- Have you even looked at someone's social media
and thought, how do they ave so many creative ideas?
I could never be that creative, even if I wanted to try.
Well, you are not alone, and also,
that social creative person,
they have seen their less creative days.
They have seen the struggle, let me tell you.
(peaceful music)
Hey, there, welcome back to AmyTV.
I am back from vacation.
Do I look refreshed?
Thank you for hanging with me.
I know I didn't post a video in the last week,
but I was enjoying my honeymoon in Aruba,
so you cannot be mad at me, right?
You can't, right?
Right?
Something that was top of mind for me
as I was coming back from some time off
was getting back into the swing of things
with being creative.
Being creative is a part of my job.
Maybe it's something that's a part of your job, as well,
or it's something that you're excited by,
but it's not always super natural to you.
So today I just want to talk about
how to become more creative, whether it is
that you're in a little bit of a lull,
or you feel like you've never had it in the first place.
Whatever the case may be, this is what I believe
you have to do to be more creative.
Before we dive in, make sure you subscribe to this channel.
I make new videos every Sunday and Wednesday.
I've been toying with playing with the days a little bit.
You know, we did Monday and Thursday a couple of weeks ago,
just wanted to try that out, but regardless,
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How do you become more creative?
I know that this is something
a lot of us think about, right?
We're in social spheres online or in real life
that could make us think like, oh, why couldn't I do that,
or why couldn't that be just an innate talent
that I was born with?
And so we kind of get into our own head
about what it means to be creative
and how creative that we are,
but we actually have a lot more control over it
than we give ourselves credit.
If it actually is something that you're excited about,
if it's something that you care about,
if it's something that you want to develop,
it's a skillset, and therefore, you need to work on it.
You can't just have a skillset.
I know a lot of people that I went to school with
maybe were born to be artists, but it doesn't mean
that they didn't have to work on their craft
to get better throughout their life.
And creativity could mean a lot of different things to you.
It could just mean that you want to be better at your work,
which may not look like creative work on the surface,
but if you have a little bit more of a creative mindset,
it could be more effective.
It could be different; you could be more unique.
I actually don't have much of a step-by-step process
for you, because I think it's all in one step.
Being more creative simply means making the time for it.
Now I know that sounds crazy, right, because we think
that oh, the creative lightning bolt
is just gonna strike us whenever the right moment happens.
I used to think that, also.
I used to think, oh, okay, I'll write a book
at some point when suddenly I have to sit down
and I have 30,000 words I have to get out of my head.
Like, hmmm, no, that doesn't happen (laughs).
When I wrote my book, it was like, oh, no,
I think I have 30,000 words,
but I actually have to set the time
in order to outline those words
and get them all down into chapters and into a full book.
So it was about making that time, scheduling that time in.
If writing is sort of that creative thing for you,
whether it's blogging or a book
or anything you can think of, if you want to be
a more prolific writer, you could wait for the universe
to say, oh, okay, now's the time
to be a more amazing writer.
Get started.
Or you can set the time to work on it every single day
so it gets easier and easier and easier and easier.
It's probably no surprise
that I turned this creativity how-to video
into a productivity video, because that's what I do,
but it really is the heart of this issue.
One of my favorite books that I've read in the last year,
which was long overdue, about creativity
was The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron,
and she specifically talks, oh, she talks about a lot
of things in this book, but one of the big things
that this book became known for
was sort of the things that you have to do
to kind of get creative at the outset,
like right at the beginning,
and the two things that she basically assigns you to do
is morning pages and artist dates,
and you're supposed to do this for a set period of time,
where you wake up every morning,
and you have morning pages,
and we've talked about this before,
but if you don't know what it is,
you simply write, you know, longhand,
on three pages, anything that is in your mind.
Now that sounds really crazy, right,
like you could just end up journaling a bunch of hubbub
and things that don't really matter,
but those are the things that are in your mind,
and if you're truly trying to get to some creative point
within you, if you have all this crap in front,
you need to get it out in order to be able to get
to what the good stuff is in the back.
So really dumping your mind on these morning pages
can be so advantageous, and then maybe you find later on
as you continue and you do it ever single day,
that you actually do end up writing something that's like,
oh, that's kind of interesting.
I really like the way that sounds.
Maybe I could build on that.
Maybe that's a blog post.
Maybe that's a book.
Maybe that's a completely different idea altogether.
Morning pages; you set the time, you do it every day,
you do it at the same time every day.
You do it in the same way every day.
Maybe you have the same cup of coffee every day.
You really schedule that time and make it a habit.
The next thing is those artist dates, right,
and this is one that's so interesting to me,
because we've all had that moment
where maybe we ended up being by ourselves for some reason.
Maybe we're by ourselves a lot.
You're walking through a park.
You went to a museum.
I find myself traveling a lot alone,
so I try to find opportunities for me
to go do something and explore.
That could be considered an artist date.
You're supposed to go completely alone.
You're not supposed to take your significant other with you.
You're not supposed to really even, I don't think,
make a plan.
To me, the way I interpreted it from the book
was just go and spend time somewhere
and absorb the environment and see what happens,
but going on those consistent artist dates
so that you can see what becomes creative to you
in that moment.
But if you do not set the time, you won't do it, right?
You have to schedule your date,
just like you would schedule coffee with someone else.
You have to schedule a date with yourself,
and so I love that her book talked about that.
Everything comes back to, are you making the time for it?
You cannot get increasingly better at being a creative
if you don't give yourself the time to do it.
I think one of my favorite books that I read,
and it's not necessarily a creative book.
It was just a book about how people become the absolute best
in their class, and it was a book by Malcolm Gladwell
called Outliers, and it's kind of funny
when you read how Bill Gates became who he was,
or how Steve Jobs became who he was,
and really a lot of other people,
not just these people that became enormous in tech.
Those were just top of mind.
But we all think like, oh, they just happened to be,
you know, amazing at what they do.
They're geniuses.
Well, no, it had a lot to do with where they were
at that point in time, what they did every single day,
how they educated themselves, the crazy things
they had to do to get to learn anything
that they wanted to know, and that's what made them outliers
in some way, but if we can take some of the things,
maybe we don't become outliers like they do,
but if we can take some of the advice from them,
it was making the time.
It was making the time, not waiting for it to happen to us.
One of the biggest things I think for people
that are specifically like, look, this is all fine
and good, but I've never felt a creative bone
in my body, ever, ever, ever, ever,
then maybe you feel like you're starting
at an even earlier point than those
who kind of understand what it feel like
but just have a little bit of a lull right now,
or they've just fallen out of sync with their creativity.
If you feel like you're starting from absolute zero,
you simply just need to make time to educate yourself
right off the bat, and I think these other things
I suggested or that are in Julia's book
are great things for you to do, also.
I don't think you should skip them.
Just because you're not an artist yet
doesn't mean you can't go on an artist's date,
but another thing you can do is educate yourself.
I know that from my own experience,
the things that got me excited
and made me realize I could have a creative outlet
were by me teaching myself some sort of skill.
So I talk a lot about my first video happening in 2007.
It was totally random.
I'd made it for a friend.
I would never have discovered that I love this world
if I would not have just turned the camera on
and tried to create something,
and then go back to my computer and read up
on how to use a video editor and stitch the video together,
and use the tools as well as I could
and come up with a final project.
It wasn't until I did some educating on that,
really, really absorbed as much as I could learn
at that time with the resources that I had,
and a lot of that was like, what can I find
for free on the internet, because I had no money.
I had no, not a lot of higher education access
to this kind of thing, so that is what made me realize
I even had any creativity in me.
Up to that point, I was like, there's no way I'm a creative.
I must be secretly good at math,
because this creative thing is not me.
I'm terrible at math; I was not good in science.
God, when I think about those classes,
it makes me want to cry.
But I had to do something.
I had to make the time.
I had to learn how to do something
in order to realize, oh, hey, there's a little bit
of creativity in me.
I think this could go somewhere.
And it can be so exciting just having,
just think of the last tutorial that you watched
on YouTube that was like here, first do this,
and then do this, and then do this,
and then publish, and then it's done,
and you got so excited that you learned
how to do something that it made you want to make more.
If you learn something and you want to make more,
you're becoming more creative.
That is literally it.
That's the secret.
So how do you become more creative?
Make the time for it, every day.
Give yourself that homework assignment.
If you need to read a book on what you need to do,
you know, I gave you one suggestion.
Go find another.
Do it.
Make time every single day.
If you feel like you are missing the boat
on this whole creativity thing,
it's because you're probably doing
a lot of things that do not spur creativity.
Watching a lot of TV and movies, for one,
is a great example.
I can tell you right now, on my vacay,
I was watching a lot of movies.
Me and Ben love to watch movies.
I don't watch as many movies when I feel like
I'm in the zone and I'm working,
because I know that that's going to be escapism.
That's gonna take me out of the world
that I'm trying to improve around myself,
and if I take myself out of that world,
I tend to get less creative.
Now you can watch film and you can watch a lot of things
and get really amped and creative,
it just depends on how you're looking at it.
For most people, they're going into the TV world,
and they're saying like, just take me away
from whatever the heck I'm responsible for
at this point, please.
What are you doing that might be escapism
that isn't necessarily productive
on the skill building and creativity side?
That's really where I think your creativity's getting lost.
It's kind of just sitting there on the shelf,
getting dusty, not being used.
If you don't use it, you lose it.
Probably not; I mean, you could just start right now.
It doesn't matter how old you are.
It's not like, you know, it's not that serious, people.
Just start (laughs).
So here's your question of the day.
What is something that you do that makes you feel
super creative after you've done it?
You even know this, and you haven't done it in a while,
maybe, but you know every single time you've done this,
there's a little bit of spark in you,
or there's a little bit more ideas
that start to come about, or you just feel more creative.
What is that?
Leave that in the comments below.
If you enjoyed this chat about creativity,
make sure you give the video a thumbs up here on YouTube.
That helps me understand what you like to see
and what you want to see more of, so thank you for that.
That's all for today.
Thank you so much for tuning in.
I appreciate it, as always.
Make sure you subscribe for good vibes,
and remember to continue to go after the life
that you want.
Cheers.
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