Creativity matters—especially when you’re new to the game and looking to get a leg up on your competition. But where do you start? And how do you stay moving once you get started, anyway? Fortunately, there’s help available. Keeping your creativity high is something you can learn, and with a little time and effort, you’ll see those ideas and plans continually rolling in.
One of the best ways to keep your creativity high is to have a big worldview. Closed-minded people can have trouble being creative, because they can’t see the big picture very well. Don’t let that be you! Open your mind to new people, cultures, experiences, and ideas. It might be uncomfortable at first, but that’s what change is all about.
Remember, your customers aren’t carbon copies of you. They come from all different cultures, religions, races, and walks of life. Cater to a wider view of humanity, and you’ll find amazing ways to be creative—along with pulling in more customers who see that you’re accepting of them, just the way they are. If your competition isn’t doing that, it’s a good way to get ahead.
Creativity isn’t just about seeing the world differently, though. It’s also about coming up with ideas over and over again—and recognizing that some of those ideas are going to be complete crap. There’s nothing wrong with that! Even if your ideas are ugly, keep generating them. In all the intellectual muck you’re wading through, you’ll eventually find some gems.
Those will be the ideas that you’ll run with, and you can leave the rest to die where they fell. When you do this, you’ll realize that what matters is the core concepts you were coming up with, even if the actual idea was pretty rough around the edges. You can always develop your ideas further later, but if you don’t keep generating them, you’ll get out of practice—and stuck.
The generation of ideas should be an ongoing process, overall, but you still need to know when to take breaks. You can’t do it all, all the time, and never expect to get burned out. Instead, make sure to take some time for yourself now and then. Take a few hours and go to the park to sit in the sunshine. Walk barefoot on the beach or go swimming. Shop, or see a movie. Have a good meal, or just take the day off for a Netflix marathon.
Sure, you can’t do those kinds of things all the time, but burnout is very real—and it can kill creativity faster than almost anything else. When you take some downtime for yourself, you refresh your brain and get it started on a whole new group of ideas and concepts you can use to keep your business moving forward. Who knows what you’ll come up with after a fine meal and a good night’s sleep? The world might not even be ready for your genius!
Great Post