You’re in real estate: should you bother to be creative or leave that stuff to the ‘creatives’?
Every profession involves creativity and every professional is creative. The idea that there are some elite and elusive ‘creatives’ roaming the Earth while the rest of us unwashed masses toil in darkness is about as likely as human life on Jupiter.
Embrace creativity. I have it. You have it. Your mother-in-law has it. The only difference between you and the ‘creatives’ is that they’ve learned how to develop their creativity from an idea to an expression. From nothingness to existence.
In my experience, creativity is like a campfire: it starts with kindling and a spark but if you don’t add more wood or get down on your knees and breathe air into the embers then the fire dies.
You need to keep feeding your creative flames until the fire is built. Once you accept this notion and put it into practice, you’ll have mastered the most difficult, most rewarding, and most important factor in being creative: commitment. … The next part is the fun part: stealing ideas.
Contrary to popular opinion, creativity is not always a sudden inspiration of original ideas. We’re exposed to so many creative things on a daily basis that we’re not even aware they’re there. But they are and we subsume their existence into our subconscious until we’re ready to ostensibly steal them for ourselves.
You may think your barn-doors-repurposed into the doors of your walk-in closet is an inventive idea but you really just saw it on Pinterest a few months ago. Nonetheless, people who come to your house marvel over the originality of it. As far as they’re concerned, you’re the most creative person in their inner circle. Let them think that. They don’t need to know that where the idea came from.
Because “good artists copy, great artists steal,” according to Steve Jobs (quoting Pablo Picasso).
Check back in on this blog next week for some cool places to steal ideas from!
