Laugh at yourself, but don't ever aim your doubt at yourself. Be bold. When you embark for strange places, don't leave any of yourself safely on shore. Have the nerve to go into unexplored territory.
Alan AldaRead
If you know what you're looking for, that's all you'll get - what's previously known. But when you're open to what's possible, you get something new - that's creativity.
Interpretation
Being open to possibilities fosters creativity, while focusing only on known outcomes limits you.
This quote by Alan Alda emphasizes the importance of maintaining an open mind in the creative process. When individuals restrict themselves to what they already know, they only encounter familiar results. In contrast, being receptive to new ideas and possibilities allows for the emergence of innovative and original concepts, which is the essence of creativity.
In practice
In a workshop on innovation, using this quote can encourage participants to embrace new ideas.
Laugh at yourself, but don't ever aim your doubt at yourself. Be bold. When you embark for strange places, don't leave any of yourself safely on shore. Have the nerve to go into unexplored territory.
Begin challenging your own assumptions. Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in awhile, or the light won't come in.
Laugh at yourself, but don't ever aim your doubt at yourself.
Here's my Golden Rule for a tarnished age: Be fair with others, but keep after them until they're fair with you.
I found I wasn't asking good enough questions because I assumed I knew something. I would box them into a corner with a badly formed question, and they didn't know how to get out of it. Now, I let them take me through it step by step, and I listen.
You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition. What you'll discover will be wonderful. What you'll discover is yourself.
Anxiety is the hand maiden of creativity.
The simple process of focusing on things that are normally taken for granted is a powerful source of creativity.
Sometimes you have to stop thinking. Sometimes you shut down completely. I think that's true in any creative field.
We are all creative, but by the time we are three of four years old, someone has knocked the creativity out of us. Some people shut up the kids who start to tell stories. Kids dance in their cribs, but someone will insist they sit still. By the time the creative people are ten or twelve, they want to be like everyone else.
To create something you must be something.
The idea flow from the human spirit is absolutely unlimited. All you have to do is tap into that well. I don't like to use the word efficiency. It's creativity. It's a belief that every person counts.
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