Thinking out of the box… but how did we get in it?

This can’t break its programming. You can.

Society has such an outmoded view of creativity. At best it’s a necessary evil, at worst it’s a waste of time.

If you don’t believe me, go and have a look at your primary national curriculum for schools and do a text search for creative thinking and see what comes up.

It’s a rhetorical question: why do we hold back from our creative potential? Because we were trained to. We were programmed to think we were good or bad at this or that and we’ve been running those programmes ever since.

Here’s proof. If someone asked you to do a drawing today, would your first reaction be, ‘whoopee!’? Or would it be one of fear and embarrassment? Ok, maybe you’re the exception, but most people would react in fear. Let’s remind ourselves why.

Let’s go back to being age 6, 7, 8 or 9. The teacher says we’re going to do a drawing. Can you think of anything more exciting? A drawing! It’s pure joy. We’re going to draw… an elephant. So we get going. Mine’s looking ok. But I’m not sure, so I look over at someone else’s which prompts a line of executable programming code from the teacher:

“Don’t copy!” the teacher barks.

So we’re programmed not to look at other people’s ideas. We don’t look to see what other people are up to. We don’t know what our competitors are up to so we can’t do better than them. We fear our ideas will be stolen so we hide them and never improve them. But paradoxically we fear that everyone else is better than us which undermines our confidence, but we can never look to see the truth because our programme stops us from finding out.

John turns to me to ask me something. This prompts the second line of code:

“Stop taking! Do your own work!” .

So we’re programmed not to discuss our ideas to brainstorm them with others. From now on we work in isolation and waste time re-inventing the wheel. We waste time making the same mistakes that others could have helped us with. We get stuck and don’t ask for help. We think that originality is better than collaboration and elaboration and never fully develop our ideas. We begin to doubt ourselves and what we’re capable of. We turn into perfectionists who never finish anything.

Then the teacher comes over and looks at my drawing. “That’s pretty good” she says.

Suddenly I’m programmed with a positive mind virus. It takes over my subroutine, re-calibrating my system with this logical argument.

Teacher is correct.
Teacher says I am good at drawing.
I am good at drawing.

Because she’s the authority figure, what she says must be true. Fast forward from that moment, a year, a decade, thirty years, and the programme is still running. Here I am. I can draw and I know it.

Then she looks at John’s. “Ha ha! What’s that supposed to be? It hasn’t even got a trunk.” She shows it to the class and they all laugh.

Teacher is correct.
Teacher says I am no good at drawing.
I am no good at drawing.

“She’s right. I can’t draw.” thinks John and he runs the further algorithm:

I cannot draw.
Drawing results in embarrassment.
Do not draw.

If we fast forward thirty years, not only does John actively avoid drawing, to avoid further embarrassment, he’s re-calibrated it as frivolous and irrelevant. Just to be safe, he’s lumped in all creativity with it, his software now labelling himself as ‘not a creative person.’

When I was seven I won a painting competition. The best in the village. I won £4.50. I bought a toy telescope with it. But was my painting really that great? If I showed it to you now would it really be that good today? Was it noticeably better than the 2nd place painting? Probably not much better. It probably wasn’t that much better than the worst painting. The painting is of course irrelevant. It’s the fact that I was programmed as a painter that counts.

Can we take credit for what we’re good at (or think we’re good at) today? We can certainly take credit for what we’re not good at.

Did we have talent that was encouraged and developed? Or were were programmed, sometimes randomly, sometimes arbitrarily? Have those programmes stuck, making us think we’re good at (or not good at) something?

The reason so many of us can’t ‘think outside the box’ is because we were forced into that air-tight box all those years ago and we’ve remained there ever since. That’s not really  ood enough. We need to do better. We need to break that programming.

I dare you to do it.

Make a list of the ordinary things you’re not good at. My guess is it will include some of the following: drawing, writing essays, maths, mental arithmetic, memory, sport, geography, finance, cooking, DIY, public speaking, selling…

These are all base-level skills that require little or no talent. They just require confidence and practice.

Pick one, and practice it. Seek the extra bit of training if needed to crack it, and break your programming.

You are not a color home computer loaded with a Beginners All Symbolic Instruction Code operating system and a flashing cursor awaiting instruction on what to do. You are a self-determining creative being. You need to start acting like one. We all do.

Ayd works with people and businesses to explore and unlock their creative ideas in ways they may never have thought possible, to inspire innovation.

Book Ayd to speak about the Power of ‘What If?’ and Inspiration for Innovation at your conference, or in your business. A great way to open your event or as an after lunch energiser.

For more interesting info see: www.aydinstone.com

Innovation is not welcome: a warning to creatives

Innovation is the process of making something better, or doing something better. It’s applied creativity. In some small way, almost everything could be made better. There are plenty of things that are crying out to be made better. Innovation is certainly needed. But it is not always welcome.

People don’t like change. They say they do, but they don’t. They don’t like things that are different and they certainly don’t like people who are different. This is a double blow to creative people like you because not only are creative people the ones who drive change by doing different things, they are also different themselves. They may even look, sound and act different to normal people. Normal people don’t like that.

This is a warning to creatives: you and your ideas are not welcome around normal people.

Who do you think you are getting ideas above your station? You’re paid to do a job, not to think. You’re paid to keep the status quo, not to upset the applecart. You’re paid to continue the ideals of the company, not to modify them (even if it makes them better).

Trying to get a new job? Who wants a troublemaker? Who wants a loose canon on deck? Who wants someone who’s multi-disciplined? They have a coat peg here for a job description, not an evolving mind. (If you don’t believe me on this, just check out any job advert and you’ll see that from a cleaner to an executive, the job description involves things that must be done, not things that could be thought.)

Trying to start you’re own business? You’ve got to stand out from the crowd to be seen, but if you stand out too much you may look flakey. If you look too exciting and fun you may be thought of as flighty and not serious (but of course if you look too ordinary you won’t be seen at all).

Most inventions and developments took ages and ages for the normals to catch on. The herd are too frightened to try anything new so they wait to see what everyone else does first.

If you’re too innovative, they often can’t even see what you’re offering, it is simply invisible to them, they can’t compute it. You remember that story about the ships coming over the horizon to the shores of South America for the first time? The story goes, that the natives, not ever having seen a ship, couldn’t see it. This is of course a load of hyperbole, it’s more likely that they simply explained it away and initially just ignored the phenomenon. Something like that anyway.

My favourite example of this is the Beatles 7th album in 1966, Revolver. It is now cited by all the experts as probably the most innovative rock LP ever recorded, certainly the most influential LP of the 1960s and definitely better than the one everyone usually thinks is better, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.

But what happened on its release was unusual. It went to number one, obviously, but the critics of the day couldn’t review it. They couldn’t review it because it was too innovative to review. You can get hold of these reviews today and read them for yourself. They didn’t have the literary skill to properly describe what they were listening to. Even people you’d expect more from such as Ray Davies from the Kinks said he ‘didn’t get it’.

It took the listening public a year to ‘get it’ by which time the Beatles had released a less innovative LP, Sgt. Pepper, which was lapped up as the greatest human artifact every created in history. But they weren’t really praising Sgt. Pepper (they thought they were), they were praising Revolver, which had finally stretched the audience to be able to listen to rock music. All rock journalism changed that year, along with everything else in culture. Revolver was just too advanced in 1966.

Now, that was just a record we’re talking about and not really very important, but the same problem can happen with your new products, your new services and even your new ideas: if they are too innovative people just aren’t ready for them. They just won’t ‘get them’.

I’ve spoken in front of the wrong audiences many times. They didn’t get my topic of creative thinking. They didn’t get my guitar. They didn’t like my purple suit. They didn’t like my mad hair. It was too much. They just didn’t ‘get it’.

So what do I do? Unlike the Beatles, I can’t rely on my popular cultural icon status to be able to release Revolver onto an unsuspecting public. I did get a haircut. But I have to either dumb my message and approach down to an acceptable level or find a different audience, one that is ready. One or the other.

I suspect that you have a great new product or service and yet you can’t get anyone to take it up. I bet you have a great new idea but are struggling to find people to ‘get it’.

My guess is that, because it’s you, and I know you’re one of these ‘creative types’, it’s probably not because what you’ve got isn’t any good. It’s probably because what you’ve got is TOO good. Too good to be true and just too different.

I’m not in a position to offer advice. (I’m in the position to buy a new suit). But if I were to give advice, perhaps it would be this: keep looking for ways to find your audience. They’re not going to be down the street. They’re not going to be coincidentally in the next conference or networking event you rock up to. You’ll probably find, like me, that they’ll be 3% of your audience hidden in every batch of normals you come across. Our challenge is to increase those odds by being more strategic.

The other thing you could try would be to stop being so darn clever and knuckle down to be mediocre and boring just like everyone else. Play it safe and sound, that’s best.

But I can’t imagine you can do that anymore than I can. We just don’t have ‘being ordinary’ in us, do we?

Ayd works with people and businesses to explore and unlock their creative ideas in ways they may never have thought possible, to inspire innovation.

Book Ayd to speak about the Power of ‘What If?’ and Inspiration for Innovation at your conference, or in your business. A great way to open your event or as an after lunch energiser.

For more interesting info see: www.aydinstone.com

Is creativity a form of madness?

People have been asking my opinion on this article and the research behind it. So here it is.

Creativity ‘closely entwined with mental illness’

Are creative people ‘mad’? Is creativity a ‘madness’? Or do they mean that we had all better watch out, because if you’re one of those creative types, you’re probably going to go mad and be depressed, and if you try to ‘get creative’ you may even end up killing yourself.

This is, of course, not what the researchers are saying.

“Lead researcher Dr Simon Kyaga said the findings suggested disorders should be viewed in a new light and that certain traits might be beneficial or desirable.

For example, the restrictive and intense interests of someone with autism and the manic drive of a person with bipolar disorder might provide the necessary focus and determination for genius and creativity.

Similarly, the disordered thoughts associated with schizophrenia might spark the all-important originality element of a masterpiece.”

The fact that lots of famous authors killed themselves, or were depressed, proves little as there are plenty of authors who are happy and still alive. There’s a tendency with statistics to point to the conclusion you want to make.

For me, the danger with the popular media view on this topic is that creativity and mental illness are portrayed as interchangeable. Beth Murphy of the mental health charity Mind agrees, “It is important that we do not romanticise people with mental health problems, who are too often portrayed as struggling creative geniuses”

And by the same token, we shouldn’t label creative people as ‘mad’.

I’ve been introduced on stage as being “totally bonkers, off the wall and crazy mad” which wasn’t really very helpful when all I was really doing was being interesting and entertaining in a unique way, with a guitar. It just shows how totally boring the other speakers on the bill must have been.

The media also often gets cause and effect confused. It may be that a ‘mental illness’ such as bipolar disorder helps an individual in a creative role to be more productive and creative OR it could mean that someone with bipolar disorder seeks out a role in a creative industry. Either way, we may find a higher proportion of people with bipolar disorder in a creative role. It says nothing about a disorder being necessary for that role. However, the research showed that someone working in a creative role is no more likely to have a mental disorder than anyone else, thus nullifying the commonly held inference and making this paragraph, like most journalism on the topic, void.

Here’s another article that makes me a bit cross:

Creative minds ‘mimic schizophrenia’

Which of course is not true. It’s not true because creativity is such a vast human endeavour and schizophrenia is an invented term to label certain types of mental illness conditions. We might as well say “Oranges mimic Tuesdays”. Except that would be totally mad.

It’s not the research that I’m questioning here, but the inferences that are being made.

I think we need to be more careful about the definition of what ‘mental illness’ is. If someone’s condition serves them, supports their work, is part of who they are and causes no long-term internal distress, then I don’t see why the medical profession, the media or anyone else has the right to call a person as having a ‘disorder’ when all they really are, is different.

If someone is suffering and in pain and can’t function in a way that serves them, then that’s a problem, obviously, and treatment may be needed. But if they’re suffering solely because of the way society has labeled them, treats them and doesn’t accommodate them, then that’s wrong.

In an age of political correctness, has society’s prejudice not been eradicated at all but instead changed its style? Has it moved from it being acceptable to discriminate out of malice or fun to discriminating by labelling anything different from a normal standard as being a ‘disorder’ and looking down elitist normal noses with pity at the poor disordered sick people.

It would make more sense if we found someone who was totally boring, who had created nothing, contributed nothing, who had lived a dull life – to be labelled as ‘mentally ill’. I’d say that person was really sick and in need of treatment.

It’s the creative people who innovate, who invent, who drive the human race forward with their discoveries, that save lives, that enrich souls. And for what? So that dull people, who never look up from looking at their shuffling feet can moan that jumping safely from the edge of space is a waste of a Sunday evening when they could have been watching the X-Factor results.

John Lennon once said that “everything is the opposite of what it is” which sounds like a nonsense statement until you think about how often it appears to be true…

If to be creative, I had to drink from the cup of madness and risk insanity, rather than become a norm, a drone, whose life’s purpose was only to remain within the accepted parameters of ordinariness – I’d drink deeply, and accept the highs and the lows as a price worth paying for a life worth living.

Ayd works with people and businesses to explore and unlock their creative ideas in ways they may never have thought possible, to inspire innovation.

Book Ayd to speak about the Power of ‘What If?’ and Inspiration for Innovation at your conference, or in your business. A great way to open your event or as an after lunch energiser.

For more interesting info see: www.aydinstone.com

The story of ‘What if?’

My stage. That massive screen dwarfs the guitars!

Last Friday I opened the 12th Annual Convention of the Professional Speaking Association in London. I’d planned to do something different there for some time. I’d already worked out that my talk was to be called ‘The Power of ‘What If?’. But I’d had this idea to write a song called ‘What If?’ and not only to perform it live on stage with my guitar but to record a full band backing track and have a video synced too. I knew that the venue had the largest projection screen in London so it would be a shame not to take advantage of that.

But time passed and the date of the convention grew closer. I was also involved in support for other aspects of the event and almost forgot that I’d have to get a move on to be able to work out my own quite complex idea.

Two weeks before I discovered that my normal stage suit was unusable. It had just worn out. There was a particular outfit I’d always wanted so decided now was the time to get it. I spoke to a tailor in America who had Paul McCartney’s original 1965 Beatle suit that was worn at Shea Stadium, the Beatles most famous and biggest gig, and the world’s first stadium rock show and he made me a facsimile suit, stitch by stitch perfect.

It was now a week before the gig and I still hadn’t written the song. Maybe it was too big a task? To come up with a new song that was good enough to open a show, record it, learn it AND do a video in just a few days?

I wrote the song in an evening, or at least the tune and a few words (the two words were ‘What if?’, so no great lyrical creative leap that day). I spent the next day splurging out dozens and dozens of phrases and words and selected the best to form the lyrics. I only needed 90 seconds worth, but it still wasn’t easy.

Then I started working out how to record it. I didn’t have time to get my drummer in, I’d have to do it myself, and I’m not that great a drummer. Even to keep a constant time over 90 seconds would be tough. I pulled it off by recording a few batched of 8 bars and then duplicating them to create the drum track. The next day I overlaid the main acoustic guitar, then the complex bass line (I’m quite proud of that), then two tracks of 12 sting Rickenbacker, one track of lead guitar with a wah-wah pedal and one without. Then I laid down the main vocal and two extra vocals creating a three-part harmony. All the tracks were first or second take – I knew I didn’t have time for perfection.

I then mixed the recording to create the backing track. I turned off the main vocal and the lead guitar as I’d be playing these live. Then I had to figure out the video…

I wanted the video to feature the same outfit as the one I’d be wearing on stage. The only problem was that the new suit was being held in customs. It arrived on Wednesday (the conference was on Friday, and I’d be setting off to it on Thursday). As soon as the suit arrived I filmed various segments of me playing the various instruments and synchronised it to the music, putting footage of the Earth from space in between. By late Wednesday night, it was done.

All in all it was about 30 hours of work that went into 90 seconds of performance that opened the convention.*

You can see the finished video here (this version has the main vocal turned back on).

It seemed to go down well at the event, but of more importance to me was that it served as a reminder of what can be done when you put your mind and your passion into achieving the ideal outcome for something. To my mind, I’d achieved the impossible. And although the audience would have never seen or guessed the effort that went into it, I feel it was worth it.

So my question to you is this: what idea outcome could YOU actually pull of if you put your mind and your passion to the test? What if…

The lyrics are:

What if you were brave?
What if you took flight?
What if after trying hard you got it right?

What if you had time?
What if you had cash?
What if you could find that inspiring lightning flash?

And see, realise
As your dreams came back to life before you eyes
What would we see, what would we find?
With opportunity laid out before your mind?

What if you had hope?
What if you were great?
What if you find a way to escape your certain fate?

What if you had skill?
What if you went wild?
What if you still had the imagination of a child?

(* I was pleased to have the ‘subtle’ Beatle reference in my act as it was 50 years to the day that the Beatles’ first record, Love Me Do, was released.)

Ayd works with people and businesses to explore and unlock their creative ideas in ways they may never have thought possible, to inspire innovation.

Book Ayd to speak about the Power of ‘What If?’ and Inspiration for Innovation at your conference, or in your business. A great way to open your event or as an after lunch energiser.

For more interesting info see: www.aydinstone.com

How Apple understand both ‘art’ and ‘science’

It was always said that Jazz could be described as ‘a loose kind of tightness and a tight kind of looseness’.

That’s a really good description of how creativity works.

It’s the mix of art and science, logic and chaos, restriction and freedom, opening out and closing down and of course of ‘left’ and ‘right-brain’ working together.

And yet our world is polarised into two halves. We’re told and schooled and trained to be one thing or the other. The classic example is we’re forced to choose between being a scientist or an artist way early in our education. The system assumes that they are mutually exclusive and that you cannot be both.

The problem we have is that the great scientists, in all fields of physics, chemistry and biology, those that made the big discoveries, were also artists.

By the same token, the great artists and designers had to have an understanding of science.

Here are some simple definitions:*

Science = an understanding of the natural world, how it works and being able to describe it.

Art = doing something with that understanding.

Science = knowing how to make changes

Art = making changes

Let’s have a look at how this art/science paradox works in one of our favourite companies; Apple.

Let’s think about what they are known for, loved for and hated for (no-one is ambivalent when it comes to Apple)

• Gorgeous cutting edge design (of the products, the packaging and the marketing materials)

• A focus on creative lifestyle activities: music, design and film.

• They create a ‘togetherness’, a club (or cult), of like-minded creatives, geniuses, fun, coolness.

But there’s more:

• Their products are expensive and exclusive.

• They operate in a closed system of their own making.

• Users have to surrender other freedoms to fully enter their ecosphere.

All of those points are true you can use them to add to your own beliefs, depending of what’s important to you, as to whether you hate or love the company.

But whatever we think, one thing remains, Apple is the most valuable company in the world.

Whether you refuse to buy an iPhone, one thing remains, Apple is the most valuable company in the world.

If you baulk at iTunes’ grip on the music industry, one thing remains, Apple is still the most valuable company in the world.

They were also recently voted the UK’s most ‘cool’ brand.

There’s no getting away from it.

So we need to ask ourselves, how did they do that? Is there anything we can learn?

The one thing that I’ve noticed is that they employ a loose kind of tightness and a tight kind of looseness – at the same time. We all think they’re arty and cool and yet their business acumen is more solid than anyone on Earth. We all think that amazing design is the big acumen and the ease-of-use that results from it gives us freedom to create and yet they control our thoughts.

There’s the story that Steve Jobs dropped the prototype iPod into a fish tank to see if tiny bubbles would come out from the device (they did). If there was air in the device, there was space and if there was space there was an opportunity to make the device smaller.

There’s the story of the room full of prototype iPhone boxes, all slightly different designs, so they could find exactly the right kind of user unboxing experience. If you’ve ever opened a new iPhone you’ll know they got it right. Can you think of many other companies that go to that level of control of the consumer experience?

Applestore employees are given a training handbook which has a section on ‘Getting to yes’ by controlling the language the employees use when talking to customers. Some of the most interesting, and revealing are shown in he photo below. Look at the heading ‘Do Not Use’. This is not a manual of suggestions, these are commandments.

So instead of ‘bomb’ or ‘crash’ they have to say ‘unexpectedly quits’ or ‘does not respond’. Instead of software ‘bug’ they have to say ‘condition’.

Fanatical control over your business is good. Looking at the big picture and encouraging artistic freedom is good. The real trick is to have them both at the same time.

That’s what Apple does.

That’s creativity.

That’s Jazz.

(* other definitions are available)

Ayd works with people and businesses to explore and unlock their creative ideas in ways they may never have thought possible, to inspire innovation.

Book Ayd to speak about the Power of ‘What If?’ and Inspiration for Innovation at your conference, or in your business. A great way to open your event or as an after lunch energiser.

For more interesting info see: www.aydinstone.com

Is this you: Too many ideas?

Most of my creativity work is involved with helping people and businesses come up with more and better ideas for their work, their lives, their businesses, to help them innovate, develop new products or new ways of working.

But sometimes I hear this: “but I don’t have a problem coming up with ideas. My problem is I just have too many and don’t don’t which to implement.”

Is this you?

From time to time, it’s certainly me. I have two finished feature film scripts, ideas for three other films, ideas for four novels, twenty finished short stories, hundreds of songs that need recording, dozens of recorded songs that need uploading to iTunes, three business ideas for Dragon’s Den, three big marketing ideas for my own business, three non-fiction books three-quarters finished, ideas for three more non-fiction books, ideas for three public events and three ideas for some big corporations that could innovate their businesses.

That’s quite plainly too much to work on today. Too much to work on this week. I couldn’t get all that lot done in a month and the fact that some of those ideas have been hanging around for ten years tells me a decade isn’t even going to crack it.

It’s obvious that I have too many ideas to do before 2022. If I could work on them all full time, maybe I’d break the back of the to-do list by Christmas 2014, or perhaps not.

Because let’s face it, developing and working on speculative ideas can never really be our full-time role. Most of the time we have to get the donkey work done, the bread and butter, sort out family life, keep the wolf from the door, pay the bills, work for the Man, please the boss, firefight, ambulance chase, deal with people, manage stuff and generally ‘get on’. Only a lucky few have the luxury to sit back and pick and choose from their creative list or religiously work through every single idea one by one without distraction.

So is it simply a question of time management, of project management and the old chestnut, goal setting?

Partly.

Those are topics well described (by me in the past and loads of others). Here’s a summary: Prioritise your projects, break ‘em down into bite sized chunks and do a little bit of work on them each day. That’s goal setting. Not much more to be said really.

But does that solve the problem?

No really, no.

Because goal setting, time and project management only work when you know what you’re supposed to be doing. The reason people don’t achieve their dreams (or even get the most humble of tasks done like reading the papers or having a break) is not through lack of time management or not having goal setting techniques.

Could it be because all of those wonderful ideas we have, we know, deep down that they’re not really that great after-all, or would require far too much time and effort to transform into a good idea worth making sacrifices for?

To put it simply, we’re right back at the start, if we admit it. We actually have lots and lots of pretty average ideas and a few very poor ones. The reason we don’t know which to choose is because none of them excites us, ignites our passions or gives that shudder of a thrill as if buried treasure has been found.

The fact of asking the question, ‘which idea should I pursue’ gives us a clue that perhaps we need to be more creative still; take the present batch of ideas as practice for coming up with something worth pursuing. If you were asking ‘which girl or boy should I marry?’ and had to weigh up the pros and cons of a group of men of women, it probably means that you haven’t found the right person just yet. It’s the same with ‘the big idea’.

Why should there be a ‘big idea’ you may ask? Because we know perfectly well that we can’t do everything. We know perfectly well that we haven’t got the time. We know perfectly well that multitasking produces multiple average results.

We know from everyone who has ever been successful that they concentrated on one thing at a time, to get it right, to power it, to complete it.

So the next time you hear someone saying ‘I’ve got so many ideas, I don’t know which to focus on’ tell them they’re just not being creative enough. And that includes me if you catch me at it too.

Ayd works with people and businesses to explore and unlock their creative ideas in ways they may never have thought possible, to inspire innovation.

Book Ayd to speak about the Power of ‘What If?’ and Inspiration for Innovation at your conference, or in your business. A great way to open your event or as an after lunch energiser.

For more interesting info see: www.aydinstone.com

Dare we discuss the F word?

Dare I write an article about failure?

The internet is so full of positive platitudes, feel-good quotes and testimony from all the rich, famous and celebrated (successful) people about how failure is a good thing – the best time to begin again – the another way not to do it getting you closer to success and so on…

But does that help?

Are there different types of failure that need to be handled in different ways?

Perhaps.

Here’s the first and most clear cut type. We can all recognise it. It’s where you fail to reach a set standard, such as a driving test, or get a silver medal instead of gold, B for your Mathematics GCSE instead of an A. It’s also a failure to pass through a gateway such as failing to get the job or the university place or to close the sale.

These I believe are all the same; there’s a target and you didn’t hit it. Maybe, depending on what it is, you can have another go and try for the bullseye again – re-take the driving test. Sometimes you can’t and have to settle for less – take home the silver medal, go to your second choice university, put up with the job for a bit longer.

But there is another kind of failure that attacks the creative mind that is unrelated to that first type. This more pernicious one is less easy to spot and deal with face on. No amount of platitudes or quotes from Marianne Williamson or Edison will make a dent it its blackness. It’s a creeping doom of an arbitrary dissatisfaction with your work, your abilities, your life. It’s a sense of having failed that unlike the first type isn’t matched to a clear and visible target. It has fuzzy edges. You can’t quite get a handle on it. It’s a feeling of failure rather than a printed out results page that clearly gives the grading mark. It’s something only you can see and often you can’t quite explain it.

Zig Ziglar said, “Failure is an event, not a person”.

That’s a great and useful quote, and clearly helps with Failure Type 1. But with Failure Type 2, when there doesn’t appear to be an actual event, it really does still feel like a personal failing.

It manifests itself as an over whelming feeling of not being good enough (rather than a specific and tangible failure to hit a target that can be identified and corrected). It appears as a holistic failure, of all systems.

So many artists, on completion of a piece of work, which may even have been labeled by the outside world as a masterpiece, often turn on themselves and their work and label it themselves as a failure, and sometime even destroy it. Authors have been known to burn or shred manuscripts, painters to paint over or destroy their paintings, musicians to wipe mastertapes.

It’s symptom is that of regret, focusing too much time on what might have been if we’d only chosen the alternative path.

We know we’re prone to it when we find ourselves comparing ourselves or our work with others.

In the mid-sixties, the Beatles and the Beach Boys vied for position as the greatest creative force in popular music. Inspired by the brilliance of the Beatles’ 1965 Rubber Soul, Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys felt the gauntlet had been thrown down and he had to better the Beatles’ efforts. The result was the excellent Pet Sounds. But it didn’t hold he crown of most innovative LP for long as the Beatles released their groundbreaking Revolver LP in 1966. This excited and enraged Wilson, who took it upon himself to bring in a new lyricist and the best professional musicians he could gather, ignoring the rest of the Beach Boys, in an attempt to produce his masterwork and trounce the Beatles once and for all. The Smile sessions were the most ambitious recording sessions ever attempted, but the complexities required were just not possible with the technology of the day. He also took it upon himself to produce the album himself feeling that no other producer could translate his vision. The Beatles of course had George Martin in their collaborative team, as well as being a tightly knit quartet. The overly complex Smile was hit by delay after delay and then, in January 1967, Brian Wilson was traveling in his car when something came on the radio. He pulled of the road to listen and broke down, tears falling on his cheeks. It was the Beatles new record, Strawberry Fields Forever. That was the moment that Wilson knew that the Beatles had won. That was the high water mark for innovative popular music. From that point on, everything to come would be variations on a theme as music fragmented into genres. It was cemented by the release of the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper six months later making Wilson’s creative breakdown complete. He never fully recovered. Smile was abandoned and he left the Beach Boys.

44 years later in 2011, Brian Wilson returned to the Smile tapes and finished off the record. Technology and time had moved on sufficiently for him to be able to piece together the intricacies in a way he couldn’t back in 1967.

He had set himself up for creative failure by setting a goal that was impossible to reach, setting his ambition too high, by wanting to create the greatest music work every created (trying to get ‘one up’ on Revolver could have been attainable). He was also weighed down by the immense pressure of a mythical standard of his own making by judging his success by comparing himself with others. Instead he could have compared himself with his personal best (trying to beat Pet Sounds could have been attainable).

There is a reason that creative people create their own demons in this way.

Creativity is governed by right-brain thinking, by imagination, with subconscious inspiration in the visual arts, in music and in creative writing. One of its principles, or attributes, is uncertainty. It’s a by-product of how creativity works, it is not certain of itself, it is in flux and without logic or sequence.

Uncertainty is uncomfortable. We usually want to search for certainty, for an anchor, for something to cling on to. But we need this uncertainty to be able to create in the first place, but its dark side is that we turn it into self doubt and spiral down into our own meaningless lack of worth instead of spiraling up into transformational success.

So what’s the answer? In short there isn’t one. But there is hope in knowing that this is the path that we will find ourselves on at some point in our creative lives. Being forewarned is forearmed and knowledge that our despair is just a side product of our creative power can take the sting out of it.

Doom and glory are the extremes that only the creative mind tastes. Our job is really to surf the space in between as neither of those countries are places we should ever linger.

So perhaps the old platitudes were right after all. You actually can’t have success without failure as they are both manifestations of the same mechanism.

Churchill famously said “If you’re going through hell, keep going”. The same is true, of course, for failure. You’ve heard the one “Bravery is not the absence of fear, but the ability to take action in spite of it”.

Success favours those who continue to take action in spite of failure, those who keep going. So come on, let’s keep going, knowing that failure is perhaps not a false path after all, but is perhaps instead the fuel.

Ayd works with people and businesses to explore and unlock their creative ideas in ways they may never have thought possible, to inspire innovation.

Book Ayd to speak about the Power of ‘What If?’ and Inspiration for Innovation at your conference, or in your business. A great way to open your event or as an after lunch energiser.

For more interesting info see: www.aydinstone.com

The paradox of the creative soul

It’s often said that when an artist gets comfortable (either with enough acclaim or financial reward) they stop creating. John Lennon once said he thought it was a myth, saying, “It’s easier to write on a cushion”. But is it?

The paradox of the creative soul is that the driver for their creativity is often to attain a peace and order of their own making, in their particular medium, from the turmoil that surrounds them. The creative process is by definition a manipulation of the environment in some way. But that process can only be initiated from a state of a personal struggle, of chaos, an itch. So if the creator finds themselves in their perceived successful state, where all is already peaceful and ordered, their creative journey is over. They have no driver to continue.

Popular belief tends to suggest that not only is the poor, struggling, unfulfilled artist more prolific, but their work is often perceived to be more worthy. But is this true?

In music, the blues, songs of unrequited love and of melancholy, born out of struggle, heartache and sadness are ranked far higher in terms of artist merit than formulaic happy love songs that are deemed cheesy in comparison.

Because creativity and problem solving are so entwined, can it be that the creative soul needs problems to work on or they lose their raison-d’etre? Like the detective who longs for a mysterious murder to solve, without which he is nothing.

Do we as artists have a faustian pact with darkness, that we need it, to have the light we create have contrast?

But it IS easier to write on cushions. It IS easier to work productively on your art when you’re not trying to keep the wolf from the door, be that threat of personal safety or financial security. Urgency does fire creativity, there’s no doubt, but urgent creativity draws upon emergency quick fixes as the brain tries to effectively fight or flight. Urgency gets results but the brain doesn’t allow itself the luxury of tapping into deeper subterranean caves for more inventive solutions.

The reason there are so many stories of struggling artists does not suggest that poverty is a vital ingredient to creativity, but that it’s simply a feature of it being so difficult for anyone to gain superstar status. It’s especially difficult when the artist is busy doing their art and not selling themselves, and so often artists are better at one than the other. Neither is mental illness a prerequisite. Again, we know those stories well as news favours sensationalism.

Many creatives realise that their joy comes from riding the paradox. It is the creative journey that they seek to enjoy. It’s not about reaching the destination. In many ways, it’s not possible to reach the destination just at it’s not possible to touch a rainbow.

Many creative people are good starters but poor finishers, they’re more likely to kick start another process while the previous one is still in motion. This act of plate spinning itself causes more dark pain of chaotic struggle. This struggle requires, and conjures, the kind of creative energy the creative soul so desires.

Creative people are fixers. They spot problems and try to fix them, or reflect them for others to understand better. The artist is both hero and villain, harnessing both darkness and light, logic and chaos, art and science. This is the paradox that the creative soul must embrace and surf in order to play their creative role in the world.

(The picture is Salvador Dalí’s, ‘The Persistence of Memory’, 1931, showing softness and hardness and unconscious symbols of the relativity of space and time and the collapse of our notions of a fixed cosmic order.  © 2007 Salvador Dalí, Gala-Salvador Dalí Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Dalí is a great example of an artist who produced consistent work during high levels of personal success, accolades and wealth.)

Ayd works with people and businesses to explore and unlock their creative ideas in ways they may never have thought possible, to inspire innovation.

Book Ayd to speak about the Power of ‘What If?’ and Inspiration for Innovation at your conference, or in your business. A great way to open your event or as an after lunch energiser.

For more interesting info see: www.aydinstone.com

The creative secret of the transition

Creativity happens in the cusps, on the skin, at the interface of transition.

Nothing much happens in the lazy heat of mid-summer or the bleak cold of mid-winter. It is in the spring of new life and in the cold air of autumn when the light changes to darkness when the moment for creativity has come.

It is the precipice between waking and sleep – the hiding place of inspiration and secret ideas.

Have a look at soap bubbles, bubbling together on the water’s surface in your bath. The bubble itself is empty; the structure and the strength is the interface between the bubbles. And as above, so below and so within – the soap bubble is a model of the universe, exactly half way in size between a galaxy cluster and an atom. Both contain vast empty space, with their stars and nebulae, or their electron shells, forming the structure, the pattern, between which is only empty space.

Life began on that cusp. On the sulphuric vents in the deep sea, the interface between earth and water. The first cells emerged by evolving a polarisation of hydrophobes and hydrophiles, by creating a unit that rejected water within and faced it without, forming a spherical cusp. Life evolved in the oceans in the interface between the cold dark of the depths and the golden warm light of Sol. It found it’s place between the wet sea and the dry land, between the dusty hot land and the cool clear skies. Each interfacial transition moved the process we call life onto new heights of adventure, excitement and advancement.

Humanity evolved on the interfaces too. Between hand and rock. Between body and mind. Between mind and spirit.

And so it is with ideas.

Ideas are born exactly half way between what was and what will be.

Transition is our moment of artistry. When old ways are understood so well that they can be implemented unconsciously, we can begin to work with new ways that are so unknown they still have the excitement of discovery and experiment. The two become fused together for a brief time – confidence and uncertainty, hope and fear.

Transition is our moment of destiny. It is standing on a solid foundation and then taking that first step off into the brink of the unknowable. It is where things happen, where genius is forged, where kingdoms are born.

But it is also a place of terror, of frustration and despair, as every artist knows. As every inventor knows. As every entrepreneur knows. The night is the darkest just before the dawn.

But the transition is not the place to stop and rest. We are only ever passing through. It’s not the place to retreat from, that only leads to boredom, self-parody, repetition and stagnation. It is the springboard to our future.

The transition can only ever be a passing place, a moment, a touchpoint. Then there is new work to be done, to fulfill the potential of what the transition promised. The world becomes flat again, processes continue again, production begins again on the new plane. That is until he next moment of transition when the dice is thrown once more, the rule book ripped up again and when the new ways have themselves become the old ways as we face the next transition.

Once more we find ourselves on the precipice, the cusp, the edge of infinity, with only the one certainty, that change is certain. The circle continues.

But do not fear, this moment will too pass. The sun will rise again and the dreams we had upon waking will become our reality once again as we deliver from the transition our most creative expressive ideas.

Ayd works with people and businesses to explore and unlock their creative ideas in ways they may never have thought possible, to inspire innovation.

Click here to learn about Ayd’s Ideastorm workshops.

Book Ayd to speak about the Power of ‘What If?’ and Inspiration for Innovation at your conference, or in your business. A great way to open your event or as an after lunch energiser.

For more interesting info see: www.aydinstone.com

NASA’s Mars Rover Curiosity cartoon

NASA’s Mars Rover Curiosity discovers it’s running the wrong software…

Ayd works with people and businesses to explore and unlock their creative ideas in ways they may never have thought possible, to inspire innovation.

Click here to learn about Ayd’s Ideastorm workshops.

Book Ayd to speak about the Power of ‘What If?’ and Inspiration for Innovation at your conference, or in your business. A great way to open your event or as an after lunch energiser.

For more interesting info see: www.aydinstone.com