by Voyage | Oct 18, 2009 | Uncategorized
Who wouldn’t want to be known as a vital creative force in the workplace and in life? Creativity is a unique and core component of our species, some believe it’s the very reason for our species. And yet so many of us shy away from it. Why? Because the road to true creativity is fraught with real fear, and so we opt out in one of two ways: We project creative excellence onto others – the artists, the visionaries, the people who can’t get up in the morning and hold a day job, and so on. The failing here is seeing creativity as a gift bestowed on a select few rather than a muscle to be worked out by all. We lower the bar – i.e. we praise tired, mediocre work as creative genius. Here, creativity is demystified, readily available for the claiming, even if we fail to understand exactly what it really is. The “sin” here is reversed: Seeing creativity as pure muscle and ignoring the subtleties that arise from a natural given talent. How then should we tap true creativity in a world where it is regularly forsaken or faked? Here are seven steps that will help cultivate and channel creativity, handpicked from across the expansive ethers of the Internets… 1. Have the COURAGE to try new things and risk failure. Every big breakthrough starts as a harebrained idea. This doesn’t mean you should constantly go off the deep end, just that you should balance your portfolio of solutions with an investment in the new and untried. Over time, the risk is usually worth the reward. 2....
