3 Uncommon Creative Assets That Would Put You Ahead of 95%.
The most successful people in the world have them in common.
Edward de Bono is one of the world’s most recognized authorities on creativity.
He pioneered such life-changing and success-inducing concepts as Lateral Thinking, Parallel Thinking, Six Thinking Hats, and the like.
Before he died in June last year (2021), he had assisted Nobel Laureates, Presidents, CEOs of multinational companies, and celebrities to develop and maintain strong creative muscles.
After years of studying dozens of the greatest thinkers who have made things that shaped civilizations, Bono came up with 25 traits common to these creative greats.
From my experience as a creator and teaching creativity at the university for over 16 years, the top 3 of these characteristics are solid enough to transform your life into a wildly successful one.
1. Drive
People who succeed in anything are those fired up to want to light up the world. Drive is the fire.
If you don’t have a drive, you are like a cart without a horse. You may be on the best road in the world, but you can’t move — you won't get anywhere.
Drive comes from wanting the best for yourself and a group, organization, or community you care about.
It was drive that fired up the Wright Brothers to build the first flying machine (which got improved over time by other driven people), giving rise to one of the most efficient forms of transportation the world enjoys today.
Drive it was that propelled me, a poor boy from an impoverished village, to endure frustrating conditions to learn, connect ideas, and grow myself to become an international professor in a foreign country today.
When you are driven, you always want to do something that makes a difference and advances society. When you are driven, you don't settle for less. Drive is the mother of all outstanding achievements.
How to develop a drive
You need to develop hatred for the average, hatred for the ordinary, and hatred for small things.
There are other simple things you can do to increase your drive.
- Have a big ambition. Dare to be the best in everything you do. Talk and act like a champion.
- Be desperate about achieving your goal. Make it all or nothing. If you are not desperate about your goals, you don’t want them bad enough.
- Dread being left behind. Be scared to death about being a failure. Fear of failure could be a powerful gift for transforming your life. Instead of being paralyzed by them, let that fear ignite your passion and drive you toward your goals.
My all-time favorite book title is An Enemy Called Average by John Mason. I have never read the book, but I love the title, smiles. It speaks to the importance of reaching for the highest possibility in anything.
2. Creative Confidence — Courage
One of the things that made me a very dull kid for most of my early childhood education was not that I didn’t know things I was supposed to know. It was my lack of confidence.
I allowed my fear of being laughed at (for not getting my answers right) to trump my desire to improve and become a good student. My story changed the moment I learned to put myself out there and do things that scared me, such as speaking in front of the class.
The predisposition to try something — even with high odds of failure — is one undisputable attitude of successful people.
Show me a man who is not progressing much in life, and I will show you a man who is not taking enough action.
In their beautifully written book, Creative Confidence, the world’s famous creative brothers, Tom Kelley and David Kelley, said something powerful.
The ultimate stroke of genius in innovators and successful people is that ‘they just do more, period! They take more shots at the goal.’
Franklin D Roosevelt, the 32nd President of the US, explained this phenomenon with these powerful words.
‘Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the assessment that something else is more important than fear.’
It’s about doing something you care about — something that needs to be done — regardless of your fears. Imagine a world without courageous people.
Imagine how different the world would have been if we didn’t have Thomas Edison, The Wright Brothers, Henry Ford, Steve Jobs, etc., who dared the odds to push forward with their ideas despite repeated failures and other people’s skepticism.
How to develop creative confidence
- Recognize your fears, then damn them. It is natural to be afraid, especially when pursuing a new goal. All you need to do is acknowledge your fears and welcome them, but take action regardless. As Ralph Waldo Emerson urged, ‘do the things you fear, and the death of fear is certain.’
- Have a bigger ‘yes’ inside. Courage is a game of alternatives. To push forward on any course of action, you must make the goal bigger and more desirable than the alternative — your current situation.
- Take baby steps. Fear of failure sometimes appears like a big mountain. To get on top of it — to your dreams — you have to take it one small step at a time.
Break it down, start from the base, do the less risky part first, and before you know it, you are hoisting your flag and celebrating your achievement at the top.
- Seek other people’s support. The fears of taking action on important things thrive on self-doubts. Sometimes, you need an external force to dispel your doubt and interrupt your negative train of thought. Talk to an inspiring friend or family member, or seek out a mentor or counselor who can offer guidance.
Success is a friend of the brave — of those who set higher priorities and act on them. Let your fears be tamed by higher ideals to achieve excellence, to see excellence, and to reach for the highest possibilities.
3. Stubborn Optimism
90% of the 3,311 billionaires in the world in 2021 were self-made. They built their wealth through personal efforts.
The world is too challenging and negative for people to build this amount of wealth without being stubborn optimists.
At a time when, according to Bloomberg, the fortunes of the 500 top richest people in the world fell by a staggering US$1.4 trillion, a recent Harris Poll indicates that 6 in 10 Americans aspire to be a billionaire soon.
This is what it means to be a stubborn optimist.
America has always been a land of such people. I won’t be surprised when that 60% eventually become billionaires in a few short years from now.
It is those who expect to succeed that eventually succeed, period!
Being optimistic is energizing as it puts you in the right mental mode to give your best shot at your goals.
To a large extent, optimism is a function of your environment. The more you see successful people and great things around you, the more inspired and optimistic you are to achieve great things.
I spent the first six years of my life accompanying my grandfather to his small subsistent farm in a village where people defecated in the open, where there was neither electricity nor running water, and where there were no schools nor healthcare facilities.
If you grew up under those circumstances, it isn't easy to be optimistic about the future. You don’t even have an idea there is a world better than yours, let alone dream about it.
Although those were my circumstances, I somehow imagined that there was a better world out there. Not only that, I believed that I had a right to that better world.
Today, from that 5th-world community, I have gone to the most exotic places in the world.
I was even invited by President Barack Obama, the most powerful man in the world at the time, to visit the United States under the Mandela Washington Fellowship for Young African Leaders Program.
From that 5th world, I now teach the children of the citizens of the 1st world, being an international professor at a Malaysian university and someone that is frequently invited to speak to students and business owners in several advanced countries.
That is the magic of stubborn optimism.
I have not arrived yet. I am still growing. But I am far away, literally speaking, from where I was.
While I might not have made it to the top 5% in anything in the world yet, I am certain that by any measure, I am ahead of the 95% of the world I came from.
I have gotten this ‘far away from home’ because I forced myself to see a world beyond my immediate environment.
Although my childhood conditions would have me despair and settle for less, I choose otherwise. I was positive about my life. I saw possibilities. I was stubbornly optimistic.
How to develop stubborn optimism
From Ed De Bono’s and my study of the most successful people in the world — people whose successes are largely attributed to their stubborn optimism — here are three ways to become more optimistic.
- Practice creative gratitude: be grateful for where you are but don’t be content. Imagine a better deal and pursue it.
- Don’t waste the gift of negative circumstances. Use your deprivation as a stepping stone to rise. Let your challenge be a motivation to grow and not a reason to fail.
- Connect with positive people. This doesn't have to be a physical connection or contact. Over time, I connected with the most optimistic people in the world through books. I read their biographies, watch their interviews and follow what they do.
- Practice positive thinking. Make daydreaming your companion. Set time aside to daydream. Do it with strong emotions. Regularly picture the future that you want to feature in.
Conclusion
Success in anything in life is largely a mental process. One of the most valuable mental assets you could have is your creativity skills.
And to be creative and build like the successful top 5% of any human population, you must have the drive to achieve an ambitious goal.
You must act courageously on your ideas and be stubbornly optimistic about your chances.
