Multi Creator, Where Lies Your Passion?
As I sit here in my cosy (hyggelige) office, with lighted candles and tea, I watch the storm rage outside. It’s yet another storm here in Denmark, only this one seems to be much worse that the previous ones.
It’s the first week of January of 2024, our Queen who’s been our Queen for 52 years, as old as I am, abdicates in less than 2 weeks, and perhaps this storm outside is an indication of the year ahead of us.
In search for inspiration for this blog, I picked up Marty Neumeier’s book “Zag” again, and started to go through the 17-step process for finding my Zag.
The concept is simple, when everyone zig, you zag. This is how you build a successful brand.
Only, I’m stuck at step 1 by the question: “Where does your passion lie?”
Oh no, not that question again!
“Today’s real competition doesn’t come from other companies but from the extreme clutter of the marketplace.”
Dear multi creator, where does your passion lie?
How many times I’ve been asked to answer a version of that question, I reckon it must be near a hundred. And the amount of times I got stuck answering it… just as many.
Maybe, like me, you’re a multi creator, and you know too, that there is no easy answer to that question.
And yet, there’s something about this particular time, that is giving me a clear sense of where my passion lies.
Creativity, and the personal journey of a creative process, is where my passion lies.
Creativity has been my interest since I was a little girl, but it’s such a vast, human, difficult-to-pin-down subject, I might as well say I’m interested in life. Yes, but what part of life, specifically?
Maybe multi creators are natural “zaggers”
What is true for me, and many of my clients, is that we have kinda' always zagged. We have often gone other ways than our peers in life. We’re natural “zaggers”. :)
Marty Neumeier explains that to zag means your brand has to radically different, not just different. Here, I’m not talking about a brand, but us, multi creator people.
I certainly did something radically different, when I left, not just school but my country at 17, when all my peers and school mates continued within the school system.
If you get off the main road and follow a road less travelled, you’re well familiar with feeling unsure, and uncertain. You also know what feeling alone and misunderstood feels like.
This is often what it’s like going through an extensive creative process.
I would argue, that the experience of having done something radically different than was expected of you, maybe even several times, and living through all the ripple effects that creates, gives you a unique insight to the world of creativity.
Creativity matters. That means yours matter.
There’s no question, that we need creative solutions to solve our challenges. Globally, environmentally, and personally.
I zoom in on the personal creative process of you and me.
Have you seen that trick, where you start by seeing the Earth from space, and the it zooms all the way in to someone’s living room? Was that in a Michael Jackson video I saw that?
Anyway, that’s what I do. I zoom in on helping you create the right conditions for you to create.
Those conditions involve self-kindness and doing just something small.
I like to concentrate on this little corner of creativity: the how.
How you start and finish that project that’s bubbling inside you.
I’m not fussed about what your project is. It’s not the “What” that interests me so much as the “How”. Though you can be sure I’ll be your biggest cheerleader, no matter what your project is.
The “how” of creativity is unglamorous
You and I know …
The “how” of creativity is unglamorous. It’s not glamorous, or easy, and you’re up against yourself the whole time.
But it’s rewarding, and special, and with a bunch of character building side effects.
If only we wouldn’t believe the stuff we consume passively on social media. I have 3 kids at the ages between 17 and 21, and it scares an old fart like me, to hear them believe most of what they see on TikTok.
How are we ever going to stay with our creative interests, if we compare ourselves to the rubbish, and heavily filtered stuff we see?
My creativity coaching job is important, because we need to reality check what it actually will take, bringing that creative project to life.
It will take
Patience
Self-kindness.
Self-forgiveness for making bad stuff, and skipping days.
Perseverance
Self-discipline to ignore, or limit time on social media.
So, to circle back to the beginning of this post, and Marty Neumeier’s step 1 in finding my Zag when everyone zigs, I’m actually pretty clear on where my passion lies:
Supporting you on your own creative journey forward.
Dare I ask: dear multi creator, where does your passion lie?
Ok, moving on to step 2 out of 17 now. :)
If you found this post useful, I’d love for you to get my emails too. That’s a place I share most of what is going on in front and behind the scenes. .)
