Trained to evaluate

Most of us are trained by our parents to evaluate everything before taking action.

To evaluate involves analyzing and judging, sorting out things into good and bad or useful and useless.

However, to create involves generating ideas, visualizing them and considering possibilities.

Naturally, there are many uncertainties between when an idea is generated and it is able to produce result. This creates a lot of fear that does not allow one to visualize the ideas and consider the possibilities involved.

Therefore, in order to generate creative ideas, and be able to visualize and consider the possible outcomes it is necessary to separate creativity and evaluation. There is the need for us to develop a thinking method that will generate better ideas first and evaluate them better. There is a risk in creativity.

Fear
As stated in above, our training can create fear, mainly the fear of failure because of the risks involved.

Nobody wants to fail or make mistakes especially if there are financial implications.

But it is necessary to note that one may never do anything in life (not to talk of succeeding) if he/she continues to avoid failure.

Remember that a child that is afraid to fail may never walk.

Therefore one can increase his/her success rate by taking more risk, which might mean making more mistakes. Most creative people make mistakes but they learn from them.

Everything cannot make sense
Because we are trained to always evaluate, we want all ideas to make sense, we lose our faith and creative abilities.

Unfortunately, there are many mysteries (things) in this world that you cannot understand.

Most people like things to make sense, so they are not comfortable with things that they cannot understand.

One thing that I know is that in the mist of mess, confusion and frustration, one can develop his part to success and creativity.

No self confidence
From above, there is always a certain degree of uncertainty and fear in every creative endeavor. Sometimes you may have some doubt about the outcome mainly due to a high degree of evaluation.

For one to be successful and creative, you must have self confidence in your creative ability but do not forget that failure or mistake is a learning experience.

At the beginning, this confidence may be low and it will grow with experience and familiarity with the creative idea. Do not forget that the Bible said that “All things are possible to them that believes”.

Listening to many people

It is good to have a mentor and to take advice from experienced and knowledgeable people.

They will tell you the secret of their success.

It is also bad to follow their advice without asking many questions because it can cripple your vision and discourage you.

A creative person will do what other told them that it will not work because they know something about their idea that others does not know.

People will discourage you

Due to the fact that most people are not as creative as you, they may not understand your ideas, nor be able to visualize them and consider the possibilities.

Rather than they acknowledging their weakness, they will create fear and start discourage one.

Some of them might tell you that everything to be created have been created and there is nothing to create again.

Some may never see anything good in what you are doing and continue to talk about the consequences of failure.

Never mind, do not be afraid of failure or mistakes, develop self-confidence and refused to be distracted, your creative ability will disgrace them.

Too much information

People who do a lot of evaluation are most times overwhelmed with information.

The gather so much information and spend a lot of time, energy and resources analyzing the problem, situation and outcomes.

This makes them to overthink, lose the creative ability to act on their ideas and begin to procrastinate.

Creative people know when to stop collecting information and start taking action. Be wise.

Too much comfort

Most people are not creative because they are too comfortable and this comfort begin to create a self-imposed limitation.

Everyone is a product of his believes, experience and thinking. Until most of us force ourselves out of our comfort zones and change our thinking pattern, be open minded, we may never be creative.

Remember the saying of Albert Eisenstein, “We cannot solve a problem with the same mind set that we used to create it”.

You may not be creative until we change some of our habits and thinking pattern. This will increase as we leave our comfort zones.

Finally, I urge you at this point in time to examine ourselves and identify any of these factors that is hindering our creativity and develop strategies of breaking them.

Thank you.

Augustus Zekaryah

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About the author

Augustus is a management, banking and business computing professional with over 20 years of documented success in the field. Augustus is recognized for the application of software to solving business problems, Software Project Management, Enterprise Architecture Strategy, and Delivery of learning solutions with focus on adaptability, Development and execution of business plans, General management and administration, Operations management and  Best practice development. Augustus founded and manages FirstPlus Integrated Business Solutions (http://firstplus.ng) as a Software and Business Consulting outfit that specializes in Software development and integration, E-Learning development, Business and Marketing Planning, Consulting and training. Augustus brings to his work a high level of energy, passion, commitment and humour. He is married with children.

Other articles published by the author in this series at http://firstplus.ng that may be of interest are.

1. Leadership
2. What is time management?
3. Seven habits
4. Importance of time management
5. Helping people

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Regards

Augustus Zekaryah