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Every time I find myself looking for a silver bullet....a solution for my lack of ability to give my daughter her medicine at the right time, or my lack of ability to get my pictures perfectly Instagram worthy, I've been trying to remind myself of one thing: "Use what you've got."
I strongly believe that constraints breed creativity, and my youngest daughter Lori illustrated that for me very well at church one Sunday morning.
In this episode, we'll talk about...
How your imagination can expand in times of limited resources
Challenging yourself to grow creatively
How access to money can help or hurt our creativity
It was Sunday morning and we had just walked into the church, found our seats on the bench, and I sat just behind the girls and Lorianne. It wasn't more than about five minutes before we got in and sat down but Lorianne came over to me and she said, "Mom, do you have anything that I can play with?" And I'm thinking, "Okay, Lorianne, let me see what I can find, but why didn't you bring your toys?" And so I've received to look through my bag and I really didn't have anything. I didn't have any extra Barbies laying around that they left in my purse or you know, extra random pamphlets that they pick up at the store that I wish they would just throw in the trash. I didn't have any of that lying around. In fact, what I had was a jar of coconut oil. You can almost imagine how much fun it might be playing with a glass jar essentially. So I reached in, I grabbed the jar and I told Lori, "Look, this is what I have, honey, you can take this." And you know what, she looked at me, she took that jar and she smiled and she said "Thanks, mom." And then ran off to her seat.
As she sat there and she had the jar, I was watching her for a little bit, just sort of peaking over the bench. She's had a jar and she had acquired two pins. I'm not sure from where. Maybe she had them in her coat already and I could see her using the pins as people. I wasn't exactly sure what she was using the jar as, but she was playing with it. So all these three items that weren't meant to be toys, but she had turned them into toys and she was playing something and she was so occupied, or at least the next 30-40 minutes or so.
And then she came back around to me and say, "Mom, do you have anything else that I can play with?" I'm like, "Okay, let me check it out and see Lori." So I went and looked through my bag again and I don't recall what I pulled out, but again, it was something that wasn't a toy. I don't think it was quite a paperclip. I dunno if it was maybe another pen or a marker. I had something and I gave it to her and again, she took it and had the biggest smile on her face. And again, just another "Thanks, mom." And she went off. She starts playing and really getting into whatever it is and wherever it is, her imagination was taking her. And that just made me think, so often we feel like we need the best of the best, the fanciest of the fanciest, this and that to meet our needs in our business and our life. So seeing Lori be so happy and content using her imagination with what she had was really really inspiring to me. It made me think about that phrase of just using what you've got and just how our imaginations if we allow them, can expand in times of constraint.
When we don't have what we think we need, that perfect picture for building our business or for being the best mother we can be, the best wife we can be, whatever it is with those constraints, it allows us to be creative. But if we think about it that way, if we think about it from a place of, "All I have is this, let me see how I'm just gonna make do." If you have more of a negative and pessimistic attitude for that will go lock your creativity. But when you allow those constraints to be a jumping-off point from your creativity and you look at it that way, that's a good position to be in.
Now I think we all and stand with me on this. I think we all should take a very conscious choice to grow more creatively every day. And I don't know if that looks like for you taking some inanimate objects like Lori and finding a way to use them and play with them. Or figuring out that you might need something in particular for your business. I don't know. You need to create a new opt in to capture email lists and you know, you wish you had some super great landing page software and some great platforms to get that done, but you don't, how do you challenge yourself creatively to still attract people to be on your list? To still get to the outcome you want to do. And sometimes I think purposefully putting ourselves in situations where we have to use what we've got will help us with that growth.
I think we all should take a very conscious choice to grow more creatively every day. (Click to tweet)
So I'm going to challenge you and I'm challenging myself too, Let's try to grow more creatively every day. One of the things that I think sometimes hurts our creativity or can kind of keep us in a place of looking for something perfect or looking for the right thing to help get us to the next step or to help scratch the itch that we're having. That being is money. So you may be thinking, "Okay, Candace, whatever. Because if I've got the money, I'm not worried. The itch is scratched. I've got what I need. What are you talking about?" But I think when it comes to creativity and really getting out of the box and stretching your imagination, sometimes money can hurt us because money can help us with the answer for sure. With money, we can buy whatever answer to whatever problem we're having. But that kind of is easy. And I'm not saying go for the hard path. What I'm saying is sometimes we need to engage our brain more. Sometimes we need to think out of the box to keep ourselves from even being mediocre. We've gotta be careful about how hard and how quickly we decided to put our money into action for us versus living with the constraints that we have. I hope you take it and take some action with it. And just now we've got some opportunity like Lori, to really stretch our imagination and stretch our creativity to solve the problems and make our bigger impacts on this journey.
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