Do you have an untapped creative gift? I mean, something you do exceptionally well, but don’t use? And whenever you dismiss your gift, do you feel an uneasy hunger? Because if you have an unused creative talent, then I hope fate unscrambles the puzzle so you see your gift in full raw potential.
I’ve discovered a dream. I scored top marks in university math, but I left the field, believing I didn’t love math enough to die for it. But it haunts me: a gift I no longer nurture. I just couldn’t see the fit?the potential.
That is, until I faced a vision. I got a job interview that directed me to Makerspace: an inventor’s dream. Calgary’s Makerspace opens its facility to inventors, hobbyists, and business-owners wanting to build products and prototypes. Makerspace has a room for robotics, a room for laser cutting, a room for 3D printing?a room for most any manufacturer’s aim.
Now, I can tap into all my passions and talents through a single vision: building stuff to sell. You can too. We each possess a life-funnel that mixes all our skills, talents, and passions into a single vision. To discover that vision, get skills and seek new possibilities.
Sometimes opportunities fast-track our dreams. Other times, our dreams take painstaking work. Regardless, fill your funnel with dreams and discover your vision?through creativity today.
To that end, here are some tips on kickstarting your creativity:
In bold below, Liz Dean outlines creativity tricks and tips in her book How to be Creative: Rediscover your Creativity and Live the Life you Truly Want. I muse in what follows.
Learn to bake while recovering from cancer. Similarly, why not learn to bake while recovering from exams? Build a robot. Learn how to edit videos. Make 3D animations. Each creative endeavor builds on the last, forming mountains of possibilities to etch your life’s purpose upon.
And learning a single creative task can take your life into multiple, fulfilling directions. Each new direction acts as input for your funnel’s final vision. That final vision gets clearer the more skills you add. That vision also morphs into a bigger and better version with each new skill you add.
Creativity comes in three forms, according to Professor Margaret Boden (as cited in Dean):
(1) combining familiar things into something novel,
(2) taking existing stuff and changing things like color, shape, or theme, and
(3) coming up with original thought inspired by new environments, a redesign of your house, etcetera.
So, if You’re amazing at, say, accounting, but hate it, don’t fret; funnel it. Combine your accounting talent with your other passions to brew new goals.
And if you can’t find the dream, change your surroundings. Go to a museum in a new city for one weekend every month for a year. Exchange bucket lists with a group of strangers, and live out someone else’s goals for a year. That would inspire creativity?and tolerance for ambiguity.
You won’t find your life’s purpose on the couch. Tweak your world to discover bigger, clearer possibilities.
At the beginning of each day, do one of the following: dance, doodle, conjure happy thoughts, feel gratitude, laugh?play.
Doodle a dream each morning. Yes, make a lofty goal and doodle yourself doing it.
I wrote a list of tasks I would love to achieve if I faced no barriers of age, money, time, or talent. At the top of my list I wrote: “produce a blockbuster film” and “host an event at the Saddledome” and “start and operate a college.” I have over twenty of these lofty goals.
I then broke each goal into sub-steps. Although the list seems like little-more-than wallpaper, at least I’ve dreamt up passions and stuffed them in the funnel. I keep in mind that one tweak can fulfill a dream. Or, in the case of anxiety, one tiny shift in your thoughts can cure you. Or, in my boyfriend’s words, “One kind act can change a life forever.”
Every little bit doesn’t just add up. More accurately, each slight change opens a new universe.
So, list your wildest dreams. Every morning, take one item from your list and get creative. Doodle yourself fulfilling that dream. Or conjure happy thoughts of basking in success. Or dance the thrill of overcoming the so-called impossible. Fill your funnel with the best fuel?and ride the Indie.
When we can create without deadlines or pressure, our happiness rises.
Learn skills that bring you joy. Learn, say, design skills, knowing that whatever you create, you can turn into 3D products, built by your own hands. Learn what causes time to suspend. Create. Fail. Tweak. Repeat and realize.
Why learn new skills? To better see your best life’s purpose. A paradox? I call it a creative spark!
