Creativity and Courage

Creativity and courage?

Creativity and courage are wrapped together so tightly it is easy to forget the importance of courage. Doing the creative thing rather than the safe, rejecting the status quo and trying the new takes courage.?

Anxiety closes your thinking when you need it to be at its?most open.?

What does it take in terms of courage to be creative and then use the thinking??

• It takes Self-confidence to suggest the new?
• It takes Self-resilience to shrug off the eight rejected ideas to reach the ninth and tenth gems.?
• It takes Self-belief in the power of your thinking to know you can out-think any problem and keep going until you do.?
• It takes Self-reliance in your ability to join dots together in ways others may struggle??
• It takes being your own person to be vulnerable to accept and move on from creative misfires and uncertainty??
• It takes courage to remain open-minded enough to flex and flow with dynamic and unpredictable sequences of concepts as they develop.?
• It takes courage to be prepared to leap into the unknown or new?
• Inspirational thinking by nature is radical and takes courage to firstly, allow yourself to think it and then actually secondly, say it.?

All the above attributes are in everyone, which is why we are all creative at heart....but also why so many people struggle to be creative.

All too often as we progress from childhood into education, and then our working lives it gets lost along the way. We need to be brave and unlearn some thinking that block?our creative side from coming out. This begs the question -??

How do you become more courageous to release the free, easy thinking and access your creative side within??

1 - Accept and Acknowledge your fears, accept them rather than avoid them. Everyone has fears, everyone has ways of dealing with them or not. The first step is to acknowledge they exist and that alone gets you halfway to dealing with them.?

2 - Face things. Once acknowledged you next need to do something. Confront your barriers and ask yourself why they exist and why you allow them to affect your thinking and actions. Worrying about rejection, failure, ridicule or all the ‘what-ifs’ that may never happen requires reframing into opportunities for growth and learning. Now that's hard, but if you....?

3 - Use positive self-talk. Tell yourself I will, I can, I’m going to… and then give it a go face things and succeed. Remember negative thoughts that try and protect you from your own creativity, are not your friends. Reframing and positivity are states of mind, if you struggle with them, start with faking it until you think it for real. Having a mentor can really help here.?

4 – Make it a habit. Doing something courageous or even just a little uncomfortable does give you a buzz. Seek it out, not avoid it. Continually Plan to do things that are a challenge so they eventually become your business as usual. Repetition and practice practice, practice getting to a new more courageous norm.??

5 – Practice mindfulness. It’s easier to be courageous if you are calm, centred and focused. There is loads of advice about this, start taking it. No one ever needs less of it.?

6 - Get a mentor or Coach. Talk things through and share your concerns, fears and barriers. Sometimes all it takes is talking about it to realise you are overthinking and allowing self-constructed barriers to stop your progress. Others will have much more clarity use it to your advantage and believe what you are told.?

7 – Errors/mistakes. Learn from your mistakes and embrace fails as much as wins. Every time you get a setback ask How can I bounce back higher? Life is about choices, chose to learn and grow – be curious as to why things happened and look beyond the obvious to the root causes. Hard to do alone but much easier with a mentor/coach!?

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Working on all these areas will change the way people perceive you, change your perception of yourself and will help creativity flourish in all aspects of your life. ?

Creativity might not solve all the problems or challenges in your life, but it will make them look radically different and give you more options?to address them.?