This post is by Michelle of Take Back Your Creativity.
Here’s the thing about creativity: it’s all in your head. Even if you say there’s something outside of you that gives you ideas, they still end up in your head. And the thing about something in your head is this: your worldview, thoughts, and opinions will greatly affect it, and how it’s brought into the world.
Nowhere does this show as clearly as in the way we treat our ideas. People apply the scarcity mindset to their ideas and end up hoarding them. “No!,” they cry. “That’s my idea, you can’t have it.” Or, often heard from bloggers: “I think I should use my best ideas for my site instead of guest posts.”
Ideas are intangible things, completely without form and thus without limit. And, of course, they are abundant. They’re everywhere—how many ideas do you have in a random week? Okay, they’re not necessarily good ideas, but they’re ideas nonetheless.
Now think about how you treat your ideas when you’re influenced by the scarcity mindset. You hoard them or save an idea for later, when you can do justice to it. You don’t tell anyone about your latest idea, whether for fear of them ridiculing you, or fear of them stealing it. You wind up believing, consciously or not, that there exists only a finite number of ideas—more importantly, there’s only a finite number of good ideas—and so you treat them as if there will never be enough to go around. Big mistake.
When you treat your ideas this way, you set up creative blocks. Instead of treasuring the ideas you do have, you’re worrying about where the next one will come from. Instead of using them (and of course, ideas love to be put into action), you’re letting them get dusty on a shelf somewhere. Eventually, the part of you that creates ideas, that pulls them out of the ether—whether you believe that’s your subconscious, a higher self, or a daemon—will start to think you obviously don’t value them if you treat them so, and then the ideas dry up. They cease to come to you, and when they do come, it’s only with much effort.
Here’s a novel idea: instead of hoarding your ideas, use them relentlessly. They don’t have to be used in public, if you’re shy about them or not sure they’re that good—but use them somehow. Test them out, play with them, put them into action.
This sends a message to yourself that yes, these ideas will get used, yes, you do value them, yes, send more, please and thank you! Even if you’re only writing the ideas down and keeping track of them in a swipe file—and that’s all you do with that idea for now—that sends a little signal that you’re willing to act on the idea.
The less ideas you work on, the less ideas you have. So get crackin’!
Michelle is a writer and creative strategist living in Austin. She just launched Take Back Your Creativity, an ebook, workbook, and audio kit intended to help you integrate your creative life & your daily life, increase your creative output, and navigate around creative blocks and burnout. Check it out here, or you can read her writings at Wicked Whimsy.
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I love that you said “use them relentlessly”! Using them is a habit just like any other, but it’s a habit that feels so damn good! I think it’s also brilliant that you connected blocks to a scarcity mindset. Whether it’s creativity or sales, scarcity thinking keeps us small and our games in life even smaller!
Thanks, Sandi! Using & respecting your ideas is definitely a habit that can be learned just like any other, and the results are well worth it. The connection between idea blocks and the scarcity mindset came up one day in a conversation with me and my husband, and I thought it was too good not to share
Great post, thanks Sandi!
It reminds of when I was at art school – some people cling to their mistakes because it was their idea!!! grrr… like a dog with a bone.
And also, there is always that possibility that your idea is a stinker. Everyone who works consistently has a few bombs. If you guard your secrets you may never have to suck it up and admit that you bombed.
There was this one guy, I’ll never forget it, who was drawing with graphite on marble. And he was all, “This my idea, I invented drawing graphite on marble.” And we’re all like, “Whatever, you can have that idea because all we need to do it lick our fingers and that drawing you’ve been working on for 2 weeks would disappear – you’re missing the point man. You need add something meaningful and lasting to the mix.”
Anyway, that didn’t go over well.
My husband did a project in New York at Andrew Kreps Gallery called “Making Room For Redundancy” a few years back that addressed this issue. If you look in any magazine you can see virtual “copies” of art works – crazily as it sounds… it’s true — 2 people can have the same idea independent of another.
Also, I think this totally ties in the with the research on Loss Aversion Theory.
Ooops – I mean Michelle! (sorry about that)
Thanks for your comment, Leigh! I’ll have to look up the Loss Aversion Theory & what it’s all about.
I’ve found it even goes beyond hoarding – eventually, you become so obsessed with the notion that your ideas are rare and special snowflakes that you hit a creative wall. If ideas are so rare, I must only have a few of them, and I just had a good one, so…
I’ve definitely struggled with this, but I’ve found that the more I write (guest-blog, etc.), the more ideas I end up generating. The shift from that scarcity mentality to an abundance mentality has really opened up a lot of possibilities for me personally.
Yes, that’s definitely true, Pete! And I’ve always found that the more I write and the more I use my ideas, the more ideas I end up getting, too. It’s a big shift to make and a wonderful experience.