Having three young children I get to see first hand the daily creative ideas they come up with. From those “art projects” to the monolithic Lego creations they spend all day creating. We are all born with creative ability. Somewhere between childhood and becoming an adult that creativity is suppressed. Your ability to be creative will allow you to come up with entrepreneurial ideas and answers that others can’t. Reigniting your creativity from within is a key to your success as an entrepreneur. So how do you do that?
Forget Failure – The biggest obstacle to creative ideas is your fear of failure. Sounds simple but its true. I’m sure you’ve said it, “I’m not creative”, “I cant think of anything”, you need to forget that attitude and allow yourself to open up to failure. When you sit down to create an idea go into it with ZERO inhibition.
Release Restrictions - As you are preparing to come up with your ideas it is important that you not set restrictions on yourself. Time, money, your age or situation, are not barriers to your creative ideas. Allow yourself to think completely free.
Begin Brainstorming - Just start throwing out ideas in your mind and write them down. Our first reaction to any creative idea is to assess immediately whether it will work. You need to forget that thinking for now. There will be plenty of time later to evaluate each idea and determine the best feasible one. Let the ideas flow freely. No matter how silly the ideas, whether you think the ideas will work or not, just start the process by writing them down.
Evaluate Everything – Now is the time where you can evaluate all the ideas you have come up with. Look at each, one at a time and understand whats good about that idea, whats bad about that idea and which one has the most potential to accomplish what you want. Don’t necessarily look at your creative ideas as “which one can I accomplish”, but more from the standpoint of which one would fit the problem the best.
Finally Focus - Now is the time where you focus on the one idea you feel has the best opportunity of succeeding. In this stage you start to analyze the logistics or path that you will need to take to accomplish the idea. You need to forget all the other creative ideas you’ve generated, especially the second guessing that will take place. Once you’ve locked in on an idea, then focus all of your efforts on implementing that idea.
Creativity is something each of us are born with. You need to foster that from within and continue to develop the skill.