Hey everyone,
A new decade is upon us and in the coming year and the coming decades, I believe bold creativity is going to be the thing that we are most going to need in an ever-changing world. So, as we end this year and this decade, here are the 30 secrets I’ve learned about creativity and living a creative life.
- The creative ideas you have are worth taking the risk for and they are worth investing in.
- You will not have a body of work as a writer without first putting yourself out there, and at least initially, not doing very well at it.
- All you ever need to know is how to take the next step.
- If you are learning and growing constantly and putting yourself outside of your comfort zone, then by default, you will be picking up new skills and doing better work, thereby ensuring that your best will always be ahead of you.
- Set milestones that are big and substantial so that it really does feel like something to celebrate when you hit them.
- In every failure there is a lesson, but equally, it does not help us to not call it a failure. We have to acknowledge our failures as failures.
- The moment you’ve come up with an idea is not the time to tell people about it. The moment you’ve come up with an idea, that idea is the most vulnerable that it’s ever going to be.
- Your goals become more doable and the habits more likely to stick if you’re increasing your ability in small increments.
- It is really important for you to have a comfort zone, because that is your home, it is where you feel safe, and it is where you come back to when you venture outside of it (as you should!)
- Don’t let your emotions get in the way of taking action.
- If you want to live a creative life, you are constantly going to have to go to the place of discomfort. Being comfortable with that discomfort is the trick to growth as an artist.
- The trick to problem solving in creative projects is letting go.
- You are the sum of the people around you, especially your closest influences.
- If you want to have fun with your writing and creativity, you have to let go of the expectations around what the end result is supposed to be.
- When you choose positive thinking, you are more likely to take action, you are more likely to believe that your action has results, and you’re more likely to then follow-through when things difficult and hard, which they do.
- Act as though you were already successful.
- Sometimes sleeping on a problem is a good thing. But if you’re sleeping on it for half a year, then you’re not really sleeping on the problem, you’re just ignoring it.
- If you want to be an artist of your time, then you must open yourself up to the culture and the conversation that you live in.
- Comparison stands in direct opposition to creativity.
- In a creative life, not only do you fail often, but you fail publicly.
- If you don’t believe in what you stand for and what you’re putting out into the world, then your truth is easily swayed and makes for weak art.
- Creativity is not always about doing new things, but doing the same things differently.
- You have to be defiant in the face of criticism and fear.
- Creative projects fail more often than they succeed.
- If you’re using up all your creative energy to find ways of putting out the fires in your life, you’re left with little or no creative energy for the work that you want to do.
- For a lot of writers, the problem is getting started. And the reason you have trouble getting started is because you think that this word that you’re writing, this sentence that you’re writing, is going to constitute the final version.
- If you’re getting feedback too early in the process, at a time when your idea hasn’t solidified and you’re still figuring out what it’s going to be and what you want to say, you risk being asked questions that you’re unable to answer and therefore derailing or abandoning the entire thing. If you’re leaving the feedback for too late, you can spend years slogging through the whole thing only to find that there’s a small flaw in there that could easily have been fixed that you were blind to, but that now runs through the entire thing.
- Chaos is an integral part of creativity.
- When you talk passionately about something that you love to do and that is a big part of your life, people can’t help but get inspired by it.
- If you’re not enjoying what you’re doing in the day to day, then you’re living for a high that comes after months, sometimes years, and lasts but for a brief moment.
That’s it from me for this decade, everyone.
Let’s start 2020 boldly going where we’ve been afraid to creatively venture before.
I’ll see you there.
Cheers,
Natasha