Page 227 - THE DO-IT-YOURSELF LOBOTOMY Open Your Mind to Greater Creative Thinking

218 THE FIVE GREATEST BARRIERS TO CREATIVITY

New ideas are, by definition, unknown. One can even argue that
this fear thing, a barrier for most people, is also an acid test of a new
idea. I’ll go even further and add that a new idea, by definition, must
have some element of fear, because a new idea is unproven and there-
fore you might fail. So it might be a monster, but you don’t know.

Of course, in this ever changing world, just staying with what you’re
doing now—not changing, not thinking of a new idea—could doom
you to failure as well.

But for some reason we find more security and less fear in the
known than in the unknown.
Fear is an integral part of the creative process. What exactly are we
afraid of? Well, for one thing, people simply fear being wrong. The fear
of failure prevents many people from venturing, from exploring, or
from taking action once they think of a new idea. But there’s a paradox
here. Are you aware that highly successful people fail more than aver-
age people?
Did you know that Babe Ruth not only hit more home runs than
anyone else in his time, but also struck out more than anyone else in his
time? One of his modern-day equivalents, Michael Jordan, missed
more shots during his playing time than anyone else. I tracked this at
the NBA web site for three years in a row, Michael’s last three years
with the Chicago Bulls, during the league championship series. Not
only was Michael Jordan named MVP all three years, but he also
missed more shots than anyone else. In fact, he went out in style: In his
final year he missed twice as many shots as anyone else. Yet he was a
winner. Albert Einstein said, “Show me someone who hasn’t failed, and
I’ll show you someone who hasn’t tried hard enough.”
A study by a major university in California showed that the top sci-
entists in the world fail more than average scientists.
We learn from failure. There is progress in failure. And not doing
anything sometimes constitutes failure.
The only way to succeed is to do something, so we have to be willing
to risk failure. Hockey great Wayne Gretzky says, “You miss 100 per-
cent of the shots you don’t take.” We have to be willing to risk failure,
because inaction is failure when it comes to things creative.