Creativity and Motivation

In order to be creative, you have to be motivated. Motivated to create, to work, to follow your passions, to live with a little spunk. Motivation is what drives us to do what we do each day, whether we like it or not.

You've got crappy motivations and awesome motivations and everything in between. There is a trend seen amongst successful people. Not just successful people, but with people who have a genuine satisfaction in what they do. 

Build these awesome motivations in your life and watch success flow! And then be satisfied with it!

Sound familiar?? College maybe??

1. Autonomy

Autonomy is when you are motivated by self direction. You are self governed and push yourself to accomplish something instead of rewards or punishments from others. It becomes important to you to do things for your own sake. Choose to push yourself through school assignments because you want to learn and not for the A. Choose to make your work assignment perfect so that you can be proud of the outcome. Choose to pursue your passion in life and not just what makes you money.

Lets say your boss at work tells you to do some research for a project and then create a report on your findings and show it to him in a week. Now, you can do that assignment because you FEAR that if you don't, you'll get fired. You can do that assignment because you know it's just your job, it's your DUTY in the position you hold. But these reasons don't have enough substance to get you very far. When you finally decided to do the assignment because you truly WANT to do it, you then tap into the best motivation you can find. This self direction, self governing technique is self empowering.

The best source of motivation is self-generated!

2. Self Mastery

Self Mastery is a huge motivator. Do what you do because it is improving yourself. It's all about doing things in order to become better at it. There's a certain amount of healthy self-satisfaction that comes when we work on our own self mastery. It always seems like the "greats" of any respected field of work were driven by self mastery, always wanting to learn more and more.

I had a man come to one of my college classes and tell us about his business and how it all started. He began by helping his parent's small website out with their social media marketing when they couldn't afford a professional service. He spent hours upon hours just learning by trial and error and eventually knew enough to grow his parents online presence to the point that it significantly raised their profits. He now works for himself and has more then 70 employees doing the very thing he did for his parents, working for dozens of major companies. What's motivating him now? He still reads about 4 hours of marketing/ business tactical material each night in order to continue to master what he does. THAT is what is making him successful.

3. Purpose Driven

Rather then jumping into a job, a major, or a lifestyle that brings little purpose to your life, try focusing your passion and skills on a purpose that is important to you. A purpose-driven individual will always work past a roadblock while the purposeless individual will quit. Some of the greatest most successful entrepreneurs of today are those that start their business with a bigger purpose in mind. Without purpose you lose direction. Without direction it's hard to look past the failures and stumbling blocks that come your way. Steve Ells, founder of Chipotle, almost lost his restaurants due to tough critics early in his business. But, his passion and purpose of bringing fresh ingredients in a simple way to his customers kept him afloat. They are now one of the largest growing restaurant chains in the bizz!  Purpose is the strength needed to go for something seemingly impossible.

Her purpose was to pet the bear... so she pet the bear!

These motivating factors have been taught to me through several different channels, however nothing seems to explain so well how they work and why they work, then this awesome video. It's worth ten and a half minutes of your time, trust me! Dan Pink, the speaker in this short clip, is a motivational pro who has done many studies and written a couple books on what motivates everyone at the workplace and at home. Enjoy!

The most creative people I know are the ones that are motivated by at least one of these things, sometimes all three. Drive yourself to becoming more.

 It's a God given gift to become something more then we are. 

My Wife's Bobby Pins: Alien Prevention Pins

My wife LOVES her bobby pins; I don't know why, they seem replaceable... At first, whenever I cleaned the house, I tended to throw half of them away and put the rest back. Maybe if she notices she has less she won't leave them out... at random places... everywhere! I've got like twenty of these things in my vacuum! 

She must hide her bobby pin source because I never see a bobby pin grouping larger then 4 or 5!

Then it dawned on me... What if my wife was subconsciously preparing us for an alien attack, like the movie signs. Not leaving water though, but bobby pins!

What if the Alien snuck into my home and I had to do some quick thinking!?

Bobby pins! ...Pin away Matt, pin away....

You win wife, the bobby pins stay.

Wife: saving my life in so many ways!

Movie Trailers: Creative Music

On this page ill be sharing the random creativity i've spotted on the web. Feel free to comment and send me a link so I can share what you find, it can be so inspiring. 

                                                                                                                                                                 

I've always been a GIANT fan of movie trailers. It's amazing how much you can pack in a couple minutes. The best part of these trailers, without fail, is the music that has been selected or created for it. 

Watch this trailer of Edge of Tomorrow, the music makes all the difference.

The music for the Edge of Tomorrow trailer was created by the artist Fieldwork and is called "This is Not the End". The song was majorly adapted for the trailer. 

This movie, Watchmen, wasn't the greatest movie. However, anybody that watched the trailer was immediately sucked into the apocalyptic world that the movie takes place in. It still remains one of the best movie trailers mostly because of the song!

The music in this trailer is "The Beginning is the End is the Beginning" by Smashing Pumpkins. It was not adapted for the trailer, which makes it even more eery how perfectly it fits the trailer and movie theme. 

Easy Ways to Help Your Creativity Payoff

You are not going to see creativity payoff unless you generate certain habits to keep the juices pumping! Lets jump right in and go over some easy habits to get yourself into so that creativity can start working for you! 

1. Finish Everything You Start!

It's worth spending a little extra time in a crammed schedule to finish what you start. Lets say you start a painting but get discouraged half way through because it isn't turning out like you wanted it to. BUCK UP BUTTER CUP! Keep working on it, don't flip the page and start another painting. Finishing what you start, even if it doesn't turn out as expected, trains yourself to do better next time. That training never happens when things are going as planned, so make sure you jump in head first into projects expecting things not to go as planned. 

This painting represents the beginning of my creative decline! I got frustrated and stopped working on it half way through. All of a sudden, all of my projects were stopping half way through! It took me years to shake off this nasty habit! 

2. Unfinished Projects: the bane of creativity's existence!

Everyone has an unfinished project in their closet or extra bedroom collecting dust because they feel too intimidated to start! Maybe we claim that we don't have time, but we just don't want to fail! These excuses are keeping us from really jumping into creativity! Having unfinished projects is like setting up the projects in your head and leaving them up. Eventually, after one or two unfinished projects, you run out of space to work on other things! Keep your mind free of previous work so that you have room for your creative to breathe. 

Challenge: grab one of those unfinished projects and finish them! You will be amazed how it makes you feel and how motivated you will be to start more projects!  

This guy's work did not look like anything specific until he completely finished. Let it be a motivation to finish your upside down projects!

3. Love What You Do, Do What You Love!

You gotta do what you love, or else the motivation to be creative just flops the second a snag comes your way. Love to paint faces? paint more faces! Love to organize your home? Create more organization tools! You can always broaden your skill sets and passions, however stay loyal to what you are good at or love to do! Simple right? Why don't more people do this!?

This is Agnes Cecile, an artist who loves to paint with watercolor. She is especially good at faces, and if you check her youtube page you can see clearly that she paints A LOT of faces. It's obvious she found her love and does it well!

For me, I grew up with a Grandpa who gave me amazing art lessons! We always drew military subjects and it really stuck with me! It's not a surprise to see an american flag, tank, or nazi on every other page of my sketch books!

  

Old art project in middle school

My military flare still shinning today!

4. Grab A Creative Friend!

Creativity is contagious and so keeping creative people around you will do wonders for your motivation to be creative yourself! If you are about to start a project but you are getting the jitters, invite the nearest creative friend over, fast! They will never tell you to give up! They will be your biggest fans, because creative people understand the power of positive reinforcement.

Let your creatively-challenged friends know you still love them, but they need to go until you are finished!

Try these things out, give your creative juices a chance and watch the payoffs pour in! Today is a better day to start then tomorrow, just do it! 

Top 5 Creative Advertisement Ideas - Creativity Spotlight #1

However daunting their limitations may be, the creative minds behind some of these advertisements are brilliant and have successfully achieved popularity and the coveted status of "Viral" by doing something unique. Creativity takes the spotlight with

 my top 5 most creative advertisement ideas that have gone viral due to their unique approach to their market:

1. The "Prank" Approach

If you spend any time on youtube, it is easy to see that prank videos have become a popular subject. Major businesses have seen this and thrown together their own spin on prank videos in order to promote their products. 

LG did an extremely smart 2 minute video in which they set up a giant tv behind a desk in efforts to disguise it as a window. They brought in innocent people looking for a job to a fake interview and when the tv showed a comet entering the atmosphere straight towards their building, the victims paniced. Watch their reactions here if you are interested - LG Prank Ad 

One of my favorite "prank ads" was done by Pepsi Max in the UK. I especially like it because it interacts with the consumers, watch it!

2. The "Dry Humor" Approach

Dry humor has obviously been around for a long time, however its popularity in advertising has sky-rocketed. Probably because dry humor forces you to connect the dots in order to understand the significance of the humor. Marketers have noticed the benefits of having their consumers stop and think about the ads and how creating a moment between the product and the consumer is clutch to a successful campaign. GEICO has tons of these ads, one of which having over 20 million views GEICO: Hump Day. 

Here's a great example, in my opinion, of that dry humor in action!

3. The "Electric" Approach

Playing to the emotions of the consumer is key to attracting business when advertising. It can be hard to find the right approach to your consumers because the demographics of each product are different. However, once a business (through years of research) finally finds their niche demographic, they then have the power to make specific ads that really punch straight into the hearts of their audience. It's like electricity going through your body when you watch them. It's amazing how much emotion you can put into one minute of ad time.

 A great example of when a company knows who they should target and then approaches them perfectly through the right sentiment is Dick's Sporting Goods. Watch this ad and try not to feel the electricity of it! ( Watch Here for better resolution)

4. The "Treasure Hunt" Approach

This one has got to be my favorite approach, it really gets the consumers involved and everyone has fun with it. Coca Cola Zero did a great job with this in partnership with the latest James Bond movie. Random people trying to get a coke from the vending machine had to suddenly race in 70 seconds to a couple of destinations in order to finally win tickets to the Bond movie. They got it all on tape and their 2 minute video went viral.Watch it here! 

Here is my favorite treasure hunt approach with an awesome twist! (This technology would be so much fun with a group of friends)

5. The "One Take" Approach

There's something in all of us that loves to watch a chain reaction unfold. Whether or not we want it to fail or see it succeed, it always grabs our attention. This is why the "One Take" approach is one of my favorites, you can't help but love whoever spent that much time to make one continuous scene work all the way through. Here's my favorite, but there are other great ones you can easily find on Youtube.

It's important to see creativity in everything, especially when we take it for granted. The Advertising industry is where the super creative minds go to play and I'm grateful they keep doing it so well, year after year. 

Artists or not - The 5 Barriers to Creativity

Ok, take your shoes off, lets talk.

To be "creative",  it often takes a ton of effort, but maybe not the kind of effort you think. Why is it always hard to start a project for school or work? Maybe it's because creativity takes a lot of effort right out of the gate, but it's worth it at the end. It's this effort you put into being creative that allows you to break through any thresholds that are holding you back. Without this effort, you will never know how much creativity can really help you.

I'm serious!

Creativity is like a little worker in your brain that is in charge of all things novel or original. 

That little worker is your brainstormer and idea generator, without it you are extremely limited. This worker can be used with anything, but it has to get to its work station! There are barriers your worker has to get through before it can start working. The only difference between someone who is creative and someone who claims not to be creative is their willingness to help their workers through these barriers. Once you are there, once you feel that creative momentum building, it's easy to maintain it. It's getting there that is the most difficult part.

What are the creative thresholds or barriers we have to get our little worker through? Here's a list!

1. There's only one solution to every problem

FALSE! There's a mindset creative people switch on when they are wanting originality. You have to train yourself to think there is always more then one answer to every question. Even though the obvious solution is probably correct, it's important for you to spend some time searching for more. This is against everything school has taught you with their multiple choice questions on tests and their teachers fishing for one answer to all of their questions.

Sometimes it's hard to force yourself into the mindset of uncertainty, but welcome to creativity's favorite arena!  Studies show there is a bias against creativity (inability to recognize it) when someone is uncomfortable with this mindset of more then one answer. The study states, "This bias against creativity interferes with participants ability to recognize a creative idea.  [There is a] concealed barrier that creative actors may face as they attempt to gain acceptance for their novel ideas."

Don't freak out that you won't get an idea or find the right solutions, it's important that you are confident in the process of walking through uncertainty in order to find the perfect and original idea. Once you get going you start to generate more ideas and solutions that you can handle. That is a good problem for you to have!

2. Visualizing success

Have you ever been obsessed with a work assignment or an art project? If not, you should try it! It's almost like you can see the end and how it affects you and everyone else when it's done. When someone dumb enough tells you it's impossible, your vision of completion is so strong you can work through the criticism. That vision of what it can be is what takes over your thoughts and motivates you.

Often times creative people see things as they will be or can be, not what they are. 


When trying to help your worker over this hurdle, it's important you don't give a deaf ear to critics. They can help you see angles you couldn't see before. However, you need to make sure your vision of the ultimate goal is continually being built upon and not crumbling due to the critics. 

3. Lack of courage

Have some guts to push your idea into reality! I imagine some of the best paintings were never painted, the most persuasive papers were never written, and the most profound business venture were never suggested because the artist, writer, or business person let the thought drift away without writing it down or putting a few hours into it. Courage to act on ideas and to stand out from the norm is key to unlocking creativity. 

Apple is a great example of a computer company who was looked down upon for starting something fresh and new from the norm ( the PC). It took determination and courage to get through the beginning hardships but man were the payoffs worth it!

4. Embracing Failure

When searching for more then one answer and having courage in just acting on your ideas, you must expect some trips and falls. One of my favorite quotes is from Leo Burnett (one of the most creative men in the advertising industry) who said, "To swear off making mistakes is easy. All you have to do is swear off having ideas."

We all know Thomas Edison said while inventing the light bulb he had never failed, but only found 10,000 ways that won't work. Was he just defiant? Or had he embraced the process of creativity? We should all emulate Edison if we want to be creative. 

5. The "why" mindset 

Most of the effort required to be creative happens in the mind. Your mind needs to be willing to look at situations, problems, or a blank canvas with an amount of openness. However, have you ever tried to think of nothing?

 It's not the most productive pursuit. So instead of clearing the mind, you need to train it to ask the right questions. Be busy with the right things. It's almost like you are filling your brain with a bunch of receivers trying to catch the creative ideas floating around. The best kind of receivers or questions to fill your mind with are the why questions.

For example, if a new privately owned business was trying to market correctly their new products, they should be asking questions like:

Why would a consumer buy my product? Why aren't they buying my product? Why do they buy my competitor's product? Why does my product stand out among competitors? 

It's simple, just adding the word "why" in front of all your questions, but in doing so you are training your brain to function creatively. When you have that mindset you are better able to recognize creative thoughts. 

There are other hurdles and barriers that keep someone from being creative, however these are the bigger ones. Your little worker will find its way in and you'll be surprised how much it can do! Try these out the next time you are faced with a project or stuck on something with work. Simply put: 

Creativity comes to those willing to run the first hundred yards of a mile long idea. 

Shhh... Creativity is Talking

Whether it's pencil on paper or paint on canvas, I've always had some creative project on the mind.

Random Facebook Graffiti I did a long time ago

Thank goodness for high school art classes and parents who didn't undervalue my creative juices! I'm one of the lucky ones who had no significant "Debby Downer" in my artistic pursuits. 

However, creativity gets shafted by the academic scene and tends to play, at best, the supporting role to what society deems "academic success."

 Is this not wrong to anyone else?

I'd argue creativity plays a much more important role in our lives then we give it credit. It doesn't just help me make a sweet city layout in Simcity or play a musical instrument. It's not limited to helping me with just my art classes. Creativity is rooted in all aspects of life, and yet we still classify it as an optional attribute dedicated only to liberal minds. I think creativity deserves center stage in all of us!

I want to speak for creativity; give it a stronger voice then what it's been given. My hope is that this voice can be heard by the creative and those that say "I'm just not creative."


If creativity could speak for itself, like take human form and give a speech, I think it would be a little mad. It would sit those "non-creatives" down and smack them and say, "You rejected me, why!?" And then give them a hug.

For the next couple blog posts I want to say what creativity would say. Give creativity the voice it deserves for a little bit. We'll see what happens!