The curse of the creative is that although we have SOOO many good ideas, we have no way to keep track of it all, and even less resources to follow up and see how it is all going, which ideas are good, which are not so good, how to optimize and improve on our existing ideas, and less of all to execute even a fraction of them effectively.
Even though we might say “wow this is one of the best ideas I have had the last year”, and no matter how much we try, it is VERY DIFFICULT to let go of all other ideas that keep streaming into our minds and just do this one thing that we really want to do.
Because we keep getting sidetracked, knocked off of our established path, urged to try out new things that pop into our minds.. That’s who we are. We are creative. We are not made to track, to administrate, to execute to perfection. We have new visions all the time, every month or even every week coming up with new ways of improving things, and how are we supposed to disregard all those wonderful creative solutions that keep popping up in our minds, and just hold our focus on what we are currently doing?
What we have been working on for more than one week suddenly seems so old, so outdated, so boring compared to all the new stuff we come up with all the time.
Everything else is shiny – what we are looking at currently, even if it is originated from our own minds, suddenly looks dull in comparison….
This is the curse of the creative people. Channeling our ideas effectively is our greatest challenge.
For us, ideas are not a scarce resource. And we can not operate effectively in this world by ourselves. Because if we do, if we are forcing ourselves to keep our focus on one thing, then we are suppressing our greatest strength – our ability to see new solutions to old problems. And this scares us. We are afraid that if we do that for too long, we will loose our greatest strength, that we will become.. One of them. One of those people who do not see what we see, one of those people who just accept the world as it is, and not wanting to change it for the better.
But paradoxically, we need those people. They complement us. They must take over our ideas once we have spit them out. We need several of those people to channel all our ideas through. They are the ones who must inherit what we create, and make it blossom. Because while our greatest strength is to plant new seeds, if left to us, those same seeds will soon be neglected and die. Because we will have already moved on to create even other seeds before they have the chance to get the attention they deserve.
My mission in life is to align with those people who are my opposite. That’s when I can finally see my ideas come into fruition.
