Working out and developing muscles takes hard work, pain and often hurts miserably. The same is true for our creative muscles. Creativity is a muscle that the more we use, the better it gets. But, much like pizza for breakfast before hitting the gym, there are some things that we need to find ways of avoiding to stay our most creative selves:

• Stress – If we need to be creative, we need to find some stress reducers. Exercise, going a walk, stepping back from a project, saying prayers…whatever we have to do to change our focus from our situation and reduce the stress.
• Lack of sleep – Creativity is the first thing to go when we are tired. We’re not able to process normally and have to force our attention to focus on something it just doesn’t have the energy to do. Manage your energy and monitor your sleep so that you can be your most creative. Studies have proven that less than 7 hours of sleep for 3 straight nights causes our bodies to react as if we’re intoxicated.
• Avoiding being intentional – We must intentionally refill our creativity. When we pour out non-stop, we have to refill or the tank will be empty. In our busy lives, we have to intentionally create time to be creative if it’s not happening naturally.
• Focusing on too many ideas – We should always be documenting ideas, but our most important ideas need all the focus necessary to complete them. Scott Belsky said it best when he said “the greatest enemy to our ideas are newer ideas.”

What are some of the things that cause you to personally break down creatively?

Have you ever noticed that our best creative work often is inspired when we break our normal patterns or routines? In his book DRIVE, Danile Pink explains a new program that a lot of organizations have started to adopt. This program – called Fed-Ex Days – and its concept were developed by the team that runs Atlassian, an Australian programming firm. A Fed-Ex day is a day where employees work on a project of their choice with only a handful of rules. First, whatever project they choose to work on cannot be a part of their normal job. Secondly, employees only have 24 hours to work on their project; hence the name Fed-Ex day. Finally, each employee must present their creation to the rest of the team the following day.

More and more companies are embracing these non-traditional concepts to engage employees and allow them opportunities to think, process, and develop their personal creativity. Good creative leaders understand that personal creative development – the development of better art in general – creates better, more creative, and more engaged employees.

What are some of the ways you or your organization create space for employees to be creative?

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Innovation & Creativity can be very painful processes. If there was not a pain or a cost to being creative, everyone would do it…so, the cost has to be substantial enough to find those who are committed to excelling at their daily art. Max McKeown is an author and innovator. In his new book, Truth About Innovation, McKeown talks about the 4 pains of a new idea.

• People Pain – Most people do not like change. Change bothers people and causes friction. When most people are confronted with friction, they choose to avoid it and attempt to find a path with least resistance. Creativity & Innovation require us to embrace friction and do the hard work to bring our ideas to life. This is especially true in our churches – where we have so many sacred cows in our organizations. People will FIGHT for their sacred cows. And the truth is: a lot of times, new ideas fail. When they do, we lose equity with the people in our organizations. We have to make sure we are strategic as to when we cause friction and pain on the people within our organizations so we have the privilege of the pressure to succeed.
• Necessary Pain – McKeown has been quoted as saying “Innovation is a gamble”. When we are attempting to further creativity and innovation in our organizations, we are forced to face the gamble of pain. McKeown went on to explain how a lot of times the biggest pain is found in hard work. “Innovators put the effort in to achieve greatness and are willing go beyond existing knowledge at the risk of failure and humiliation.” It takes a hustler’s mentality to be willing to do the work to make our ideas succeed.
• Industry Pain – This could be the most painful for our churches and organizations. Industry pain is the unwillingness to continually develop, embrace, and adapt to technology. Everyday technology makes the playing field more even for creative people. What we can create now on a laptop and a phone used to take a crew, film, and tens of thousands of dollars. Creativity used to exist for the rich and elite, but now, kids in the hood – kids with amazing creativity – get to express it because creativity is attainable. Industry pain is the fear of growth and development and the refusal to embrace where the world is going…fast.
• Unnecessary Pain – We need to know when enough is enough. As creative people, our tendency is to continually push the boundaries and ignore the limits. Sometime,s the cost is not worth the result. We have to be in tune with our surroundings, our teammates, and our instincts to know when we have reached this threshold and the right time to say ‘enough is enough.’ Don’t allow this to become an excuse. Cast vision passionately and be willing to fight for your ideas. Just know which ideas are worth dying for and which can be refined to see another day.

As you create in your church or organization, pay attention to your pains. Know them and be willing to confront them. Your pain can make you better.

The scariest game a creative person can play is the game of comparisons.

It’s especially scary on Sundays. We work hard to prepare for Sunday. We put in a lot of hours to create our best work. Then, thanks to twitter, FB, Instagram or whatever social stream we are rocking, we sit back and have a real time view of what all of our “friends” have created.

And so it begins.

We are inundated by voices that tell us we are not good enough. Voices that say our messages are not strong enough. Voices that say our sermons or worship sets won’t move people closer to God. These voices make us doubt our content, our effort, and our execution. These voices have no right to exist in our heads. These voices are not healthy, and they are surely not God’s voice. These voices leave us feeling empty, devalued, scared, and unsatisfied with our work. We begin to wonder why we didn’t have “that idea.” These voices cause us to doubt our value and the position God has placed us in. Why didn’t we use that song in our worship set? What if we would’ve created that lighting scene on our stage? These voices fill our head with the wrong type of “what if questions.”

The truth is this: you are not your “friends” and your “friends” are not you. Stop comparing. My friend Jon Acuff talks about how we often compare our beginning to someone else’s middle. Comparing Cross Point at 8 years old to Willow Creek at 20+ years old is just not fair. Still, we do it every day. Especially on Sundays.

So today, instead of comparing yourself, believe in yourself and your team. You are creating the right experiences for your audience. You don’t have to be that other guy, or that cool church, or that super creative chick…it’s not just okay for you to be you…it’s necessary! Instead of comparing yourself to others on twitter, cheer them on. Deep down – they are just as scared and are probably comparing themselves as well.

How do you fight to not compare yourself?

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It has been said that the difference between creativity and imagination is action. Action is more than talking about our creativity or idea. Action is putting our creativity into motion. We have to build solid habits that help us move our creative ideas from the imaginary to the activated. What are some of the ways we can do this?

• Create something everyday. / This keeps us prepared and in a creative space. It helps us avoid getting lazy.
• Share our ideas with people who will hold us accountable to them. / There is a pressure that comes when we are accountable for our great ideas. A lot of time, fear keeps us from sharing these ideas, but we have to share them in order to “get them out”. An idea that is in process has the potential to change lives. An idea in our head is equivalent to no idea at all.
• Don’t be afraid to fail. / Learning to conquer our fear helps us to engage our creativity. We have to understand that creativity and love have a lot in common. One never experiences love in its fullness until we take the chance to be hurt. The same goes with creativity. The hurt of failing is not dull, but the regret of not trying will haunt us forever.
• Prepare a plan./ Make a plan that is FULL. Define expectations. Delegate. Create action items in the plan and attach dates to those plans. Leave no stone unturned in the process. Define the goal and make sure every action is leading to that goal. Planning is the not-so secret power for creative people. Great creative professionals embrace planning. Also, planning and preparing allows us to finish on time – which actually provides us the flexibility to adjust. When we can adjust, we are able to be our MOST creative.
• Be concerned with execution. / Ideas are not worth a dollar without execution. No one is going to care about YOUR thing as much as YOU do…and if at some point they do, you need to move on. Artists have to understand and embrace the business of their art: be concerned enough to – at a minimum – build a team that can help them manage the execution and be willing to not ignore the importance of “GETTING THINGS DONE.”
• Stay focused on the goal. / The biggest temptation for an artist or creative person is to allow the next idea to steal our focus. Document the next idea, but stay on task and don’t lose focus of the potential we have to complete what we are working on today. Tomorrow can be for the next thing…today is about what is in front of us.
• Control what we can control. / Stop worrying and buying excuses. We have areas which we can control. Maximize those spaces. The areas for which we do not have control, we can not waste time or energy worrying about. We will navigate around those when the time is right. Today, control what you can control.

Photo Props

Part of the resistance that we face when we sit down to try and create comes from the voices that tell us all the reasons why we can’t create. The pressure to “be creative” often derails us from creating. We have to confront these voices to disqualify them. A few of the voices that often come up in conversation:

• My creation is not good enough // If you are creating it, you have decided it is necessary and needed. This is just an excuse to keep us from achieving our goal.
• I am not good enough // You have been empowered to create. You are a designer original in your own right. You are a person and you are not what you do or what you create.  You have spent time and sweat learning what you know. We need you to create. What you bring is different from everyone else and is necessary for us to all achieve our goals.
• I have to be first // You don’t have to be the first person to “do” something you just have to be the first person to do it your way. Creativity is the ultimate “file sharing platform”. What makes creativity unique is when we apply our touch, look, and feel to it – when we make it OURS!
• I don’t know where to start // Start with the work. Creativity takes energy and work. It’s not magical,  it’s birthed in sweat and execution. What is your story? Find that and you find the beginning.
• Is it finished? // EDIT it. What we say in 8 words we should be able to say in 5 – and what we say in 5 words we should be able to say in 3.
• Why will this connect? // It will connect because you have good instincts. Listen to them. Trust them. Your creative instinct is necessary because if you don’t like what you are creating and it doesn’t connect with you…it won’t connect with anyone else.
• I don’t have enough time // We waste so much time worrying about the time we don’t have that we use the time we do have worrying. Dig in. Get to work.
• I don’t have enough resources // No one does. There could always be more. Limitations create opportunities for us to be more creative. When we lack resources, we are forced to do the hard work in creativity and not just buy our creative concepts.

So in losing my blog for the past almost 2 weeks I have found a way to share old content since it may or may not ever actually reappear on this site. The creator in me is cool with just starting with all new stuff.

Here is a shared public file. Hope it helps.

OLD STUFF LIVES HERE

It is a lot of content to disappear but like my friend Jon says in this post, LONGEVITY IS THE NEW SEXY. So we just start over and keep going.

Photo Props:

We are going to upload 45 old posts today.

New content starts today/tonight!

Thanks for hanging in.

Lets build a community together that strives to inspire creativity and help the church regain its position as culture shaping.