What do you want to create or change in your life?
Some of my clients want to experience financial success. Others want to make their mark on the world or to untether themselves from a job so they can spend their time doing what has meaning for them. Some people love their jobs but need to alleviate some of the stressors related to it.
Whatever your big goal is, you need to become clear on the outcome and then identify the first three steps you need to take today, this week, or this month to set it in motion.
Declaring what the goal is has a powerful effect on your commitment to it. If you continue to affirm your goal, it’s easier to avoid distractions and explore what the true goal really is. Is it really to acquire a certain amount of money or is it to enjoy the life that having that amount of money would afford you?
In my book Core Creativity I write about the mind-sets and habits of highly creative people. Here are some are some of their strategies to help you manifest your goals.
#1. Be Solutions Oriented as You Create a Vision for Yourself
For many people, the default is to focus on problems. A solution orientation means
focusing on what you would like to create and experience, crafting a vision that can inspire you even when challenges and obstacles threaten to derail your goal.
#2. Identify Winning Formulas You Can Use
Identify winning formulas you can use: blueprints for success you or someone else have benefitted from. A winning formula is a structure for playing to win rather than playing to not lose. You want to be focused on the positive—winning in a competitive situation, creating something fresh, and opening the door to new possibilities.
#3. Repurpose a Winning Formula, Breaking the Rules and Combining Ideas
When you’re thinking of reusing a winning formula of your own or someone else’s, take
the time to identify any elements that would need to be updated or altered given to what you’re trying to do. Are there any aspects that need to change or adjusted?
#4. See Failures and Setbacks as Offering Opportunities
If you’re willing to detach from your winning formula and your ego’s ideas about who
you are and what you’re not capable of, you might find that failures, setbacks, and mistakes can be viewed as “mis-takes”. Like a director telling an actor “Let’s do another take,” you can do another “take.” You might not like the choices that you’ll have as options, but at least you’ll have options.
#5. Take a Risk Rather Than Stay in Your Lane
Creative artists break the rules all the time. One of those rules is “stay in your lane.” Great musicians often venture into film, painting, and sculpting, and even inventing devices—we wouldn’t have multitrack recording or electric guitars if it weren’t for guitarist Les Paul tinkering with electronics.
#6. Persevere and Be Patient
Often, ideas come as mere snippets. Academy Award-winning director’s Steven
Soderbergh’s film sex, lies, and videotape began with brief notes for a potential screenplay that he wrote in a notebook. When I swim in the ocean, I often get downloads of ideas. As soon as I get out of the water, even before I towel off, I record them. An idea that seems too brief and lacking detail can be built upon and might become a full-fledged creative work if you don’t give up on it too early.
#7. Acknowledge Your Successes to Maintain Your Motivation
When you’ve completed a project or even just a challenging part of it, be present with the feeling of satisfaction and pride. Journal about your creative successes, analyzing all that you did right. And talk with supportive creative people who will acknowledge your creativity and take it seriously.
#8. Get Organized in a Way That Works for You
Respect your habits and rhythms as you organize your time and possessions. You might have to do some research to figure out what organizing systems work for you.
#9. Establish Routines and Rituals, Respecting Your Natural Rhythms
Simple systems that don’t require a lot of brain power to use along with the habit of checking your calendar first thing every morning and straightening up your workspace as an end-of-the-day ritual can help you avoid feeling scattered and being less productive than you could be.
#10. Setting Goals and Staying on Track
If you don’t have a ritual for beginning your day, you might start it by visualizing
yourself accomplishing what you are planning to do and then visualize yourself arriving at the completion, maybe imagining yourself focusing on your three or four most difficult and important tasks. Do you know what they are each day? Identifying them might help you stay on course.
These strategies and habits of highly creative people are portals to help you enter what I call open mind so that you can access your core creativity and use it for whatever you would like to create or change in your life.
Excerpt from Dr. Ronald Alexander’s book Core Creativity: The Mindful Way to Unlock Your Creative Self