1024. 5 Ways To Be More Creative. (Even If You Think You're Not)

All right, five ways to become more creative. And before we go any further, creativity is a skill. It is a learned skill. And if you can learn it, then that means that you can have it. Okay. You're not born creative. Well, you probably were, but you're not born creative. You learn how to create how to be creative. Creativity is a muscle. And I hear a lot of people that just say, man, I'm just not creative. You're probably one of them. And creativity is something that you do, it's not something that you are. What you do becomes a part of what you become. Creativity is so important because creativity feeds the imagination. Imagination, you're never going to do anything big in this life, in the world, if you don't use your imagination. Imagination is it's going to help you in some of the toughest times of your life. It's going to help you in some of the most beautiful times in your life. Imagination is something that is needed. And I don't think we talk enough about it. And I want to I want to, it's it's the it's the reservoir from the result of the creativity. And that's why I want to give you five ways to be more creative and and exercise this thing. Albert Einstein said, imagination is more important than knowledge. Bro, I've heard that saying a thousand times. And then sometimes you just get to a season in life, and I read that this morning. I'm like, oh my God. And think back to a few episodes ago, I don't know which one it was. We did talk about imagination, and it's using Napoleon Hill's definition of imagination. Imagination, I love his definition. It's the workshop of the mind where you use old ideas. Okay, this is where you get experience. Old ideas and established facts. Established facts means you have firsthand knowledge. You're actually doing things. Established facts, you mix those two together, and you're you reuse them in new combinations for new uses. And so the creativity is what feeds the imagination, and the imagination is the door opener. I just want to go back to Einstein real quick. Imagination is more important than knowledge. The reason why sometimes you get stuck in life or you're just not where you want to be is because you think you meet you need more knowledge. That's what society has built us into, like this big knowledge project. No, that's the problem. The knowledge, you always think that you need a little bit more education, you need another degree, you need another license, you need to read just one more book, you need to listen to one more podcast, I need to watch just one more video. And it's the one and then scenario. But then you get to the end of that one and then you're like, ah, just one more. I see people like this with education. They get their degree and then they get back in school and do, well, I I need I need this too. And then they think they need this too. You don't need more knowledge, you have enough in the tank to get started. Sometimes you're either procrastinating, well, really, you're scared. Let's just call it what it is. You may not label it as that, you may have a different narrative to it, but at the end of the day, you're just scared to get out there and try something new. I get it. It's scary, especially when you get older. I tell my daughter that all the time. Like, when you're young, man, take these risks, get out there and try things. Because guess what? You can always reset, you can always come back home and reset. So do it while the the stakes are low. Imagination is proof that you trust yourself. Really, because when it comes to knowledge, you're always reaching forward for the next thing, the next license, the next book, the next uh class, the next whatever. With imagination is retrieval, you're retrieving what you've already done and what you're currently doing. And that is a huge form of trusting yourself. And oftentimes we don't use our imagination because we don't trust ourselves. We don't trust ourselves because we're not using our creativity. See how all this feeds hand in hand? You may have to re-listen to this because I'm not trying to get all deep with you, but it's it's important, man. Creativity, it's why it's one of the five C's that I always talk about. Um, creativity is is one of them because it can help you in any kind of situation. And you already have it, you're just not using it. So this morning I was reading out of Jeff Good Gittimer's book, The Little Red Book of Selling. Remember, we're all selling our way through life. So before you, I'm not in sales, yes, you are. You're we're all selling our way through life. And so I just use this as the inspiration and um to talk about ways that you can be more creative. Um, so let's let's go through them real quick. Five ways. Number one, get in the habit of observing. Observation is key, but it's not judging. Many times we see something and we immediately put our stamp of opinion on that. And this is when you when you get to be more creative, you've got to observe and not judge. And so you've got to stay curious. And in these situations, whatever the result is, good or bad, there's other ideas and other uses for what you're going through. What you what whatever it is, so you go through something bad, it's not a final outcome. If you if you have something good, it's not a final outcome. Okay, so stop labeling it. You get a result and you think it's just the death sentence, or you think that you've arrived. No. So what you've what you've got to constantly do is you get to the result, you review it, and then you renew it. That's the three R's. Okay. So to get in the habit of observing result, review it, okay, what worked, what didn't work, and then renew it. Use the use the usable parts on that. Number two, be an idea collector. You get these through conversations, through books, through videos, and you capture these things. I can't read my own handwriting, so I do write in the mornings, but all throughout the day, I'll get these sparks of creativity and ideas, and I'll record them in my voice memo app. On my iPhone, what's good about that is it actually transcribes it for me. So when I open up my voice memo, I capture the idea, I I talk a little bit about it, and then in the mornings I can unpack it. And I can look at the transcript too. I can copy and paste and save that in notes somewhere else if I want to. So what's good about that? Like use what works for you. And so this is why random reading is important, is because in the mornings your mind gets primed. You read 10 to 15 minutes, you write about, which is what I'm sharing with you right now. You write about what you read. I like to teach it so that way I learn it deeper, which is why I reference to my notes. And this is what sparks that creativity. Okay, gets my imagination flowing. So when I go throughout the day, my mind is open and receptive to that. Number three, create a creative environment. Stop looking at cops, stop looking at cheaters, stop looking at does cheaters still come on? Stop looking at crime stories. They're not feeding your creativity very well unless you plan on offing somebody or running from the cops or something. But other than that, this ain't the podcast for you if that's what you're doing. But you've got to create that environment. And that environment is again through books, through podcasts, through relationships, um, through videos. Like I stay in that environment. And but my sometimes, man, I'm so I remember I've been doing this since 2017. I started this when I was at rock bottom and I've just stumbled into it. And so I've been doing this for going on 10 years. So sometimes, man, I'm so sensitive and receptive to it that it sometimes I can get like two minutes into a video or something and it sparks an idea. I capture that in my in my notes. Um, and then I unpack it later. I don't I don't stop the process. But sometimes, man, I just have to turn off the whole thing and go to something else because it's just like I'm just I'm I'm just too sensitive to that. And I get idea after idea. I have more ideas than I actually have time. Um, and so a lot of content that I create for the dealership I work at, I'm big on education. And I like to teach people how to buy cars, I like to teach people how to things to think about and things to consider. And so I'm always looking and reading and watching stuff, and I'll read I'll I'll be watching other creators and they spark an idea, and I'm like, I'm gonna go with that, capture it, and then so that's how uh I get a lot of things uh done. So you've got to uh create that environment. Number four, study it. Study inventors, pioneers, even pioneers in your industry. Um, one person that keeps coming to mind, so it must be a signal that I need to go back and start listening to him again, is Chris Gillibo. I read his book years ago, um, and it's about a side hustle. And the reason why I bring this up is because he talks about different side hustles, but I think that's the greatest form of creativity because they're looking at obvious things and then they're improving it. Like they're taking what's obvious and then make it simpler, make it uh make it more usable, make it quicker, make it cheaper, whatever. And I'm fascinated by stuff like that. And you're like, you ever watch like an infomercial? You're like, oh, why didn't I think of that? I could have been a gabillionaire. But study inventors, I think those are fascinating people. You can see if you zoom in on the on the screen behind me, like I have uh I have Einstein right up there. I think that's the the one with the brown label behind me if you're watching this on video. And so these inventors, these pioneers, I love reading about restaurateurs, like people that made like one of my favorite books is Grinding It Out, Ray Crocks story. The uh Colonel Sanders book, uh Finger Looking Good, is just an incredible story. Uh, and these guys were like at the brink of disaster. A lot of these guys were just straight up losers, and they just they kept at it, they kept at it, and then they they came up with something. So, anyway, like you got to study those kind of people, man, because they actually they they spark that creativity in your mind and they feed into the channel. It's like another channel into your imagination. Imagine, pun intended, you look at your imagination like a big a big lake. And so you have all these what would you call them? Tributaries, canals, whatever you want to call them, that feed into these, to this imagination. That's how you have to look at things in life, and so then that imagination just gets bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger. And good news is you got plenty of room. You're never gonna run out of space or anything like that, man. You just you just keep feeding it. Now, the last one is important because you can sit here and you can be an observer, you can be a collector, you can create the environment, and you can study it. But if you ain't doing it, you ain't gonna have nothing. Okay, you've got to do the thing. So you can study all these inventors. None of those inventors shaped the world or shaped their world or became super successful because they're just telling you about it. No, they did it. And so this is where you have to have firsthand knowledge. Remember, that's part of imagination. Established facts is that experience, it's that firsthand knowledge. You got to take risk, man. And let me tell you something: people look at risk as unsafe. Absolutely not. Playing it safe is risk. Risk is safe because the safety is it because it creates opportunities, it gives you other options, it gives you more creativity, it gives you other things to go. Sometimes, man, you got to go the wrong way to go to get to the right way. And so you learn the wrong way, but that improves your efficiencies in the future. It improves the way that you do things. And so, and then sometimes you get these shelved experiences where, okay, that it's not usable now, but what looks like a wrong way right now, you're like, man, I wasted all this time. 10 years from now, it's like the best thing ever. You're like, oh my God, I'm glad I took the wrong turn a decade ago because now I can use it today. You just never know. So you just got to keep playing the game. So you got to get more creative, man. The creativity is what feeds the imagination. The imagination is what's going to be the door opener for you. All right. I'll see you back here next time. Keep it simple, keep it moving, never settle, stay tough. Peace.