In 60 seconds, how many REALLY good social media captions can you write to go with a selfie you took right this second … oh, and the goal of your selfie and caption is to get 1000 new followers by the end of the day.
Go ahead – take a selfie – then set a timer for 60 seconds and see just how many REALLY good captions you can come up with.
How many did you get? One? 10? 100? None?
Some people appear to be caption geniuses and have a way of stringing together just the right words to get the reaction they are looking for. But if you didn’t write a stream of possibilities was it that I only gave you 60 seconds OR that I said your captions had to be REALLY good OR the goal of 1000 followers by day’s end wasn’t important OR that you don’t consider yourself to be creative?
How can some people be creative on a moment’s notice and others struggle for hours?
Aha! ~ To live a creative life, we must lose our fear of being wrong.
Creativity is the process of clearing that space in your mind, getting completely rid of the box you are supposed to think outside of and simply allowing a new order to take shape. Being creative means allowing yourself to be vulnerable knowing there is no such thing as perfection because creativity is the art of thought and your thoughts are perfect because they are uniquely yours.
You see creativity is not necessarily developing something new, though it could be. Creativity happens when you ditch the comfort zone and allow yourself to be playful, abstract, opposite, or just broader with your thoughts. Some captions, solutions, or approaches may work better than others, but none are ever wrong. Wrong would be not daring to express your uniqueness in the first place.
People who are creative simply throw out ideas until something lights up. And while creative people often have a process – consciously or unconsciously – they know that creativity takes whatever time it is going to take. (Like these Aha!s. Sometimes they spill out in an hour, and other times three days)
If you want to exercise your creative muscles more often, Amantha Imber, the Author of The Innovation Formula, suggests you try these tips.
1) Crank up the volume of whatever you’re listening to 70 decibels for greater distraction
2) Squeeze something in your left hand to activate brain cells connected to intuition
3) Work up a sweat with 30 minutes of aerobic activity to crank up thinking
….. and if by the end of the day you still haven’t nailed it
4) Sleep on it. In the morning you will have stronger cognitive resources and fresh eyes.
What would you allow yourself to create if you knew it was impossible to fail?
Tuesday at noon in our Trailblazer let’s dare to co-create together. Never a better time to take A Human Approach.
Succeed Deliberately!
Jae M. Rang, MAS
Strategist, Speaker, Author, Mom
