12.05.05
Posted in Creativity, Biz Success Strategies at 10:41 pm by admin
You know that old saying — if you don’t know where you’re going, any path will get you there. That’s what happens if you don’t take the time to figure out what your goals are and WRITE them down. There’s power in writing things down. Trust me, I’m a writer. I KNOW.
Figuring out your goals is probably one of the most important and one of the most overlooked steps for creative professionals starting their business. Ideally you should put together a business plan. However, I have yet to meet a creative professional (including myself) who has one. (In fact, if you do have a business plan, please contact me. I’d love to chat with you about it.) Second best is getting your goals down on paper. Here are some things to include.
Your personal mission statement. What do you want to accomplish in your life? Not just as a creative professional, artist or writer, but as a person. Knowing your mission will make organizing your time much easier.
Your creative or artistic goals — both long-term and short-term. What do you want to accomplish in three months? Six months? This year? Five years from now?
Your financial goals — both long-term and short-term. Don’t forget to write down how much money you want to make.
Your plans for your business — both long-term and short-term. Break it down the same as your creative or artistic goals — three months, six months, one year and five years. Include a marketing plan as well. It doesn’t have to be elaborate, just figure out who your target market is, where your target market is (i.e., local, regional, specific cities or national), and how you’re going to reach your target market.
Action steps for each goal, including the marketing plan. Break each goal into manageable steps, number each step and add a completion date. Make a separate copy of this and put it where you can incorporate these action steps into your daily activities.
Don’t rush this process. In fact, you should make it a treat for yourself. Go on a retreat. Try and get away for at least a day if at all possible (a couple of days would be better yet). Go somewhere where you won’t be interrupted (and that includes the cell phone). Allow yourself some quiet time to really think. If it helps, do some meditating or journaling during this time.
Don’t worry about it being perfect either. This is a working document. Ideally you should review it every six months or a year and see where you are and what’s changed.
Now, when I first started my business five years ago, I hadn’t planned anything or written anything down.
This was a mistake.
Sure I had some vague notions in my head of where I wanted my business and my writing to go, but by not committing anything to paper, I didn’t end up there. My first three years of my business I was busy and making money, but I wasn’t getting anywhere near the vague notions dancing around in my head. Even more amazing, I couldn’t figure out why.
So two years ago, I started a regular practice of writing down my goals and plan (much like the above). I do it twice a year, and you wouldn’t believe the difference. Sure, my plans are far bigger than what I actually accomplish, and I’ve also found myself modifying and changing my action steps (the goals remain pretty constant, but how I attain those goals does change).
Best yet, I’m now seeing results. I’m accomplishing my goals.
Take the time to go through this process. The rewards are worth it.
Creativity Exercise — Goal setting and creativity
If every year you find yourself setting goals and never making ANY strides toward reaching them, perhaps it’s time to ask yourself why. Could it be they aren’t YOUR goals but someone else’s goals for you?
I don’t care what the goal is — stopping smoking, losing weight, starting an online business, writing that novel — there’s a reason it keeps climbing up, then falling off the goal list. And until you figure out WHY that goal is stuck in the never-never land of goal setting, you’ll never actually pull it into reality.
Is it because you don’t know where to start? Or is the project so big you’re afraid to start? Or you’re stuck somewhere in the middle and don’t know what to do next?
Or is it because you really don’t want to do it?
Okay, I’m probably dredging up all sorts of demons now, but truly, those demons need to be exorcised or they’re constantly going to be standing between you and your goal.
What I suggest is to take some quiet time and do a little soul searching. Journaling and meditation are both excellent ways of opening up a dialogue between you and your muse. Your muse is an excellent resource for you. If you ask, it will tell you which goals really matter and really don’t matter to you.
And, if it turns out that goal is something you don’t want to do? Then stop putting it on your goal list. I mean it. Quit making yourself feel like a failure by constantly sticking it on that list.
What if the goal is something like quitting smoking? Something you know you have to do because it’s hurting your health? Try this instead. Rather than making it your goal to quit smoking, make it your goal to figure out why you don’t want to quit. And what you can do to help yourself become committed to quitting.
Whatever you do, don’t make turn this exercise into a license to beat yourself up. Be nice to yourself. You’re doing this to help, not hurt, yourself.
Michele Pariza Wacek is the author of “Got Ideas? Unleash Your Creativity and Make More Money.” She offers two free e-zines that help subscribers combine their creativity with hard-hitting marketing and copywriting principles to become more successful at attracting new clients, selling products and services and boosting business. She can be reached at http://www.TheArtistSoul.com. Copyright 2005 Michele Pariza Wacek.
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Posted in Creativity at 10:39 pm by admin
Worried you may not be creative, or you may not be creative enough? Take this quiz and find out just how creative you are.
Get a piece of paper and number it one to seven. For each question, write down the corresponding letter of your answer.
1. When you come across a rose, you immediately:
A. Smell it.
B. Quote every rose poem you can remember.
C. Write your own poem.
D. Sketch the rose.
E. Step on the rose.
2. One of your dreams in life is to:
A. Write a novel.
B. Become a painter.
C. Travel the world.
D. Climb all the famous mountains.
E. Just once, get everything done on your to-do list
3. Your desk:
A. You have trouble finding as it’s buried under everything including the kitchen sink.
B. Resembles a natural disaster.
C. Is a bit of a mess, but you know where everything is.
D. Is basically neat — you use the stacking method
E. Is in perfect order — everything in its place.
4. The person you admire most is:
A. Einstein.
B. Walt Disney.
C. Your mother.
D. Jane Austin.
E. Anyone who can get everything crossed off their to-do list.
5. You consider yourself:
A. Extremely creative.
B. Creative.
C. Somewhat creative.
D. A little creative.
E. About as creative as a turnip (actually, come to think about it, turnips may be more creative then you are).
6. You get new ideas:
A. All the time.
B. Several times a week.
C. Several times a month.
D. Once or twice a month.
E. You dimly recall getting a new idea when Clinton was in office. Or maybe it was the first Bush.
7. You dream in:
A. Color.
B. Black and white.
C. Both black and white and color.
D. You can’t remember now.
E. Nothing. You don’t dream.
Scoring:
Throw out all your answers except the one for number five — “You consider yourself:”. If you answered:
A. Extremely creative — Then you’re extremely creative.
B. Creative — Then you’re creative.
C. Somewhat creative — then you’re somewhat creative.
D. A little creative — Then you’re a little creative.
E. About as creative as a turnip — then you’re about as creative as a turnip.
Okay, this was a bit of a trick. But it’s true. How creative you think you are corresponds with how creative you are.
There was a famous study done that illustrates this. A big company wanted to increase creativity in its employees. So it hired a group of consultants to come in. The consultants started by thoroughly testing all of the employees. They discovered the only difference between the employees who were creative and who weren’t creative was how creative they perceived themselves.
Even more telling was what happened to the group that wasn’t creative. The consultants focused on helping them nurture their creativity, and at the end those employees were actually more creative than the ones who had initially considered themselves more creative.
And that means you too can become more creative. In fact, how creative you become is entirely in your own hands.
Creativity Exercise — Assumptions
Ready to become more creative? Here’s an exercise.
Write down all the reasons why you’re not creative. Go on. Write them all down. Every negative reason you can think of. Things like:
I’ve never been creative in my life.
I haven’t had a new idea in over a year.
I don’t have time to be creative.
Now reverse those negative assumptions and make them positive. Like so:
I am a creative person.
I have lots of new ideas all of time.
I don’t need time to be creative because I already am creative.
Do this every day and see what happens. This is a great way to start getting rid of those inner demons that keep all of us from realizing our true potential.
Michele Pariza Wacek is the author of “Got Ideas? Unleash Your Creativity and Make More Money.” She offers two free e-zines that help subscribers combine their creativity with hard-hitting marketing and copywriting principles to become more successful at attracting new clients, selling products and services and boosting business. She can be reached at http://www.TheArtistSoul.com. Copyright 2005 Michele Pariza Wacek.
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Posted in Creativity, Biz Success Strategies at 10:37 pm by admin
One definition of creativity states that creative people look at the same thing everyone else does, yet they see something no one else does.
But even creative people (which includes all of you, of course) can run into roadblocks every now and then. Sometimes it’s not possible to see something different. Sometimes you’ve just been staring at a problem for so long it’s now impossible to look at it in any other way.
So what do you do in these situations?
Why not try changing your perspective?
Consider this: A friend of mind who does needlepoint has a design that’s mostly black. Rather than simply stitching the design on white canvas with black thread, she’s using a black canvas and is stitching the negative aspects of the design instead of the positive.
She changed the way she viewed the problem. And now she has a really cool-looking needlepoint design that’s different from most other ones out there.
Or what about this: An art teacher has her students turn a photograph or object upside down and paint what they see — not a picture but an arrangement of shapes.
By changing your perspective, you’re changing what you see. And when you change what you see, you’re more likely to create something completely different.
But — I can hear you all saying right now — that’s art. That won’t help me with my business problem.
Okay, so here’s another story from the book “Thinkertoys” by Michael Michalko. Back in the 1950s, experts proclaimed the ocean freighter industry was dying. Costs were skyrocketing and delivery times kept getting pushed back later and later.
Executives at the shipping companies kept focusing on ways to cut costs while ships were sailing. They developed ships that went faster and needed fewer crew members to run.
It didn’t work. Costs continued to spiral out of control and it still took too long to get the merchandise shipped.
Then one day, a consultant changed the perspective. Rather than ask the question: ” In what ways might we make ships more economical while at sea?” executives asked: “In what ways can we reduce costs?”
Ta-da!
Ships are big money-sucking machines when they aren’t at sea actually doing their job — shipping merchandise. And when aren’t they working? When they’re sitting in port being loaded and unloaded.
So, the industry came up with way to preload merchandise on land. Now a ship comes in, the container carrying the cargo rolls off, a new container already loaded with cargo rolls on, and the ship heads back to sea.
That one innovation saved an entire industry. And it happened because shipping executives changed the way they viewed their problem.
Creativity Exercise — Change your perspective
So, how can you change your perspective and solve your business/marketing problems?
Try what the shipping industry did and change the question.
Instead of looking at a narrow part of the problem (”In what ways can we make ships more economical while at sea?”) broaden the question (”In what ways can we reduce costs in general?”)
Here’s another example.
Maybe your question is “how can I land more clients?” What if you started broadening the question like so:
How can I land more clients?
How can I grow my business?
How can I make more money from my business?
How can I make more money period?
How can I be happier in my life? (I know, I know, money doesn’t buy happiness. But it’s certainly nice to have.)
Maybe one of those questions is a better place to look for a solution. Because maybe one of those questions is the “real” question you want to solve, but since you never took a step back to look at the big picture, you’ve never discovered the right question to ask.
And if you don’t ask the right question, your muse will never give you an answer that actually solves your problem.
Michele Pariza Wacek is the author of “Got Ideas? Unleash Your Creativity and Make More Money.” She offers two free e-zines that help subscribers combine their creativity with hard-hitting marketing and copywriting principles to become more successful at attracting new clients, selling products and services and boosting business. She can be reached at http://www.TheArtistSoul.com. Copyright 2005 Michele Pariza Wacek.
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Posted in Creativity at 10:35 pm by admin
I have a friend who has struggled with her creativity for a long time. She’s extremely uncomfortable thinking of herself as “creative.” We’ve been working together on it, and making progress. One of the tools that’s really helped her has been journaling.
From Julia Cameron’s The Artist Way to Natalie Goldberg’s Writing Down the Bones to Linda Trichter Metcalf, Ph.D. and Tobin Simon, Ph.D.’s Writing the Mind Alive to numerous other publications, journaling has enjoyed a long history of creative-nurturing along with a host of other benefits.
For my purposes, I’m defining journaling as any sort of loose, longhand writing. Whatever thoughts come into your head you put them down on paper. There’s no structure, no form, nor concern about spelling or grammar or even legibility.
Even if writing isn’t your dream, incorporating a regular program of journaling into your life is a wonderful way to jump-start your creativity and cultivate a regular flow of new ideas. Here are three reasons why.
1. Helps you get rid of the junk in your head. We all have it. Junk thoughts. Everything from self-defeating comments (”Oh, I’ll never be good at that.” or “Who told you that you could be a writer?”) to the “worry of the moment” to neurosis of every type to the ever-growing, constant to-do lists.
Who can be creative with all that noise going on? For that matter, who could even hear a creative thought over all that racket?
Journaling is a way to quiet the mind. Writing all that junk down transfers it from your head to the paper. Suddenly, you find you can actually think rather than simply react.
The best part is this quiet lasts long after the journaling is done for the day. And if you journal frequently, then the effect is cumulative.
When I finish journaling, I find that I feel peaceful. Calm. Able to focus. The junk is gone, leaving space to be creative.
2. Gives you a chance to try new ideas. What better way to see if a new idea will work than to try it out on paper? You can write out the pros and cons, describe a scenario, play “what if” games (”What if my new business was successful?” “What if I tried that new advertising campaign?” “What if I contacted the editor at Money Magazine?”). And the best part is it’s all in a private little notebook that no one will ever have to see.
Try writing down your hopes, dreams, goals, visions. Play around with them. You may find as you journal about them, a strategy for making them come true suddenly presents itself, right there in the pages of your notebook.
3. Helps you build a bridge to your muse. This one really only kicks in after you’ve sufficiently done number one (at least, this is the way it works for me). It seems only after I’ve gotten most of the junk out of my head that the muse sometimes slips out to play a bit.
How do you know the muse came to visit you? When that brilliant idea flashes in your head. It may not happen while you’re journaling, but instead while you’re showering, walking, driving or something else. This is the muse talking to you.
It’s important to remember muses have quiet voices. They can easily be drowned out by the incessant bickering of the other noisy chatter going on in your head. Once you can get those other voices to shut up, you can start to listen for the muse.
Don’t worry if this doesn’t happen right away. There have been weeks and even months when I write nothing but junk down. But then, one day, that great idea appears on the paper or in my head as I’m walking my dogs.
And when that happens, I know all the time I spent journaling about nothing has paid off.
Creativity Exercises — Journal more ideas
I would love it if you made a pact with yourself to journal regularly for a month. If that’s too much of a commitment for you, try it as a creativity exercise.
Write down your challenge at the top of a piece of paper. Maybe it’s ways to increase business or promote your products more or a new PR campaign. Now just start writing about it.
Don’t think, just write. Fill a few pages of musing about that particular challenge. Don’t type it either — write longhand. If you wander away from it, try nudging yourself back.
Write for at least 20 minutes. If no answer presents itself in that time, don’t get too hung up about it. Try it again the next day or a few days in a row. Sometimes it just takes awhile to jar things loose. And remember, great ideas have a tendency to pop up in the most unexpected places, not just when you’re doing something “creative.”
Michele Pariza Wacek is the author of “Got Ideas? Unleash Your Creativity and Make More Money.” She offers two free e-zines that help subscribers combine their creativity with hard-hitting marketing and copywriting principles to become more successful at attracting new clients, selling products and services and boosting business. She can be reached at http://www.TheArtistSoul.com. Copyright 2005 Michele Pariza Wacek.
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Posted in Creativity at 10:34 pm by admin
Here’s a quick quiz:
1) When I see a see a sunrise, I’m moved to:
A. Compose a poem.
B. Try and capture the beauty with my paints and brush.
C. Stumble drunkenly into bed — boy that party was a lot of fun.
D. Cover my face with my pillow and go back to sleep. Who in their right mind gets up early enough to look at sunrises?
2) At work, I’m the person my coworkers go to when they need someone to:
A. Think up a new theme for the office party (especially if they want it to be a bit wild and off the wall).
B. Get people excited for the party.
C. Organize the party.
D. Clean up after the party.
3) In school, I was considered one of the:
A. Brains.
B. Jocks.
C. Nerds.
D. Nothing. I was kicked out my sophomore year.
Now take this test again and write down what you think a creative person would choose as his or her answer.
Scoring: Well, there’s no real scoring here. The point is to get you thinking about creativity and stereotypes.
In another creativity article I wrote, “Quiz: Are Your Creative?”, I pointed out that the biggest difference between creative people and those who aren’t is creative people believe they’re creative and uncreative people believe they aren’t.
But, it’s one thing to say it and something completely different to live it.
I believe one of the things that prevent people from fully realizing their creative potential is the idea of stereotypes. They think they cannot be creative because they don’t look, act, live, etc., a certain way. And, unfortunately, that belief can become so powerful it truly does cripple their creativity.
Let’s take a closer look at these three stereotypes.
1) When I see a sunrise…
You can still be a creative person and not be moved to paint a sunrise or write a poem about it. Everyone is different and everyone draws their creativity from different things. Me, you couldn’t catch me anywhere near a sunrise without an IV drip of coffee in my arm. And even if that did happen, I’d be lucky if I could reach the creativity level of a turnip.
The point is every muse is different and every muse dances to a different drum (or maybe it’s not even a drum, maybe it’s a French horn.) Sunrises make you yawn? So what? Find what gets your muse dancing and go with it.
2) At work…
You don’t have to act like a Bohemian to be creative. In fact, that image of a black-clad, beret-wearing, long-cigarette-smoking Artiste has been the bane of many would-be artists. I can’t tell you how many people I’ve run into who don’t have time to BE creative because they’re too busy trying to LOOK creative.
Creativity comes in many shapes and sizes. It also dresses in a variety of outfits — from t-shirts and paint-splatted jeans to suits and ties to cocktail dresses to, yes, the all-black look.
Don’t worry about how your creativity relates to how you look or act. There’s no correlation between the two.
3) In school…
Again, there are no studies linking creativity to getting bad grades or being a social misfit. Creativity is just as likely to have been class president as it was to have been caught smoking in the bathroom. Or kicked out of school altogether. (Now, whether those schoolyard memories are fodder for creative pursuits is a topic for another day.)
Basically it comes down to this — creativity doesn’t fit into any neat box. Whether that box may be unconventional or conservative. Whether it’s covered with clay and furiously spinning pots or impeccably dressed and churning out million-dollar deals. Whether it’s dressed in black and discussing Satre in a coffee shop or pushing a stroller in small-town America.
Creativity is just that. Creative. It doesn’t care what package it comes in.
It only cares that you use it.
Creativity Exercise — Take Away The Power of Stereotypes
Go back to the quiz. Look at the answers you chose for yourself. (If one of my answers didn’t fit — which is entirely possible — turn your answer into fill-in-the-blank.) Look at the answer you instinctively felt a creative person would have selected. I’m going after instinct here — don’t worry about what you read in the article. Or go back and see how you answered before you read the article.
Do you have two different answers? Describe what makes the answers different and why.
Do you describe yourself in completely opposite terms as you would someone creative? Why is that? Do some journaling on the answer.
Now try describing yourself again and this time add the statement “and that makes me creative” or “yet I still am creative” at the end. For instance: “I hate sunrises and that makes me creative. I was a model student yet still I am creative.” Write these out ten times each day until you begin to believe it.
(Source: Freeing Your Creativity: A Writer’s Guide by Marshall Cook. Marshall can be reached at mcook@dcs.wisc.edu, and on the web at www.dcs.wisc.edu/lsa/writing)
Michele Pariza Wacek is the author of “Got Ideas? Unleash Your Creativity and Make More Money.” She offers two free e-zines that help subscribers combine their creativity with hard-hitting marketing and copywriting principles to become more successful at attracting new clients, selling products and services and boosting business. She can be reached at http://www.TheArtistSoul.com. Copyright 2005 Michele Pariza Wacek.
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Posted in Creativity at 10:32 pm by admin
A lot of great ideas happen when two or more other ideas collide to form something completely new.
Think of this like those old chemistry movies we used to watch in school. You had all of those atoms floating around and when two collided — bam! A chemical reaction. Maybe something new was created. Maybe something exploded. Or maybe it all fizzled out and nothing happened.
Well, a similar reaction is going on inside your brain or muse. Except instead of atoms floating around they’re pieces of information or other ideas. As they drift about, they occasionally bump into each other. When that happens, you may get a new, third idea. Or a big explosion. Or absolutely nothing at all.
Now, if you have lots of atoms, or information and ideas, you’re going to get lots of reactions. Some will fail. Some will be so-so. And some will be hot — so hot, so full of energy, they’ll have the power to change the trajectory of a business. Or even a life.
The problem occurs when you don’t have lots of random information and ideas. Fewer atoms mean fewer reactions. On top of that, you still have to weed through the invariable duds. So the odds of landing that one amazing idea drop considerably.
But not to worry — there’s good news. You can increase your odds of getting those great ideas. Better yet, it’s fairly easy and painless. Below are three ways to get started.
1. Read, read and read some more. I know, I know, I can hear the groans already. “But I already have too much to read. How can I fit more reading in?” Never fear, there are ways to do this. (Remember I did say this was painless.)
The key is to keep it wide and shallow. What does that mean? Well, read lots and lots of different things, but keep it general. Read about sheep farming, finances, yoga, cooking, traveling, dog training, etc. But keep it general — don’t read deeply. You can even skim if that’s all you have time for.
Start by subscribing to a couple of different magazines and e-zines. General interest magazines are really good for this — Walt Disney used to read Reader’s Digest. Scatter them around the house — by the bed, the couch, even the bathroom. I’d put a few in your car as well for those times when you have to wait for an appointment.
When you have a few moments, flip through them. Skim a few paragraphs. See what catches your eye.
You can also buy or rent audio books and CDs and listen while you exercise, drive, do the dishes, etc.
Whatever you do, DON’T read publications related to your industry. That’s for another time. This is brain-feeding time, not keeping up in your profession time.
2. Travel the world. Traveling has so many fabulous benefits for your creative soul I could write an article just about that, but for now I’ll limit my comments to brain food.
When you travel, you open yourself up to lots of new and exciting experiences. New sights, new sounds, new smells, new tastes, new textures. And they all have the ability to form a reaction with something else.
Don’t have time to hop on a plane to India? Take a day trip to a town you’ve never visited. Or, if you can only spare a few hours, seek out a park you’ve never been to or a museum you’ve been meaning to see or even that new cute little shop that just opened. You can always find somewhere new to visit no matter how long you’ve lived in the same city. And if you’re truly desperate, try walking around your neighborhood on the opposite side of the street in the opposite direction you normally walk. (It can help jolt you out of rut.)
3. Open yourself up to new things. Of all of these, this one is probably the scariest. But, it also has the potential to be the most powerful.
Take the time to try new things. Meet people outside your normal circle of friends. Attend associations, nonprofits, hobby groups outside of the ones you usually go to. Listen to speakers on topics you know nothing about. Take a class at a community college about something outside your scope of knowledge. Or even have dinner at an ethnic restaurant you’ve never tried.
Now I’m not just talking about “typical” creative things, like taking an art class or learning to belly dance. If you’re a creative professional, take a class on doing your own taxes or budgeting your finances or repairing your car. (Oooh, I bet all you creative folk felt a chill when I mentioned that.) The point is to really stretch yourself past your comfort zone. Make yourself uncomfortable. It’s not only a great way to grow, but it’s a fabulous way to keep your muse fat and happy.
And that helps keep the ideas flowing.
Creativity Exercises — Prepare the banquet
Over the next month, I want you do to at least one tactic from each of the above three techniques.
1. Read something you know nothing about. Even if you only spend five minutes skimming an article about quilting when the last time you tried to sew a button on a shirt you stabbed yourself with the needle and got blood all over the material.
2. Travel somewhere you’ve never been before. Even if it’s an antique shop and the most antique piece of furniture in your house is a bookshelf your parents bought from Sears when you were a little kid.
3. Stretch yourself in a different and potentially scary way. Even if it’s attending one of those Home Depot gardening workshops despite every plant you’ve tried to grow didn’t and if your thumb was any blacker it would fall off.
You know how you work better when you’re not hungry, see how well your muse starts churning out ideas after a good meal.
Michele Pariza Wacek is the author of “Got Ideas? Unleash Your Creativity and Make More Money.” She offers two free e-zines that help subscribers combine their creativity with hard-hitting marketing and copywriting principles to become more successful at attracting new clients, selling products and services and boosting business. She can be reached at http://www.TheArtistSoul.com. Copyright 2005 Michele Pariza Wacek.
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