What's the secret of having creative confidence? After all, every creative act entails some kind of risk.
Mainly there's the risk of failure--whatever we create may not work or be appreciated.
There's also the risk of success. This may not be as overt but lots of people worry that if they are successful there could be negative effects: prompting jealousy from one's current friends, not being able to handle success, and even the fear that we wouldn't be able to sustain the success we've achieved.
I'm reading a book on this topic, Creative Confidence, written by brothers Tom and David Kelley. They have the necessary credentials: Tom Kelley wrote the best-selling book, The Art of Innovation; David Kelley is the founder of Ideo and the Stanford Design School.
The first step is to accept that creativity is not restricted to artists and writers and eccentrics. I suspect most people reading this are past this step and agree that anybody can be creative.
Another is to get into the habit of experiencing things that will spark creative thought. You can't force creativity, but you can invite it. Realizing that we do have an element of control helps us to feel more confident. Generally the wider the variety of things you experience, the more raw material you have from which to generate new connections.
A third is to cultivate a growth mindset. Rather than thinking "I'm good at this, I'm not good at that," we need to be open and willing to learn new things. As we've seen in just the last few years, the tools of creativity keep developing and changing and the people who can learn them have more opportunities for exposure.
If you want to check whether these ideas could help increase your creative confidence, here are a few quesitons to think about:
1: Do you believe that everybody can be creative? If so, have you tapped the creativity of your spouse or partner, your kids, your friends? Can you think of some fun ways to do so?
2: What are three things you can do in the next week or two that you've never done before? This doesn't have to be skydiving or anything big, it can be going to a restaurant and eating a dish you've never tried (or cooking one), or reading a magazine you've never looked at before.
3: Is there a skill that would help you to progress with your creative projects? Where and how could you learn it? Sometimes you don't even have to do it yourself but you have to know enough about it to outsource it to somebody else.
There's lots more in the book and I'll share more information from it in future posts.
(You can also get lots of great ideas from my book, Creativity Now, published by Pearson and available from Amazon or your other favorite bookseller.)
