Creativity often occurs only in our minds, which is sometimes why we can’t always see our creativity. It’s not always tangible. But it starts in our minds.
It’s when you are active and engaged with the outside world–exercising your body and your senses and your abilities–that we can visualize someone doing something creative.
In the spring, I received a copy of The Think Big Manifesto by Michael Port. Before reading it, I wasn’t positive about how reading it would impact my ideas on creativity. Since reading it, I realize that Port wants you to take charge and think big–whether it involves congressional legislation or fitness or work/business…or creativity. It is the revolution Port wants to start and he wants it to involve you and me.
“Revolution is more than just a political necessity,” he writes. “It is a personal necessity.”
Port challenges you to think bigger, which, in turn, will force others to pay attention–to notice you and to set an example for others and begin a revolution. This manifesto is like having a cheerleader on the sidelines, telling you to do what you dream because big ideas can start with one person and one ideas. A small idea can grow.
Port gives examples of corporations, community leaders and regular folks, whose ideas may have started small. These people believed in the possibilities and acted upon them. One small idea blossoms into a blooming garden.
While Port wants to start a revolution, he’s not suggesting we all traipse down to the local town hall with placards in hand that read: “Think Big.” He’s suggesting that you take stock of what matters to you. (When was the last time you really did that?!) And then Port encourages you to think “Why not me?”…and start believing in yourself.
You might be thinking: how does this tie into creativity? Well, do you have a project you’ve been wanting to finish? A painting you’ve been meaning to start? A poem that is burning a hole inside you, dying to be written? Do you have a business idea that is so spectacular, but it has never seen the daylight outside your own mind?
If you are the only thing standing in the way, Port would say to start thinking big.
I couldn’t agree with him more.
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Thank you Elizabeth for giving us the encouragement needed to do something different. I am particularly drawn to the challenge to “take stock of what really matters to me” and my personal challenge is not letting the obstacles in my way stop me but getting creative about how I resolve them.
Thank you, Marion, for writing!
When dealing with what you want to do, you might try seeing where your energy is strongest. That can certainly help to overcome obstacles. (It’s amazing how obstacles melt as you are able to throw extra energy at a problem!)
I appreciate you stopping by and writing.
Elizabeth