WHY BOTHER BEING CREATIVE?
The human race has developed through creativity. Creativity in its broadest sense is simply doing something new and different that creates some benefit. Without it we would all still be scavenging for food, with no tools to make clothes or to kill animals for meat. Those facilities central to our lives such as air travel, the internet and credit cards would be just distant dreams. The most significant advances in health care, education and agriculture are as a result of creativity. Creativity makes us bigger, it moves us on.
The same can be said for each of us on an individual basis. Without creativity we tend to gravitate towards the norms of society. We go to school, get jobs, have 2.4 kids, eat pre-prepared meals, buy cars, dream of retirement, start every year with a resolution that will make the next one somehow different, somehow better.
Creativity gives us choice, gives us hope that in some way we can be special, we can be ourselves, we can create our own futures. It gives us the chance to be better at our jobs, create more significant relationships, to be more efficient or effective with our time. The chance to achieve greatness in all aspects of our lives so that before we take our last breath we can say, ‘Look at what I achieved, I created and not just consumed.’
And it’s a whole pile of fun. Fun often gets a bad press in business. For some strange reason there is a widely held belief that being professional means being serious. Nothing could be further from the truth. By being playful you encourage self-expression and your creative sphincter opens up thus giving you access to your own creative genius. Some believe fun is frivolous and a luxury you cannot afford. I believe in business, you cannot afford not to have fun.
If the answer to any of these questions is ‘yes’ then clearly…
‘I’M FREE TO DO WHAT I WANT – ANY OLD TIME’
Monsieur Jagger got it right when he penned this tune, as did the Soup Dragons when they sang it so finely. We are free to do what we want, any old time. Only we make the patterns of our lives, nobody else. Every day, we are the ones who make choices. And it is those choices that determine who we are and what we do. It’s those choices that create our lives.
As human beings our opportunities are virtually endless. Never before has the world offered such a wide variety of experience. We can now really live our lives how we want – not how we are told to. It is now possible to be the world’s leading software engineer, yet base yourself on a small island in Polynesia. You can write your first piece of music and publish it to a potential audience of hundreds of millions, all from the comfort of your home. You can decide to live on a macrobiotic diet, learn Mandarin and never miss an episode of your favourite soap.
We are becoming global. The world is getting smaller and life will never be the same again! More than ever, freedom is all around us.
Freedom, however, is meaningless unless we realize that we have it, and then use it to get the very best out of our lives. And to use our freedom, we need to be aware that we have choices in our lives and also have the ability to choose constructively.
Freedom without choice would be like owning the most beautiful sailing boat, with teak decks and sleek lines, able to take you clean around the world – but without you being able to sail her. After a while, the boat would lose its appeal; it would stop looking so beautiful, and soon it would be forgotten. An opportunity wasted, as life carried on in its usual predictable direction.
We all have freedom, but it is up to us to create our own choices, our opportunities. If we don’t, all too soon life will have passed us by. Just think of all the fun we may have missed!
Making a choice and exploiting an opportunity means writing change into your life. Life can present us with so many reasons to change. There can be an issue or a problem in your life; something that you obviously need to solve. A friend of mine spent so much time away from home on business that there were warning signs in his marriage. It was apparent something needed to change. At other times you may just feel it’s time to do something new. You feel the need for change but are not sure what that change should be or how to go about it. Maybe it feels that your life is just not as good as it could be. Sometimes the choices to be made are painful, sometimes exciting; sometimes confusing and sometimes clear as day.
Regardless of the choices to be made, they represent opportunities. Now, I don’t mean that in a pretentious self-help guru style, but in a pragmatic way – if you have to change something it might as well be to your benefit. So from now on in this book, all issues, problems, potential pickles and poohs, may be regarded as positive challenges and opportunities for life-enhancing change. To view them as any less is to disregard the freedom that surrounds us all.
Opportunities can come to us in two ways:
1. We can create them for ourselves and make them happen.
2. They come to us from the outside world. But in order for this to happen successfully, first we need to be clear about where we are in our lives and what we want so that when the opportunities are presented to us, we recognize them and take advantage of them.
Either route involves creativity, thinking differently and seeing the world in new ways. And that is what this book is about.
IF YOU KICK-START YOU CREATIVITY YOU’LL OPEN YOURSELF UP TO INSPIRING POSSIBILITIES
IF YOU RECOGNIZE YOUR INSPIRING POSSIBILITIES YOU’LL UNLOCK YOUR FREEDOM TO CHOOSE AN EXTRAORDINARY LIFE
YOU ARE A CREATING MACHINE
You have some pretty amazing capabilities! As a human being you are naturally creative. And although our creative instincts tend to become suppressed, we have all the resources to change that around.