So often incredible ideas surface in our minds and we discount them and discard them. What if you went on a journey to generate more ideas, and what if you knew how to manage them in a way that would help you bring them to fruition?

MM544- Managing Your Creative Ideas

Hello, everybody, and welcome to this week’s episode of Motivate Me!

It’s Me! Time here on Motivate Me! and we are working on coming back from flat.

Before we start, let’s get into the right headspace. Let’s engage in the idea that this is time where YOU are the priority. Let’s take two slow, deep breaths to get us centered. Just follow me.

Today’s focus is: Managing Your Creative Ideas

When do you feel most passionate about life? For me, it’s when I’m creating. And when I’m in my creative zone, ideas upon ideas continue to come to me. Being open to these ideas is part of why and how I believe they flow so fluidly, but it’s my job to manage them – and to organize them.

When I was working to reclaim my passion, I had to make changes in my approach to being creative. At one point, I had found legal pad after legal pad that was filled with ideas and fiction writing I had put on paper, but I’d put those pads down and never looked at them again. I knew I couldn’t let that happen this time around, because I was setting the intention that this time wasn’t going to be like the rest. That this time I would collect and categorize my work, and that something substantial would come from it.

So, I took all the notes I’d been writing in my little one-subject notebooks, I busted out a big blue binder and an un-opened pack of dividers with tabs, and I set up my organizer. I labeled each section: “Reading Log,” “Journal,” “MoMe!,” “Zoom,” “Biz Opps,” “Writing Ideas,” “Podcast,” and “Flat.” And I set out to fill these sections but in a compartmentalized kind of way that was not overwhelming.

I had loose notebook paper on a clipboard, and whenever I had a question or idea, I wrote it out, I journaled, I found an answer, and I locked it into the binder. If I had an essay idea or product idea, I wrote that down, too, and locked that into my binder. You get the picture.

I wrote everything and I dated everything. Why date what you write? Because it gives our ideas value, because every important document is dated, because what I wrote on this paper was important. And won’t it be fun one day to look back on where it all began? Yes, I set that intention with every step of my process.

They say if we collect our ideas and keep them organized and together, the weight of them will carry them to fruition. Why not give that theory a shot?

During this whirlwind of a time, something happened. I had been meditating and journaling and excited about helping people with what was bringing my passion back, and I was reminded how much I enjoyed the process of creating. That, yes, I want to produce something valuable to help as many people as possible, but I was filled with actual joy just in the doing of the thing. And that’s what I continued to focus on: the process.

Now more than ever, I realize that I am in love with the process of creating and not the outcome of it.

Elizabeth Gilbert really put my feelings into words when she said, “Creativity itself doesn’t care at all about results – the only thing it craves is the process. Learn to love the process and let whatever happens next happen, without fussing too much about it. Work like a monk, or a mule, or some other representative metaphor for diligence. Love the work. Destiny will do what it wants with you, regardless.”

I love getting immersed in what I’m creating. To give you an idea of what I mean, here are some of the projects I have worked on: I have completed the writing of two novels (they’re not published, but they are written!), and I have two other books in the works. I’ve designed a podcast, a 50-state tour, and now this program about reclaiming your passion and coming back from flat. I have worked like a monk; I work like a mule… I speak Elizabeth Gilbert’s language.

I’m wondering how many of you are at home slaving away at something, too?

When our ideas are carefully managed, they never get lost, they no longer distract us, and they inspire more ideas!

So, to do this…

1. Desire to be creative

2. See your ideas as important and valuable

3. Manage your ideas to eliminate distraction

4. Record all ideas

5. Collect all ideas in an organized fashion

6. Be in love with the process, not the outcome

I kept at doing this, I am still doing all the things I’m sharing with you this season because they work. Because they led me to putting ideas on paper, and seeing these ideas on paper helped me make discoveries that inspired me to take next steps.

We would love to hear your thoughts. Join us in our Private Facebook group: Motivate Me! Support System and checkout MotivateMePodcast.com for anything else.

I am going to leave you with some truth talk from me to you: So often incredible ideas surface in our minds and we discount and discard them. What if just for right now, you seek them out, you write them down, and you collect them? What if you just start with that to see if these ideas change you in any way, to see if they drive you to do more or to do differently?

Remember, you Motivate Me!

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