Westside Toastmasters is located in Los Angeles and Santa Monica, California - Westside Toastmasters on Meetup

Get Advice From The Outside

Imagine that you're talking to Gandhi. What would his advice be?

How about Eminem?

What about Hillary Clinton?

General Patton?

The guy who used to be your best customer?

The woman you wish were your most loyal client?

List three more people of your choice from different walks of life. What advice do they have for you?

It's everybody's job to be creative and to participate in life. Refusing to take part in the creative process immediately closes a mental door and becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy: 'I never have any ideas.'

This is yet another enemy of innovation that is rooted in fear. After we've avoided risk for long enough, we become apathetic. The creative muscles atrophy from disuse, and we forget that we ever had them. We label ourselves as 'not creative,' and then our creativity dies.

We all have a mental composite of ourselves constructed of labels, some of them positive and some negative. Once we have decided that a label fits, we limit our behavior to conform to it. We live those labels as if they were facts (scientifically provable), rather than judgments that we might be able to shift.

So, it's not your job? Make it your job. Take the risk. Take responsibility for your own creative development. Take ownership of the creative things you've done in the past. Seize opportunities to flex your creative muscles in the future.

What it all boils down to is that you need to rip off that 'not an idea person' label. The only thing that makes that label true is your own belief in it.