It all started for me, with a kernel of an idea back in 2001 when we had returned to Australia from 2 years living and working in England and travelling to Europe every other month. It was a wonderful time, and coming ‘home’ seemed so ordinary. When we lived overseas, each new adventure was fuel for my brain. I had notebooks into which I scribbled ideas and stuck snippets of brochures and books and all kinds of inspirational stuff, and then somehow it all ended. Life at ‘home’ became about working, and being a mum to 2 youngsters, and running a home, and making meals, and and and…but I knew that something was missing…
Fast forward to today, and it’s incredibly hard not to notice the myriad of magazine/news articles/books dedicated to the topic of creative thinking in business. OK, maybe that’s just what my radar is tuned to, but more now than ever before I’m noticing the trend.
That makes me so happy, and that makes me so sad…happy because anything that promotes more creativity, creative thinking, free thinking and play has got to be a great thing for society…
Sad because our education system is still failing to provide our young students with the kind of free thinking play based creative support that they need to develop them into wonderfully radical adults.
Sad because I know that there are so many adults in the work force currently who have had the play and creativity squished out of them.
Help is of course at hand, and the internet is a fabulous place for finding resources, courses, books, tips, hints…you name it…Far be it for me to add to the noise – but I really can’t help myself.
Today I read a great article on the Thought Leaders LLC website by Paul Smith, author of “Lead with a Story”. As I was reading the article (find it here…”Why you should always lead with a story”) I was again struck with the correlation between creativity and the needs of business – but not just the ‘think like Steve Jobs’ kind of creativity – but the simple act of running meetings, making sales calls, training staff, talking to customers…stories have a way of connecting us that plain old information doesn’t.
Your ability to draft, either mentally or on paper, a good story that relates an experience to the message is a creative act. I’m not suggesting a fabricated story, but most of us have some experience that allows us to relate – or we wouldn’t be doing what we’re doing in the first place!
So back to my story…
The kernel of the idea that was planted in my head was an article I read in Fast Company magazine, a fabulous magazine that I picked up in the US, where we spent 5 weeks, enroute back home to Australia. I was hooked! The article I read was by Seth Goden about catching an ‘Ideavirus’ and I certainly had caught it! My work that I do now at Artful Genius has been a culmination of a lifetime of passion around creativity and thinking and curiosity – but particularly over the past 11 years I remember that ‘ideavirus’ article in the fabulous Fast Company magazine (a great mag that I still devour today!). There have been many times when I have strayed from the path, and some times when I have needed to, but I can no longer ignore that I have been struck with an ideavirus that has been in my system since 2001.
The idea that I want to show EVERYBODY is how embracing their creativity will allow them to have fun, reduce stress, have more laughs, create a better future, solve more problems and be more constructive at work. I’m ready to step into that path in a way that I haven’t been before…who’s with me?