Creativity, ideas & inspiration. Do we put them on a pedestal?

3 min. read.

One of my personal highlights of last week was - once again - modeling on stage for the Italian artist and photographer Sara Lando at this year's Gulf Photo Plus event. Besides being a fantastic photographer, Sara also teaches photography; and last Wednesday she held a thought-provoking speech called "Art and Vision: How to Make Ideas Happen" before putting her suggestions into practice with a live demo.

Being known for her "weird" ideas, creativity and experimental techniques, Sara questioned our excuses resp. wrong beliefs when it comes to the topic sources of ideas, inspiration and creativity. I decided to sum up the mayor "lessons reaffirmed" and apply them to everyday life and business today.

1.Creativity is NOT an inborn "talent"

Creativity is a skill like any other skill (e.g. public speaking, singing, project management), which you can train and learn. So stop telling yourself and the world that you aren't a creative person. In "reality" this is just a lame excuse for not getting into action. I know - it's comfortable to play the victim who wasn't "blessed" with this "talent". But this attitude doesn't help. It actually annoys your social environment.

If you really WANT to be (more) creative, you'll get there. No artist, author, marketing guru, storyteller - or whomever we perceive as creative - ever fell from heaven with the fully developed capability of his skill. He reached a level of excellence through continuous work. Hm. But how to start?

2.Stop waiting for miracles. Inspiration is everywhere.

The beginning of creativity is associated with a great idea. And a great idea comes from... inspiration - this is at least the usual answer. And where do you get inspiration from? Well, this is where we - again - turn into passive victims of our circumstances. Why? - Because we create a romantic idea about inspiration itself. Inspiration for us is that moment when the world mystically slows down and a graceful, tall woman with beautiful, blonde, wavy hair enters the scene. She is accompanied by a magnificent unicorn... bla bla bla. The bottom line is: If we don't get exactly that scenario, we claim that we're uninspired. Which then means we cannot get great ideas, which also means we cannot be creative. Erm... yeah. My ears start to bleed when I hear imbecility like that!

Inspiration is everywhere if you open your eyes towards it. Simply leave your smart phone in your pocket when walking through the streets of your city or in nature next time. This might help. A LOT.

3.The creative process takes TIME

Another wrong belief claims that creativity occurs or happens immediately, without any preparation. Forget it! Creativity is a process or project. Sure, brainstorming in a group of like-minded people can be very fruitful. But this only creates a basic foundation for a big idea.

The best strategy for a new creative process is setting up a (rough) plan. Get clear on your goal (at least the direction), set a deadline, define your resources, plan in some buffer, then start researching and working. Take notes, picture of things that somehow fit into your project (it's ok to not always understand why you liked that source of inspiration), talk to and observe people, have a look what your "competitors" and role models do, improvise, experiment, make mistakes, find alternatives, start with a low budget version, spend time outside, observe nature and animals etc. With the time your rough idea will get more and more specific till it makes click one day and everything you did, collected and wrote down will make sense.

Three last bonus hints

Firstly, sleep enough. Lack of sleep kills creativity. And some ideas literally come up when you are sleeping and your subconscious "digests" what you worked on. Secondly, stay away from people and things that drag you down. This is also toxic for the creative process. Thirdly, if you work on a topic you are passionate about, the whole process will be less "painful" and will flow easier.

Good luck!