Let Me Out (2016) offers techniques for overcoming the fears that delay or hamper new projects. The book advocates a series of useful methods designed to nurture creativity and boost the imagination. It’s about opening the floodgates to new ideas and making them a reality.
Peter Himmelman is a successful Grammy- and Emmy-nominated musician, author and visual artist. He created the company Big Muse to share communication and leadership skills with organizations and individuals all over the world. He runs seminars on how to use creativity and unlock paths to new solutions.
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Start free trialLet Me Out (2016) offers techniques for overcoming the fears that delay or hamper new projects. The book advocates a series of useful methods designed to nurture creativity and boost the imagination. It’s about opening the floodgates to new ideas and making them a reality.
Have you got an idea for a book, song, film script or business stashed away? Why are you sitting on it? Get moving!
The first step to realizing your dreams is to overcome fear.
It’s normal to fear failure. Worry inevitably becomes the biggest obstacle when we really want to succeed. We start talking ourselves down. Maybe we tell ourselves that we aren’t talented enough or that someone has beaten us to the punch, or that we’re not qualified.
Repeating negative thoughts gets us nowhere. It leads to procrastination at best and self-sabotage at worst. Especially when that pessimism starts piling up.
Such negative thinking is almost always rooted in past experience.
Perhaps, for instance, you've never had a freelancer in your family. You might have internalized the belief that running a business is difficult. It needn’t be. There’s nothing stopping you from starting that dream travel agency if you really want to!
Equally, if you don't take that first step, negativity and fear can escalate. But the moment you get the ball rolling, even if it’s just the smallest nudge, things won’t seem so insurmountable.
A good way to unblock negative beliefs is by using a Brain Bottle Opener (BBO for short). These are simple time-limited creative exercises designed to unlock ideas.
A BBO works something like this. In a 15-minute slot, you could scribble down possible options for your new venture’s name. In ten minutes you could doodle some logo ideas. In a couple of minutes, you could buy a domain name.
By working to a fixed time and on a defined task, you can quickly snap out of sluggish and negative mind-sets. Every concrete action takes you that little bit closer to realizing your goal.
So that’s the first step. Where do you go from here?