Showing posts with label business. Show all posts
Showing posts with label business. Show all posts

Wednesday, 26 October 2011

What is Creativity?

"What is Creativity?" is one of the questions I get asked the most. My answer is always simple: it is thinking without boundaries. Yes, I know there are a lot more precise, eloquent, and more correct answers out there but I never said or pretend to be anything but simple.

For me creativity is about letting loose. Everyone does this in their own way. Everyone sees the world differently, hears the space around us a bit different, tastes things that no one else can taste, feels the earth spin in their own unique way, and describes their environments in their own terms.

At least the above descriptions hold true until we get to a certain age; A certain age where we have to "behave". At some point in all of our lives we have been "shhhed" or given the glance that tells us that is not appropriate. For some of us unlucky ones perhaps we even got a gentle kick in the shin or a slight pinch on the arm when we have asked to many questions, or have spoken to loudly, or maybe even out of turn.

So we grow up and somewhere along the way after all of this squashing of our enthusiasm and our vigor to learn and ask questions we stop asking. We conform, we begin to wait our turn, we begin to say things we think others want us to say.

Creativity for me is about every once in awhile letting loose in whatever you feel comfortable doing it. Creativity does not have to be an amazing ART piece, or some aww inspiring design that you have concocted. It can be the way you tie your shoes, it can be wearing sandals until the snow hits, it can be about how you say good morning. Creativity is about finding a few things in you that you do just for yourself and that you do that some might even think is a little bit different. I mean imagine one day if you just decided to only write with a pack of crayons that you bought the night before and that you wouldn't stop writing with that pack of crayons until they were all used up? Would it be the end of the world? What if instead of making the same chicken meal you make every night you decided to go to the grocery store and buy everything and anything you have never ate in your life and tried making a dinner out of that?

My main argument for all of this is people (myself included) can sometimes be boring. So why don't you challenge yourself to just once colour outside of the lines and see what happens? Does the world fall apart?


Don't get stuck in life, be creative:




STORYTIME:

This post was inspired from a rather interesting situation I got to observe.

Imagine 7 in the morning standing in line at the grocery store in the middle of October. Yes that is right it is dark out, there is almost no one else in the store, and there is definitely not a whole lot of noise. When all of a sudden this beautiful voice belts out "Good Morning, you are here to check out and I am just the lady for you." This kind of singing certainly woke everyone up who was in the store and put a smile on everyones face.
Behind the cash one of the elderly ladies who was working said that she always sings her good mornings and sings her customers through the line because it is so early and that often she has been in the store for so many hours that she too needs to have a bit of fun.
It was amazing to see everyone in the store react so positively to this wonderful older lady who certainly was not afraid to let loose, be a little bit creative with her job, and inject a whole lot of fun for everyone around.
You know the old saying "sing like no one can hear you" well she did just that and she says that is what gets her through the late night shifts that last until the wee hours of the morning. This lady says she loves her job and she loves her job because the store manager allows her to be herself. Don't you wish more of us could be ourselves? Were allowed to be ourselves?

Tuesday, 4 October 2011

Re-launching and uncertainty

Well  the day has come and went and it felt really good. The Creativision website has officially been re-launched and finally I am happy with it.

It is amazing how picky one can be. A couple of weeks ago I decided that a relaunch was necessary. So I went to work fixing up the website. I asked a bunch of people what they would like on a coaching website and got some feedback. I worked for probably 3 weeks on the re-design and had really liked the process of having to re-write everything and coming up with new ideas and incorporating old ideas that had worked in the past. I finally had a product at the end of it all that was publish worthy. And that's what I did, I hit the publish key but never really told anyone, I just let it sit there. Then as I would go through my day in and out I noticed I was constantly looking at the site, if not in real life, in my head, and I came to realize I didn't like it! What? Why? I had worked so hard on the site re-design and as I was doing it I felt really good about. But then that nasty entrepreneurship, solo guy going at it alone little flaw crept in-I was having self-doubt. Was this the site I really wanted? Could it be better? Was I missing something?

I also asked myself the biggest question of all-why didn't I tell anyone about this re-launch? Why did I just change the site?

Well I thought about this lots and I think I knew all along that I was not happy with the site therefore I just did it and didn't "put it out there". I find it amazing what our minds can do to us. I spent that whole 2 weeks that the first re-design was up second guessing myself to the point where I got very little sleep. I think I was right in second guessing myself as I think this version of the website is much more attune to the type of site and work that I do.

I am fascinated though that without thinking about it or being strategic that before this launch I made a big hubbub about it. I was so excited to unveil this site to the world and to see how people would react.

Why was I so proud of this one and not the other? I'm not 100% sure about the answer but all I know is that I think there is something in an entrepreneur that just tells you-"this is right".

Every now and again you just find a groove and you believe. So this is the point of this post-even when everything feels wrong and you're not quite sure about anything hold onto trust and belief. Trust in your own capabilities and believe that you can pull through.

Although this was just a little website re-design it was a big reminder for me. Entrepreneurs are stubborn, me included. And sometimes even the guy who is giving advice to others needs to listen to his own head. I had to relax and just believe that eventually something good would come. The piece I wrote about self-doubt just a couple of weeks ago certainly played into my head on this one and I didn't even realize it (hmmm....maybe that's another reason why I wrote that post).


Have you ever found yourself second-guessing yourself on even the smallest of details? What have you second guessed yourself about? How did you come through it?