Tonight I am giving a speech on creativity at my Toastmasters club. It’s called Create a Better Future. I’m sure I am preaching to the choir here but I have come to the conclusion that there are three things every person must believe in order to create a better future. I thought I’d share them here.
1. You must believe you are creative. I know this sounds like a no brainer, I also know I spend a large portion of every workshop I do trying to convince people they are creative and giving them permission to be creative. The truth is while there is much creativity in the arts and that the arts can help to build our creativity, creativity is bigger than the arts. Any time you solve a problem by unconventional means, you’re being creative. Any time you run out of money before you run out of month, you’re probably going to be creative. You are creative, believe it.
2. You must believe creativity is needed. I hear so many people on the verge of giving up and I have been on the verge of that myself in certain situations. But what if we took giving up off the table? What if you had to, in the words of Andy Andrews, persist without exception? It’s as if I were to ask you, “I know you’ve tried everything, I know you’ve exhausted every possibility, but if you had to do one more thing to solve your problem, what would it be?” And when you would tell me, I would say, “Well then go do that.” We don’t need to quit, we need an idea, a new way of thinking. We need to get creative.
3. You need to believe you can create a better future. When we look at all the problems of our world, it can be quite daunting, so don’t do that. How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. Look at the one thing that drives you crazy or fires your passions or holds you back and attack it. Throw every ounce of your creativity at it. Come up with ideas, all that you can think of no matter how strange. Albert Einstein once said, “If at first an idea is not absurd, then there is no hope for it.” It’s true, every great invention started out as somebody’s crazy idea. So start wide and narrow it down to what you can do with what you have and start there. No one can do everything but everyone can so something. So get creative.
Einstein also said “We can’t solve problems by using the same level of thinking we used when we created them.” One of the first steps in changing your future is changing your thinking. When conventional wisdom isn’t working, don’t start wringing your hands. Get creative. Look for the creative solution and make it happen and in some small way you’ll create a better future, and if enough people do it, we’ll create a better world.
What do you think? What one problem in your life or in our world would you like to solve and what is one action step you can take toward solving it?
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