I started taking ballet lessons when I was 4 years old. I’ve got the feet and the flexibility, so the actual dancing part has always been second nature to me.
Flash forward 15 years: I volunteer to choreograph a ballet piece for my dance group, Star Heels. I’ve been dancing for most of my life, so coming up with choreography can’t be that hard… right?
Wrong.
As it turned out, it took me about 3 hours to come up with my first 20 seconds of choreography (this is AFTER days upon days of trying to decide on a song). That, as I’m sure you can imagine, was incredibly frustrating.
I’m now choreographing my fourth dance and I’ve gotten the hang of it. Here’s what I know about myself now that I didn’t know then: if I let myself be a perfectionist, I will be. If I let myself come up with a million ideas a minute, I can do that. I’ve discovered that I am not the type of person who can just think and think and suddenly come up with the million dollar idea. I’m the type of person who improvises to the same part of the music 87 times before I finally do something I like.
The same goes for just about everything. I could beat myself up trying to think of a paper topic, but I work so much better when I write down every paper topic I can think of and then go back and find the winner.
For me, my biggest hurdle to creativity is just getting started. If I force myself to start coming up with ideas (even bad ideas), I can eventually produce some good stuff.
I don’t really have a time or place in which I’m most creative. Just last week, I came up with about 10 ideas for a campaign in my copywriting class during my International Relations class (…sorry, Professor). Sometimes my best ideas come to me when I’m on a jog, falling asleep, or walking to class. The most important thing for me is to accept that I can’t be perfect the first time I try something. I need to let myself have a ton of bad ideas before I finally get to the good one.
Flash forward 15 years: I volunteer to choreograph a ballet piece for my dance group, Star Heels. I’ve been dancing for most of my life, so coming up with choreography can’t be that hard… right?
Wrong.
As it turned out, it took me about 3 hours to come up with my first 20 seconds of choreography (this is AFTER days upon days of trying to decide on a song). That, as I’m sure you can imagine, was incredibly frustrating.
I’m now choreographing my fourth dance and I’ve gotten the hang of it. Here’s what I know about myself now that I didn’t know then: if I let myself be a perfectionist, I will be. If I let myself come up with a million ideas a minute, I can do that. I’ve discovered that I am not the type of person who can just think and think and suddenly come up with the million dollar idea. I’m the type of person who improvises to the same part of the music 87 times before I finally do something I like.
The same goes for just about everything. I could beat myself up trying to think of a paper topic, but I work so much better when I write down every paper topic I can think of and then go back and find the winner.
For me, my biggest hurdle to creativity is just getting started. If I force myself to start coming up with ideas (even bad ideas), I can eventually produce some good stuff.
I don’t really have a time or place in which I’m most creative. Just last week, I came up with about 10 ideas for a campaign in my copywriting class during my International Relations class (…sorry, Professor). Sometimes my best ideas come to me when I’m on a jog, falling asleep, or walking to class. The most important thing for me is to accept that I can’t be perfect the first time I try something. I need to let myself have a ton of bad ideas before I finally get to the good one.