Wondering How To Be More Creative? Hint: Take Risks

Risks are scary. That’s essentially why we build the comfort zones we often can’t escape, and while we build them for a variety of reasons, most of them only restrict our true creative potential. Whether our comfort zone was built as a result of fear, anxiety, or just plain laziness, chances are nothing spectacular ever happened within its bounds. That’s because creativity is the spectacular thing our comfort zone prevents from happening, and sometimes the best way to be more creative is to take a risk on the one thing that scares us the most. Do you want the secret to unlocking creativity? Take risks.

(Photo by Zachary Raber)

Stop allowing fear to hold you back and instead use it as momentum.

When you learn to let fear be more of a push than pull it enables your creativity to flourish rather than stifle. We’re all scared of taking chances. Diving head first into something you’re completely unprepared for has never been a relaxing endeavor. When you learn to let the discomfort fuel you instead of completely terrify you, whatever you’re creating not only becomes more rewarding, but more inspired.

When we create what we’re familiar with it’s most likely good, but it’s not great. It doesn’t have that one thing that differentiates it from everything else you’ve done, and it’s because you let fear get 5e best of your process. You allowed fear to step in, interrupt you, whisper things that simply aren’t true or significant, and it prevented you from creating something remarkable.

(Photo by Zachary Leung)

Stop worrying about what others think.

It’s normal to question yourself as an artist. It’s okay to wonder whether your art is worth anything or if it’s appreciated in the way that it should be. Your art is extremely personal. It’s made of your mind, imagination, spirit, emotions, and feelings. It’s what you’re going through, where you’ve been, how you’ve struggled. It’s a large part of who you are and where life has taken you. Your art is your journey, and while it’s okay to wonder what others will think, don’t let that inhibit your creativity.

Create what you want. Create it for whoever you want, for yourself, your partner, your family, friends. Create it for a stranger. Create it for no one. Create art you envision and don’t let the fear of unknown opinions of others scare you. You don’t know what other people will think about your art until you show them, and as long as it’s something you’re proud of, and something you genuinely enjoyed creating, who cares what other people think? If it made you happy and no one else then take it as a creative exercise. You stretched your creativity and whether the creation was “successful” or not, at least you executed something. At least you had the courage to be vulnerable and put your art out there. Others will think what they want to think. Don’t let that stop you from continuing to create things that are remarkably you in art form.