How to Be Creative (Even When You Feel Empty)

How to be creative. So I'm at the airport, I just arrived, and I saw a question while I was at Tim Hortons picking up my ice cap. And it was a question from one of my YouTube viewers, love you guys, Michelle, who wrote in to ask about what do you do when you're stuck? How do you be creative when you're stuck? How do you get that idea? And I thought, you know, I gotta make this video before we are— before I get into the airport. Creativity will come from two things, okay? It'll come from exposure to new ideas, and it'll come from freedom. And I'll go over both quickly. Exposure to new ideas. If you're not getting any creative new ideas right now, chances are your life is boring. Your life is too boring. Your routine is too boring. Your schedule is too boring. You're doing the same thing every day, and it's boring, and you're probably not really happy right now. Creativity comes from variety, right? You got to expose yourself to new ideas, to new opportunities. You gotta Do things that stretch your comfort zone a little bit, and from there you'll get creative ideas. Now I'm at the airport right now. Traveling is a great place to get creative ideas. Every time you travel, you get new creative ideas to bring back into your business, into your life. It opens your eyes and refreshes your thinking. And you know, you may not be able to afford to go traveling right now, so you know, that's fine. But find other ways to change up your schedule to be able to go out and do things that are different and new and fun and expose yourself to ideas and people that bring out a different side in you. You know, I get a ton of creative ideas because I am surrounded by people who bring out different sides of me, who expose me to new ideas, and I've created a schedule where I've factored that in, where I'm doing different things all the time. So today I'm at the airport. You know, on the weekend, as an example, I went to 2 trade shows. Okay, I like going to trade shows, uh, just to see what's going on, what people are up to, the different businesses that are there. The first one was an RV trade show where people were selling campers and trailers and, uh, and buses and everything you need to go camping. And my wife and I go camping a couple times a year, and I thought, hey, we should, we should check that out, maybe get a motorhome, uh, whatever, just to educate ourselves. So that was on the Saturday. Then on the Sunday, at the same building in, uh, just next door, was the Sexapalooza show. And So we went to that and, uh, totally different crowd, totally different vibe. And it's probably safe to say that we were one of the only couple, if not the only couple, to go to both shows on the same weekend, right? That you think the audience going to an RV trailer show is going to be different than the ones going to the Sexapalooza show, but we were there both. And that, you know, being exposed to those kinds of ideas and, and different different culture and different subgroups makes you more creative, even if you're not— like, I'm not a hardcore camper, I'm not a hardcore, you know, well, I'm not an anything kind of S&M guy, but anyway, maybe that's too detailed. I'm a pretty normal meat and potatoes guy there, but getting into details on the Evan Carmichael channel, but it doesn't matter because those— being around different people and different ideas will make you more creative, so Your schedule is probably too boring. Your life is probably too boring right now, and you gotta break out and do something different. Okay, so that's the first one. New ideas and experiences. The second is freedom. You gotta give yourself the time to be able to go out and do all these things. Creativity can't be forced. You know, if you have a goal to say, "Hey, I wanna get better at piano." "I wanna get better at email marketing." The more you practice, the more you focus, the better you're gonna get at it, right? The more I practice my scales in piano, the better I'm gonna get at it. With creativity, it's almost the opposite, right? You can't say, "I'm going to be creative right now," right? You— that's why brainstorming meetings often don't work very well because you're forcing people to be creative on the spot. Where creativity will often come from— taking walks, sitting on the toilet, being in the shower, right? That's where you get all your creative ideas because you have a little bit of time where your brain has freedom. Where so many people are so overscheduled, overcommitted that you're so worried and stressed out about what you have to do that you have zero time to focus on things that could help you grow, new creative ideas. So you have to open up chunks of your time. You have to be willing to go out and, and, and shower more, go for walks, give yourself more time, stop scheduling so much stuff in there. Okay, that's how you get creative ideas. If you do those two things, if you consistently expose yourself to people and ideas that are different from you, and you give yourself the freedom to be able to explore, I guarantee you, you're going to come up with a ton of creative ideas. And then your next question is going to be, how do I execute? But we'll worry about that when we get there. Anyway, I'm going to get in. Thank you guys for watching. Believe. You guys like this video? You want to see more like it? Subscribe to the channel. I want to know how you get creative. I want to know where your best creative ideas come from. Leave a comment below. I'd love to hear from you. Thank you guys. I'll see you soon. Evan Carmichael, your newsletters have taught me not to quit. I look forward to them every week. They have changed my life. Thank you.