'Where Do You Get Your Ideas?'

    "Where do you get your ideas?"

    Arrrrggggh!!! That question! The bane of every creative person's existence.

    Okay, I'll answer this for once. But pay attention, because it might be the only time. Usually I give a glib answer such as Agatha Christie's British equivalent of, "I pick them up by the dozen at J.C. Penney."

    In all honesty, most of my ideas just come to me. They "pop into my head." I rarely go looking for them. This ability can be developed. To me abstract thought is creativity: the putting together of seemingly unrelated items to form a new thing. (I've gone into detail on this elsewhere and will undoubtedly do so again in the future, so for now, I'm leaving this at that.)

    Let me put it another way. You look at item A and suddenly imagine how it affects or interacts with item (or situation, etc.) B, even though the two may seem completely unrelated. For instance, what does a mackerel have to do with world peace? In creativity there is a lot of "what if" and "if... what...?" "If this were to happen, what would be the results?" And the truth of the matter is once you've done that sort of speculation and free association for a while the subconscious becomes conditioned to the activity and will begin doing it on its own, seeing all sorts of mysterious and wondrous things you'd not have consciously noticed, and offering them up to you on a silver platter as amazing flights of creativity and startlingly clear insights.

    You train your mind to be creative. Maybe there is a bit of genetic proclivity involved, but I think that concept is highly overrated. I don't care how much natural physical prowess you have, if you want to be an athlete you still must train. Further, while some people may have a genetic predisposition to becoming drunks, there are a great many people who are alcoholics who have no such predisposition. Genetics are not required in any of this. Often the greatest are those without the natural giftings because they work harder at it and master it, whereas the naturally gifted take their gifts for granted and never fully develop their particular genius.

Press on. Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful individuals with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.

U.S. President Calvin Coolidge

 

    Unfortunately most people wrongly think that if they can't, without any training or support, win a marathon on their first try they should buy a wheelchair and never walk again. "I can't ad lib like Robin Williams? I'd better never tell a joke. I have no sense of humor!" They dismiss themselves as uncreative, without ever having trained a minute.

    I think most really creative people inadvertently, without conscious thought or effort, went through exactly this type of training in their earliest formative years. It may not have been directed to the purpose of birthing creativity, but that was the natural result anyway. Maybe it was the games their parents played with them. Maybe it was their natural reaction to the stimulus presented. I don't know what spurred the training of the subconscious, but training there undoubtedly was.

    Let's say you're training your mind for creativity. You're working on it, but you're still stuck for ideas. What then? A bit of advice: Go buy a Sunday paper, not some rinky dink little local thing, but a major metropolitan Sunday newspaper, the kind of sledgehammer bulk of newsprint that could kill on ox. Open it up. Start reading. There is so much information in one of these papers, so many ideas ready for the serving, that if you can't get anything from it you're either blocking your mind ("Blah... ! I told you, I'm just not creative!") or you simply need to do more training.

    Let's pursue this. Read a story in the paper. How do you react to it? What is your opinion of it? What does it make you think of? Does it bring up some childhood memory? You have to be open to whatever feelings and thoughts flash through your mind. They are the root of creativity. Too many people shut them off. They don't want to feel, they don't want to think about anything from the past because it "might be unpleasant." Yeah well, creativity can be unpleasant at times. Welcome to the jungle! It takes a certain openness to be a really creative person. Most people just don't want to go there. It is not that they can't. They won't.
    Back to the story. If you are trying to come up with an idea regarding something in particular, pause for a moment. Consider, how does this story apply to what I need the idea for? How do the feelings, thoughts, memories this story brings up apply to my situation or target? Start flipping through the paper, read what catches your eyes. Are you drawn to a particular ad? Why? Perhaps your subconscious is trying to alert you to something. (By the way, you could very well put down the paper, walk away, and an hour later suddenly come up with just the idea you've been looking for. You fed you subconscious the information and when it was fully digested, your subconscious presented you the answer. Congratulations. That is the way it is supposed to work.)
    There are enough ideas in your average metropolitan Sunday paper to keep you going for a year. (Alternatives: encyclopedias and dictionaries. Flip through a dictionary randomly reading words and definitions. What do they bring up in your mind?) As I said above, if you are getting absolutely nothing, it is only because you either haven't applied the proper preparatory work or you are blocking it from working because of lousy beliefs.

    Actually, this is all just more training for your subconscious. It's like working out. The more you do it, the bigger your muscles become, the easier it is to do. After a while the entire process will become invisible to you. Then you too will experience ideas that "just pop into your head."



Los Angeles, CA
January 27th, 2000