Failure. One of the most feared subjects of my clients. The sheer thought of failure will put someone into a frozen state from which there is no creation possible.

But isn’t failure just programmed if you decide to use your creative abilities and actually create something that has never been, a ground-breaking thought, an winning idea, a new venture?

You are moving outside of the boundaries of life as you know it. You enter territories that were not yet available to you. You don’t know the way around there. Yet.

Wouldn’t you accept the fact that you can get lost in a new city? Would you beat up yourself for not finding the restaurant you want to visit in a new town? Or would you just get prepared and take a map or use your GPS system?

Why is that so much more difficult to accept the challenges of getting lost and the possibility of failure as you enter your creative zone? Is it because creativity is still viewed as some wonderful gift you need to be born with or as the privilege for artists? Is it because we really have limited light posts on the way to our creative flow? Is it our beliefs about our creative potential? What matters is that at the beginning of a creative venture, we have this fear of failure that we need to face.

Sometimes inspiration comes from places you never expected from.

Sometimes you follow your bliss and inspire others.

Sometimes a drop into an ocean can make the biggest waves.

And sometimes you just need to dance!

And before you ask, the song is Unstoppable from Santigold.

Do something extraordinary

Create a movement

Be unstoppable

Nothing?

Let’s face it. You sell something every day, in every waking hour of your life.

Not you?

Do you have kids? Do you manage that sometimes your offspring do what you want as a parent? Then you must be already a sales genie. Kids – one of the toughest customers for Mami’s and Papi’s ideas.

Are you married or living in a  partnership? Congratulations. You managed to sell the idea of a committed relationship to your partner. No small feat nowadays.

Do you have paying clients? Did they fall from the sky on your doorstep or did you actually have to sell them your services or product?

Life is selling.

On most days I manage to sell my kids on what we need to do (Yes, we need to hit the road NOW, otherwise … we will be late from YOUR football practice!). I sold my services to major companies in my past. And I am selling my services as a coach now to my prospective clients. I even sold the idea of marriage to my husband! 

 What do you really think about you selling? Do you love the excitement? Or do you see that as another thing that has to be done? Or maybe you get heart palpation even when thinking about turning a prospect into a client? 

What do you think about being sold? Is it a happy experience? Do you feel used sometimes?

Do you enjoy the dance of seller and buyer? No? I don’t blame you. There are very, very few who understand the choreography of selling on this planet. But those who do, they get enormous rewards.

And what does my rambling about selling has to do with creativity? Come back  to find out.

“Creativity belongs to the artist in each of us. To create means to relate. The root meaning of the word art is “to fit together” and we all do this every day.Not all of us are painters but we are all artists. Each time we fit things together we are creating – whether it is to make a loaf of bread, a child, a day.”

Corita Kent, American muralist

Do you wait for the right time to do something really important for you?

Do you wait till the inspired moment arrives to begin writing your book (or your blog-post, or …)?

Do you believe that anything you do has to be perfect for the first time?

I did. I still believe in the concept of the “right time”. But instead of believing that it will arrive some day miracously at my doorstep, I create them now. I prepare myself for the right moment, then decide that  NOW is the right time.

As for perfection? I see that also different now. I used to have a saying (that most probably drove my husband to distraction many times) “If it is worth doing, it is worth doing perfectly”  Only it stopped me from going for expierences as I knew I  have no chance doing them perfectly the first or second time around.

For 6 months now, I “work” on my website, meaning : desperately waiting for the right time when through a magic force I can launch that site full with perfect content, perfectly written and with the perfect design.

Last Thursday I jumped at an opportunity that requires an up-and-running website before the May 19th. Crazy? Was that the right point in time to do that? Will my website look and read perfect? I don’t even have the time to consider those questions. Let alone beating myself up on why I wasted  6 months worrying about not producing something perfect. How perfect could my content be if I tweaked that every week for the last 6 months?

I write and re-write, tweak and re-tweak content now. I have a deadline. It is the right time. My website might not be perfect. Yet. But I give the best I can and continue to write and re-write, tweak,and re-tweak, until I am happy with my creation.

“You don’t have to get it right, you just have to get it going” Mike Litman

‘Live out of your imagination, not your history.’

Stephen Covey

Are You? Let me hear that answer.

In my beliefs YOU ARE BORN CREATIVE.

The big challenge is to stay that way in the face of all conditioning one has to face growing up. It begins when parents state upon seeing the little artwork of a 3 year old, “but that doesn’t look like….” (put in the right word for the concept that your little artist conveyed in his artwork). And kids learn fast. They learn that things look like as their parents (later as their teachers) see them and not as they see them through their eyes or in their own imagination. They began to see through the eyes of those who came before them. The sad reality is: they will need to explore new paths where nobody has touched his feet upon before them. But we prepare them for history, for yesterday that never comes back as we all so well know.

As parents of course we try and try to give our kids the right opportunities to develop themselves and get ready for life. We take them to countless practices, sport, dance if the are lucky. We push them to learn languages. We take them to museums on the weekends. Boy, it is hard work to be a parent nowadays.

But…

Do we let them play football as they want? No, there are the rules already established how that supposed to happen.

 Do we let them dance the dance that is inside them?  No, there is already a good way how to dance ballet and do an Arabesque.

Do we let them get creative with language? Of course not, we don’t understand the half of what the youngsters say nowadays anyway, we need to protect our own kid from doom.

Do we let them to touch and play with the things exhibited in museums? God forbid… security will be after us.

All good intentions on the surface.

Attention, tricky question ahead: aren’t we grown-ups show our fear of the creative genius of our offspring in pushing them into cages built by our society’s past experience and our own fear of looking outside of our windows? Do we let our already limited reality to limit the new generations’ willingness to open those closed windows and doors for a peek outside?

 Are you afraid?

Just open up for an inch. Next time your kids say: “that is the Sun” on their picture, stop yourself saying,” no, honey, the Sun doesn’t look like that at all”. You might not live to the day that the Sun will look exactly like that, but your kid might. And he will need all the creative abilities you try to rob him in order to survive. And survive should he, right?

A refreshingly new twist to look at creativity and the creative process… 

Elizabeth Gilbert: A new way to think about creativity

 

Did you show up today to do your part of the job? Do you carry a notebook and pen (or a recorder) with you all times to reach for that creative idea zeroing in on you? Or do you let them search for a more ready and prepared soul out there?

“The greater danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but rather it’s too low and we reach it”

Michelangelo