Creativity and Business Success

By Action Coach Dave Beam

Do you own your own business?  If you do, you know that there is a consistent set of challenges every week, if not every day, to be addressed.  Owning a business is the quickest way I know to find your strengths and weaknesses.  It will test you in about every area of ability.  So to be really good at the business of business, you must be a great problem solver, and that takes creativity.

You may say “I really don’t consider myself to be all that creative”.  Though that may be your belief based on your experience, the fact is all human beings have an innate creative ability.  You may be uncomfortable being a creative, free flowing thinker.  You may not be one who typically “thinks outside the box”.  You may need to learn how to tap into that creative part of your brain.  If you want to improve your creativity, you must change your beliefs about your creativity.  You are a creative person.  As a human being, you were created to create.  Children naturally express an intense ability to dream and play.  They can take the simplest objects and environment and create whole new worlds.  Then as they “grow up”, they are often told to start “being realistic” and stop all of that silly “dreaming and fantasizing”. 

A key to entrepreneurial and leadership success is the ability to envision the future – to create an opportunity in your mind using the raw material in your possession.  Great entrepreneurs have honed the ability to create possibilities in their mind and then plan and act to bring them into being.  Every invention, every innovation, and every discovery started in the mind of a human being.

My message for you today is very simple.  Allow yourself to dream again.  Change your thinking from “that could never happen” to “how can that happen?”.  Allow your mind to wander into new worlds of possibility and wild excessive success.  Take your current goals and multiply them times 10 or 100 or 1000 and ask yourself “How could I do that?”  Find other like-minded individuals that share your entrepreneurial passion, and give each other permission to dream again.  Until you believe something, it will not happen.  Cast off your fear of disappointment and start to think big.  Start asking yourself “Why not?” 

You are wired to create.  That is what differentiates human beings from other organisms.  We have the ability to imagine and conceive of things yet to be materialized.  Set aside and plan time to brainstorm and think of possibilities.  Put on some music.  Get outside and take a walk.  Breathe deeply.  Play with your children and your grandchildren.  Laugh and have some fun.  Stress, worry, gloom, and negativity kill the creative spirit.  Some of the best ideas and thoughts show up when we’re laughing, dreaming, and really just chilling out.  So go for it.  Who knows what might happen?