The Creative Executive excels at these two things. These two things are MUSTs.
The Creative Executive excels at open mindedness and continuous learning.
Nothing will help your creativity expansion like open-mindedness, curiosity and a dedication to lifelong learning and reading. Nothing. Conversely, nothing will close you off from creativity and sparking new ideas faster than having a closed mind, completely not interested in new ideas. They’re gone!
You must have an open mind. 💯 It is not an option if you desire to be creative. It must be free and open to all ideas and attached to none. It must be constantly seeking, testing and tweaking. Constantly seeking and tweaking, borrowing from other great, open minds. It must be open to capture great ideas when they hit. And then you must have the creative confidence to document & express them to others.
The Creative Executive believes that everything is teachable.
The creative executive believes that everything is teachable. Yes, everything. Therefore, creating & earning an open mind is possible for those who wish to transform theirs from a closed one. Closed minds are spawned largely from how we were raised by our parents. How parochial they were / are. What you were allowed to do and not do. Where you went to school and what the school valued. (It is rather ironic when schools teach you “only one way.” There are always multiple ways to learn to solve problems. There is never just one. This is the core of creativity.) Closed minds are the result of other people, pseudo-authority figures who never really know, telling you what to think and what to believe and how to feel. No bueno. No good. Enough with the closed minds already! Let’s open them up!
Engage in possibility thinking. Ask ‘What If…?’
We have to open ourselves up to the possibility of what might be. We have to open up and allow imagination to take hold! We have to realize that our current circumstances are not our destiny. Not even close. We need to shift our beliefs toward possibility, toward creating a compelling future, to what will happen if we put in the disciplined, creative work. We have to continuously ask “What if…?” (Super Human and Navy SEAL, David Goggins always asks, “What if…?” Questions to power himself through. Highly recommend his book for creative inspiration.)
The creative discipline to execute on ideas.
Creativity is far more doing and less talking. Creativity is executing on ideas. It is action. It is especially spontaneous action. This is why the camera in your pocket — the one on your smartphone — is the best one out there because it is always with you to capture that sunrise, to capture that funny incident about to happen, to capture sunlight hitting your French Bulldog just so.
You get to spontaneously document the lesson you just learned and share it with others immediately! You get to spontaneously document the creative way you use the new web app and share that with colleagues. You get to spontaneously document major life events and share them with family and friends. All this is DOING, not sitting around talking about it and saying, “Only if…”. No. It is, “What if we…?” Or, “How about we do this right now!? What’s the worst that can happen!?” Creatives ask / state that all the time: “What’s the worst that can happen?!” Take those creative chances and let’s GO! Get outside and GO!
The Creative Executive possesses the Craft mentality.
This may sound like a stretch for those ‘educated’ and for those who graduated from college. Especially for the top-down, corporate style, this-is-the-way-things-are-done-around-here, Excel-spreadsheets-solve-all-problems, MBA types.
Creatives are Craft People. We are makers. We are designers. We work with our hands at what we do. We swing tools. We saw. We use tools to create other tools. We use brushes. We cover and protect surrounding areas. We mix things up. We roll things out. We squeegee. We hammer away at the project on the crafting table until we get more toward what we want. We begin with the piece of wood and whittle away at everything that isn’t the table that we see inside. What do all these actions have in common? *Craft*. *A dedication to making things*.
This is far more tradespeople than this is Harvard MBA. I state this somewhat harshly because the MBA will squeeze the creativity right out of you if you allow it. And most of us allow it because it is unconscious. If you wish to identify and align with creativity, then you have to acknowledge that you are also a craft person, a person dedicated to making things. (Yes, I’ll make allowances for the /crafty/ person. Of course, I will. Craft and crafty go hand-in-hand.) The point is you can be really creative, and just be a guy from Nebraska. (Yes, even one who went to the University of Nebraska.)
The Creative Executive Makes Things.
What do crafts people do? We make things. Not only make things, but make things every day. Execute every day. Practice every day. Work with our hands, crafting things every day. Hammering away on the project every day. Welding metals every day. What do all of these actions have in common? Getting after it every day! Some of us, 7 days a week! There’s no need to take a day off when you love what you do. When you’re dedicated to it, when you’re driven by it, and you love it, there is no need for vacation days because every day is a vacation day. We are driven to create! We don’t sit around, pontificating about what might be — We GO! Now! Now is not the time for pondering and pontificating. Now is the time to GO!
###
