We really need to disabuse ourselves with the destructive notion that we just aren’t born creative. As Sir Ken Robinson likes to say “We grow out of creativity”. We fail often and go through stuff we don’t want to feel again, this makes us fear failure and when you are too afraid how our you going to be creative when in a lot of ways creativity is about being brave about something. I think a good rule of thumb for this is that if you are not afraid on failing about something then you are not trying hard enough. It’s cliche but we have to push the boundaries with everything we do. So Be Brave.
Gretchen: You write about the importance of thinking creatively. Do you have any habits or exercises that you follow to try to boost your creativity or to give yourself the breathing room need to think big?
Seth: There are two secrets to creativity:
1. Understand that there's no gene for it. No cultural or family history required. Creativity isn't a gift from above, it's something that everyone is capable of.
2. The only thing that prevents your creativity from showing up is fear. Fear of being laughed at, fear of being wrong, fear of seeming uninformed. So many creative exercises and habits revolve around overcoming that fear.
For me, the single best thing you can do to become more creative is to be wrong more often. Creative people are wrong all the time (look at Apple's long string of failures). The goal is to create a safe place to be wrong, a way to be wrong without destroying yourself. [Along these lines, I remind myself to Enjoy the fun of failure.] The more wrong I am, the more often, the better I seem to get at being creative.
There are very few chances a day to be really creative, even for someone who is creative for a living, the way I am. So I seek these moments out, I treasure them and I try to be intentional. “Here's something I've waited for a day or a week for… a chance to say or do something that might change the status quo, that might improve a system… I wonder how I can mess it up?”
via The Happiness Project: Seth Godin: “You Can Become the Indispensable Linchpin.”.