Page 64 - 100 Ways to Motivate Yourself

heart out?”

Terry Hill’s advice to his audiences on the subject of creativity is to make
sure you “get your stars out.” This is another way of saying let the stars that are
in you shine freely. Don’t force them out. Just let them shine. Although Hill’s
audiences are usually advertising people and writers, his recommendations apply
to all of us. Our lives are ours to create. Do we want to create them in a
lackluster way or do we want to be inspiring? When we write our plans and
dreams, we need to write our hearts out. In shooting for the stars, it’s time to get
a bit wild. Wild hearts can’t be broken.

44. Just make everything up

Sometimes in my seminars I will ask the people in the audience to raise their
hands if they think of themselves as “creative.” I’ve never had more than a
fourth of the audience raise their hands. I then ask the people how many of them
were able to make things up when they were younger—make up names for their
dolls, make up a game to play, make up a story for their parents when the truth
looked less promising.

All hands go up.

So, what’s the difference? You made stuff up as a child, but you’re not a
creative adult? The difference is that we have charged the word “creative” as
meaning something truly extraordinary. Picasso was creative. Meryl Streep is
creative. Wyclef Jean is creative. But me? One of the ways to get started creating
goals and action plans is to just “make them up,” as you did as a kid. Think of
creating in simpler terms. Think of it as something all humans do very easily.
French psychologist Emile Coue said, “Always think of what you have to do as
easy and it will be.”

45. Put on your game face

Most people who play a lot of golf or tennis work much harder at their
games than they do at work. All people work harder at play than they do at work,
because there’s no resistance. Golfers are working harder on the golf course than
they are at their professions. They don’t always know this (although their