My Best 97 Creativity Tips: 41-60

[In this 5-part series, I want to share with you some of my top creativity tips gleaned from working as a creativity coach for the past thirty-five years and from having written 50+ books over the past fifty years. If you’re interested in training as a creativity coach, please take a look here.]

My 97 Best Creativity Tips: Tips 1-20

My 97 Best Creativity Tips: Tips 21-40

Here are tips 41 – 60. Enjoy!

41. Get cognitively stronger! Use the following three-step cognitive tool: 1) Identify negative thoughts like “I have no talent”; 2) Dispute them by saying, “No, that’s not true!”; 3) Replace them with affirmations like “Of course I’m talented!” Start today to get a better grip on your mind.

42. You might recognize that talent is so loaded a word that you would be wise to forget about it altogether and just keep on working. Forget about talent. Concentrate on showing up.

43. Grow creative by not fearing mistakes. Put too much salt in the soup. Leave the sugar out of the cookie dough. Feel the feelings that come with making stupid mistakes. Then say, “I can survive these feelings!” Remind yourself that you must grow very easy with mistakes and messes.

44. Affirm your creative efforts. Affirmations are not bound up in rules. An affirmation can be long or short, poetic or plain. If you love a phrase and find that it helps you then that is a valid affirmation. Create some powerful affirmations!

45. Who isn’t a little inclined to take shortcuts? But be careful! Shortcuts can kill the creative process. Avoid illegitimate shortcuts when you create.

46. Self-deception stifles creativity. Anatole France put it this way: “It is in the ability to deceive oneself that the greatest talent is shown.” Are their truths that you need to admit to yourself? Admit them!

47. Art happens on dull days too. Do not wait for inspiration. Do not wait for anything. Grow creative by regularly and routinely creating.

48. We have enough experiences in a day to make art for a decade. Never fear a shortage of great ideas. If you show up often enough and grow quiet enough to hear them, great ideas will percolate right up.

49. Make sure you have a private space where you can get your creative work done. Make that space. Secure that space. Get agreements so that no one will bother you in your space. Create, secure, and honor your space!

50. If you live with people—with parents, with a mate, with children, with roommates—get agreements. Let them know that often in your private space silence is golden and that sometimes you are not available.

51. Say to yourself “What does my creative work require?” and honor your answer. Need to tidy up your space? Get some supplies? Do some research? Do it!

52. Many people are embarrassed to create in public. It feels unseemly to them, like kissing in plain view. Deal with that self-consciousness! Learn to make a spectacle of yourself. If you don’t, you’ll feel uncreative everywhere except in your private space.

53. Feeling too chaotic to create? Don’t think that way! Instead say, “Let me take this chaos and use it to create a world.” Invite that unwanted guest right into your private space.

54. Revere beauty without becoming enchanted by it. Aim for it but also aim for truth and goodness, just in case they, and not beauty, are the real things of value. Not beauty alone but truth, beauty, and goodness.

55. Concentrate, but also surrender. Surrender, but also concentrate. Sometimes the one, sometimes the other, always both!

56. Creativity requires persistence. Are you practiced at sticking to things for years at a time?

57. Learn by doing. There is no other way. Experience is the best and the only real teacher. Grow creative through conscious effort!

58. As you shop your creative projects you’ll find yourself waiting on news from the marketplace. While you’re waiting be patient but not idle. Responses from the world can take a very long time! Keep working.

59. Mystery is the artist’s territory. Excellence lies in the direction of mystery! Let go of your need to know and buy bewilderment instead.

60. It is remarkable that we can hold the entirety of a year in imagination long enough to make decisions about what we’d like to accomplish. Practice this useful skill right now. Picture the coming year and make decisions about what you want to start, work on, and complete.