If you’re surrounded by negativity, look for a better environment. Lawyer Charlie Brower said, ‘A new idea is delicate. It can be killed by a sneer or a yawn; it can be stabbed to death by a quip and worried to death by a frown on the right man’s brow.’ Negative environments kill great ideas. But a creative environment is like a greenhouse where ideas are seeded, then sprout and thrive. In order to grow, you need to look for people who are committed to personal growth, and spend time with them. People like them: 1) Encourage creativity. We need a ‘safe place’ to be at our most creative – somewhere that encourages and welcomes creative thinking. When innovation and good thinking are openly encouraged and rewarded, we feel we have ‘permission’ to be creative. 2) Are willing to risk failure. Even when we’ve studied and prepared thoroughly, we’ll probably have to try several times before we succeed. So, we need to be in an environment where mistakes are viewed as part of the creative process. 3) Believe in the potential of a dream. A creative environment encourages us to think of a blank sheet of paper and answer the question, ‘If you could draw a picture of what you want to accomplish, what would it look like?’ A creative environment allowed Dr Martin Luther King Jr to speak with passion and declare, ‘I have a dream,’ not ‘I have a goal.’ Goals can give us a focus, but dreams have power. Dreams expand our world. And God is the giver of dreams and visions (see Joel 2:28).
