Creativity Starter-Kit: “No Other Option”

Brace yourself! I’m going to appear to sound like a bitter, overly calloused entrepreneur for a second, but if you can endure it there’s a wonderful take away at the end. 

I’ll give you the bright side first. It’s simple. Human ingenuity isn’t dead. In fact, today, you and every human you know is capable of unrecognizable creativity and genius. 

And, that’s wonderful news! 

Here’s the darker side of the same coin. It’s not automatic. No, you don’t need to be the child of classic painters and concert pianists to access the type of creativity I’m talking about. But, you do need something else. 

You need to paint yourself into a corner. 

That’s right. You need no other option, but to find a solution. That’s what I’ve observed time and time again. When you place the game all in and must have a positive result, humans find a way. 

Now, how do we do this responsibly? I don’t think you (or anyone) should risk it all, especially because you read a blog post.

The beauty here is that you don’t actually have to risk anything substantial, because you can pretend. (HINT: pretending you have no way out only works if you act as if it’s true.) 

If you need to get your Substack to 100 subscribers or you need to enroll 15 moms into your new networking club or if you’ve got to sell 2000 candy bars, I know from experience that almost anyone can do these things if you leave no other option. 

The problem isn’t that people lack creativity, it’s that their need for creativity isn’t bound to anything. Most folks trying to sell 200 candy bars, for example, will try one medicare idea, they’ll get mediocre results, and they will take the “L” and call it a day. 

When you’ve got skin in the game and missing your target isn’t an option, the obvious behavior change is to try six things and do them with 300% intensity and if those don’t work you make phone calls and do research and turn over every stone and make every connection possible… and it works out. 

But, you wouldn’t know that if you had a way out. 

So, get rid of the way out. Humans like yourself are capable of anything. The only way to know what you’re capable of, though, is to find out what you’d do if you had no other choice. 

Carry on.