“Don’t aim for success if you want it; just do what you love and believe in, and it will come naturally.”
David Frost

The secret to creative success is simple: there is no secret.

Success in any creative endeavor is more about cooking a great meal than it is about magic.

Magicians set up a trick, then – POOF – the result is done and in front of us. It’s secretive and usually deceptive. Magic, once uncovered, loses its mystery.

Chef’s take their time. They seek the best ingredients. They look for the right mixtures and blends. They understand a great meal is built around more than just one thing. It takes a commitment, a lot of small tasks, a lot of small additions, a few subtractions, the right temperature, and a lot of intentionality to cook a great meal.

The same is true with our best ideas – they require commitment. We have to know where we are going and what we are cooking. We have to find the best ingredients. The best temperature. Be willing to add and subtract things we love in order to create the perfect blend. Then, we have to execute it with precision, intentionality, and make our best ideas delicious.

Success is not built around one thing. It takes prayer, hard work, passion, hustle, talent, effort, calling, and a lot of intentionality.

What are some of the most important ingredients you have found for your success?

“The greatest discovery of all time is that a person can change his future by merely changing his attitude.” – Oprah Winfrey

The truth is this:
We’re all busy.
We all get tired.
Life is not fair.
Things rarely go as planned.
Stuff does not always work out.

But, the truth is also this: we get to focus on how we approach all situations. It’s hard to find inspiration with our vision filled with negativity, doubt, fear, and worry – especially when we need to be our creative best.

We have a choice in how we approach our lives and our work.

As the creative force in our organizations, it’s up to us to set the tone. If we want our creativity to grow, we have to find the positive in all our situations. And the truth is that there is usually positivity waiting to be uncovered.

So our new truth is this:
We get to tell the greatest story ever told.
We have the honor to do our job or our ministry.
We can get refreshed and refilled by reconnecting to our vision.
While life is not fair, we get to do what we do, and impact the lives of other people.
Things don’t always go as planned, but we have been gifted with creativity that helps us adapt, adjust, and make things work.
When everything fails…we get to come back tomorrow and do it again.

How are you approaching your work, life, and creativity?

We all need to be inspired. Sometimes Monday is the least inspiring day of the week. We hope this helps get your juices going.

What are some things that are inspiring you this week?

Remember when we first started? Every day we did something for the first time. Innovation was not a goal, it was a necessity…and it worked. It worked really well. In fact, it worked so well we found some things we got REALLY good at doing and we shifted from innovating to executing. During that shift, we started to get scared of innovation because innovation and new ideas might change the methods we found that worked. We traded new ideas and innovation for successful execution. It’s an honest situation, but it gets scary. When we stop innovating and ONLY execute, we stop growing creatively.

It’s a fight every single day to avoid this very tempting trap. Never sacrifice great for good. So, how do we make sure we continue to innovate? How do we get unstuck if we have slipped into “execution only” mode?

1. Identify the innovators on our teams. Who are the people who have not gotten sucked into the norm? Lean on them. Usually, they are going to be new to our organization. They tend to be young and not know what is or isn’t acceptable. Some of them may be attendees or volunteers. They have a different lens and filter. It’s key to LISTEN more than we TALK to these people. Empower them to use their voice…it does not mean you’re a bad leader, it actually means you’re a smart leader.

2. Ask Questions About Everything. Questions inspire creativity. Statements cement fear. Why can’t we change this? Why would we not want to try something different. How can we make this better. How will people respond if we adjust this thing?

3. Embrace Teams. If we have ideas we know will work but we don’t have the bandwidth to pull them off, create a team to work on the idea. Pull people from other areas and task them to work together. It will help your creative culture and help get things done. An hour of intentional work will move the ball. Further, people working on projects that are outside of their area will be more creative through the process. This is a great space for testing before an idea gets too costly or too far down the line if it’s not viable.

4. Focus on passion, not job description. If someone is passionate about something, create space for them to work on that idea or project. Just because it doesn’t fit in their job description doesn’t mean they can’t excel at these endeavors. Some of our best projects or ideas will come from passion, not paper.

5. Study Others. As connected as we all are, we can learn from one another better now than at any time in our history. Use twitter, Facebook, internet campuses, podcasts, blogs, and email to find out the HOW and the WHY of people we admire. Technology allows us to be closer than ever. Take advantage of the tools, but don’t stop studying. Always be ready to share what we are learning with our teams. This will also help you identify some unique new ideas that may not be happening in your community or in the world, for that matter.

6. Be Intentional With Creativity. Don’t assume ideas are coming. Change the canvas often. Be intentional with creating space for ideas to be developed. Invest in creativity and culture. It does not have to cost a lot to break the norms of the day. Getting out of the routine will help you get back to everyday innovation.

7. Put Execution Into Vision. I know it sounds like an odd idea to break out of execution mode by executing, but our new ideas will never change our norm if don’t put them into action. As we develop the new things God has for us, we have to be sure they fit into our vision. If they don’t, we are just trying to be cool or different for the sake of being cool or different. That is never successful. Never waiver for the vision, but never let grass grow under our feet by not putting ideas into action.

How do you fight the temptation of executing more than you innovate?

Photo Props:

Our best and most creative ideas are created from the things that occupy our fascination. When we allow ourselves to follow our fascinations, we can quickly accelerate the amount of good ideas we have, problems we can solve, and inspiration that we can harness. But often, we don’t. We allow the pace of our days, our responsibility, even stuff we love to keep us from the things that fascinate us. We chock our fascinations up to fantasy when the truth is they are the fuel for our future reality.

Renowned innovation expert Mitch Ditkoff has developed a formula for harnessing our fascination:

1. Suspend Reality. Find space to perform this exercise.
2. On a piece of paper, create three parallel headlines — the first, “What Fascinates Me,” the second, “People I Admire,” and the third, “What I Would Do If I Had More Time.”
3. Jot down at least five responses under each headline.
4. Look for connections between your various responses.
5. Write down your inspired ideas. Then, circle your favorite.

Once we have identified our fascinations, we become responsible for using them to help us be more creative, more efficient, and more aware of how the things we have been wired to love can help us change our worlds.

What are some of the things that fascinate you the most?