The Secret to Creativity

Hey friends,

Last week I finished the book ‘Unreasonable Hospitality’ by Will Guidara. If you’re not familiar with him, Will Guidara is former owner of some of New York’s most expensive restaurants, including one which was recently named the best restaurant in the world.

The book’s packed full of interesting ideas, but his approach to creativity was something that particularly stood out to me.

Now, I’ve never really considered myself to be a creative person – I’ve got friends who can seemingly pull amazing ideas out of thin air, whereas I feel like I’ve got to rely heavily on external sources of inspiration. Like, when I sit down to come up with ideas for something I usually turn to things I’ve read, watched, or listened to so I can gradually piece things together and connect the dots in my own way.

Creativity just isn’t a spontaenous process for me, which is how I’ve always thought it should be.

But, in the book, Will talks about creativity as something that’s far more systematic than spontaneous. Basically, he says that the people we think are most creative are the ones that have a systematic process behind that creativity.

This was a very liberating idea because I’ve had this limiting belief for some time that ‘I’m not a very creative person’. But, if we think of creativity as being a systematic process, rather than a spontaneous process, then this isn’t true at all.

For example, I’ve got systematic processes for my creativity when it comes to making YouTube videos (which we teach our students in the Part-Time YouTuber Academy – enrolment closes on Friday 17 March btw 😉) and systematic processes for thinking of business ideas (which involves journalling and asking myself various questions).

And although these processes don’t look that creative, they’re responsible for the consistent creative output that has helped me to create hundreds of videos and grow a multi-million dollar business over the last few years.

So, the takeaway here is that creativity is an active process.

As William Faulkner once said, ‘I only write when inspiration strikes. Fortunately it strikes at nine every morning.’

The point is, the only way to be properly creative is to show up and put in the work.

So, if you’re ever held back by the limiting belief that ‘you’re not creative enough to do X’, realise that the way you become more creative is to stop waiting for inspiration to strike and start taking action.

Have a great week!

Ali xx