Humans cannot fly. Its an inarguable fact. In the present, its easy to name a few machines that can get us off the ground though. Can you imagine life in 1900? No Airplanes. No Helicopters. What was going on in the minds of the wives of Wilber and Orville Wright?
We have three screaming babies and my husband is out tinkering in the barn again?
My mother was right, I should have married farmer John because he is practical and knows how to make a living?
I am sure they thought that their husband’s quest to allow a human being to fly was an insane idea. Our world has been shaped by sane people with insane ideas.
Everyone has the ability to be creative. Little children spend all day in fantasy land dreaming of growing up or of hitting home runs in the major league. Dolls are implements that foster creativity of young girls. They dream about being a mom and playing house. Little boys want to be sports heroes or truck drivers. They spend all day driving their trucks around and if they could move some real dirt around it makes their fantasy 1000 times more real.
Have you ever seen a child playing? She doesn’t care who sees her or what they think. Its her fantasy anyway. Somewhere along the line, we start caring what others thing of us. We want acceptance and support. Instead of surrounding ourselves with accepting and supportive people we change our thinking to what we think the people already around us want to hear. We are not true to ourselves and we lose our creativity over time.
It takes courage and conviction to be creative and imagine reality differently. We need to let our minds flow with good ideas and bad ones and have the courage to reveal our ideas to the world. Conviction is needed because you will come across people that are not open to thinking differently and knock your idea because it makes them feel uncomfortable. You cannot be discouraged.
For example, you reveal your desire to start a new business. If you’re lucky you will be met with excitement and support when you reveal your ideas to the people you surround yourself with. What you will probably receive and angry grumblings on how you will fail, lose everything and probably cause the end of the world. These people are so uncomfortable with themselves, their own fears about themselves spew out of their mouths. They are not even listening to you, your qualifications or your idea. They are voicing their thoughts about how they would feel about starting their own business.
In business, you have to think creatively. You must dream. You have to dare to believe in these dreams that you and only you understand and have bought in to. Entrepreneurship is a lonely lonely road. Not because you haven’t assembled a team yet, but because in the beginning, it is you and only that believes in the idea. Most importantly, you have to ignore the boo birds that will attempt to pull your dreams back down to their level so they feel comfortable with themselves. This may be your biggest challenge as you are pulled between letting your creative juices flow and conforming to the expectations of those around you.
