Friday, September 21, 2007

Creative Vision - Have You Been Dreaming With The Lid On?

Do you have a clear, strong vision for your creative life?
Do you know exactly where you want to be heading, what you want to achieve in the next month, the next 6 months, the next year, the next 5 years?
What are your creative dreams and goals, and what are your plans for reaching them?
If you’re like most of us creative types, you’re probably now quivering behind the sofa, face locked in an expression of horror at the mere mentioned of words like “goals”, “achieve” and "plans”.
Because of this aversion to thinking about the future and putting steps in place to get there, your creative ambitions are far smaller and more limiting than they could be. In short, you’ve been dreaming with the lid on.
Here then are 5 of the major reasons why you don’t dream big in your creative life:
1. You feel you don’t deserve it. You don’t bother to think about what you could achieve because you feel you don’t deserve to get there and experience all the happy, proud feelings that would come to you. Most likely this comes from a combination of years of programmed thoughts like “I’m not worthy enough”, “Someone else more talented should get a break before me” and “I’ve not been good enough”.
2. You don’t recognise you dreams already around you. Often when we do think of creative dreams that are big and wide reaching, we don’t realise that already we have some of them in place. For example the writer who has written countless poems, stories and articles, but when asked what their creative dream is says “to be a prolific writer.” Recognise those dreams you’ve already achieved!
3. You’re scared of failing. If you dream big then of course there’s the chance – in fact it’s almost a certainty – that you won’t see every last detail of your dream perfectly realised. Because of this “all or nothing” kind of approach, rather than reach the amazing achievement of 75% of your creative dreams, you think it’s better to achieve none at all.
4. You don’t connect your dreams with reality. Your dreams are completely unrealistic. Even dreams have to be based in reality if you want to reach them. For example if you’ve been trying to learn guitar without much success for 10 years but still dream of being spoken of in the same breath of Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton, you’re being unrealistic. Find a dream that plays to your unique talents and creative strengths.
5. You simply don’t know how to dream big. Maybe in your life you’ve had no examples or role models of people who’ve dreamed big and achieved them. There’s a saying that we become most like the 5 people we spend most time with. If none of them are creative or have achieved much, that’s going to seriously hold back your own creativity and ability to dream.
These are 5 of the reasons why we don’t dream big in our creative lives, why we keep our dreams small, in a jar, with the lid firmly on.
Which do you most relate to? What steps can you take in the next 24 hours towards taking the lid of that jar, or at least loosening it a little and giving your creative dreams a chance to come out?
Kick-start your creativity today by downloading your free copy of the powerful and practical Explode Your Creativity! Action Workbook at http://www.coachcreative.com/createcreate3
From Creativity Coach Dan Goodwin.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Dan_Goodwin

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