis player. Yet we find most people do not think of the idea of having a mentor for creativity. Obviously the old saying holds, “Two heads are better than one.” Think of all the people who are in your life, and on that list think of the top three creative people who you know personally or professionally. Ask one of them to be your creativity mentor. The idea behind a creativity mentor is not to only have someone to brainstorm with and run creative ideas by, but to have someone who can teach you more about creativity. Just make sure your creativity mentor is someone who is more creative than you are and who has a track record of being creative. Then set up some sort of process when they
can mentor you over a certain period of time. It may be three months or six months, and you may meet with him or her about once a month—but set up a structured process. And yes, in case you're wondering—you can learn to be better in terms of creativity.

There are many professional coaches in the marketplace who do executive coaching, motivational coaching, time management coaching, financial coaching, and even grief coaching. Seek out, find, and hire a professional coach who can coach you on creativity and innovation and critical thinking. Yes there is an investment required on your part, but we guarantee it will pay off. If you're going to learn, then learn from the best.

Both of us have often found that being involved with significant challenging projects at work results in modest and major breakthroughs in terms of our individual creativity. At one company Shawn worked for, the company was planning for a national meeting and it was suggested having a company history museum display. Rather than running in the other direction from the project, Shawn thought it would be fun and challenging, so he volunteered for the task. Over a two-month period he had to curate, assemble, and build a company history museum that could be transported to the site of the national meeting. It turned out to be a big hit. Many people saw rare items in the museum and learned a lot
they did not know about the company's early days. But don't miss the key point, by participating in the creation of the museum, Shawn was able to apply all of his creative talents in project management, influence, negotiation, graphics, visual elements, and design.