To Jumpstart Your Creative Business, Get Curious, Start Exploring

By Rhonda Campbell

If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got. Sound familiar? It’s called getting stuck in a rut or becoming stagnant. It happens to top, established companies (and leaders) as well as to new businesses.

The One Thing That Causes You to Drift

Truth is. If you’re in your 30s or older, you’ve probably also experienced it in your personal life. Keep doing the same thing for several months or – yikes – years, and there’s a good chance boredom will start to set in, pulling you away from your dreams like a strong ocean wave.

You can stop drifting by doing one simple thing. No. It doesn’t matter what it is. The only important thing to note is that whatever you do, it must be something you’ve never done before. Oh. And it also has to be something positive.

So. Let’s say you’re an illustrator. You spend 8 to 10 hours a day leaning over your desk sketching and adding bright colors to one children’s book illustration after another. Money is good; you certainly aren’t lacking for clients. In fact, writers, editors and publishers are literally banging on your door and ringing your telephone, asking you to take on more work.

Clearly, you’re well respected, but you’re also bored, and you love art. You love to create. The boredom you’ve been trying to throw off for months is starting to chew away at you, scare you, in fact. Thoughts that you made a mistake and chose the wrong career have been filling your head.

And there you sit, day after day, doing the same thing you’ve done a thousand times before. Pencils and paper in hand. It’s all you can do not to scream. Why don’t you do something different, some small (but different) thing?

You could change your noonday break (and if you don’t take one, start). For example, if you normally drive to the corner deli and pick up a roast beef sandwich, you could pull your bike out of the garage and take a ride around a nearby park. Keep your eyes and ears open while you’re at the park. If you do, something’s bound to peak your interest, making you curious, eager to explore. As you become curious and start exploring your energy will shift, pulling in insights, inspiration and encouragement from within you.

But you don’t have to hop on a bike to stir up your curiosity and exploration vibes. Other ways you can stir up your curiosity, inspiring yourself to explore are:

• Listen to a song (preferably one with no lyrics) you’ve never listened to before
• Write a poem (if you don’t usually write poems)
• Go to bed at a different time, one hour earlier than normal might do the trick
• Get out of bed at a different time
• Eat something hot and spicy (if you don’t normally like spicy food and if eating hot, spicy food won’t disturb your health)
• Get up right where you are and start dancing as if the whole world loves every single move you make
• Skip to your car in the morning
• Go to a pet store and hold a puppy
• Try to solve a complicated puzzle
• Put a picture puzzle together (might take an hour a day for several weeks)
• Start singing to the next person who approaches you (the very next person)
• Count backwards from 50 to 0
• Start to eat a favorite fattening food then just walk off. Return half an hour later and toss the food in the trash.
• Take the train the next time you travel if you normally drive

Stir Up Your Curiosity and Inner Explorer

You get the point. Simple acts can make you more aware, alert and curious. They can also stir your desire to explore, helping you to shake off stagnant energy. Believe it or not, life gives us nudges to, “Hey, try something new,” but we get scared, preferring to stick with what we’ve always done, even if we’re bored to tears.

The next time life pushes you in a different direction, go exploring. You don’t have to leave your career or creative business. But to always have the fuel to jumpstart your creative business, you do need to stay curious, aware. And as you can see, it’s fairly simple to stay that way. You did it all the time when you were a kid.

It’s true. The earth is huge, filled with peoples from diverse backgrounds, singing with different languages. But if you don’t get and stay curious, there’s so much you might miss even if you stay here for 100 or more years. As you become curious and start exploring, ideas will surface. Many of these ideas may hold the key to a change you can make at your creative business, a change that will propel your company forward by leaps and bounds.

If you enjoyed or benefitted from this article, share it with others by clicking the Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google Plus and Share buttons below. You bet!  We appreciate it!  

Click the “Subscribe” button at the side or bottom of this post so you can always be the very first person to receive our updates!

Get Your Copy of Spiral at https://www.ebookit.com/books/0000000841/Spiral.html