The Truth About Success & How To Use Creativity To Make Your Dreams A Reality.

Welcome back to the second article in my series “From Employee to Entrepreneur.”

In the first article, I talked about the importance of  “speed of implementation” and why that’s a key skill you’ll need to succeed.

Today, I want to shift the focus from the “outer world” – i.e. doing stuff and getting things done – to the “inner world” of being an entrepreneur.

Specifically, we’re going to focus on creativity … and we’re going to learn how to use our minds to connect ideas and things together in new combinations … so we can actualize and achieve success in business and in the world to make your dreams a reality.

But, before we do that, there’s an important concept you need to understand.

What Is The Truth About Achieving Success?

When it comes to success – especially entrepreneurial success – most people have it wrong.

Let me explain …

See, most people think that success is a direct result of a particular action. They think there is a direct cause-effect relationship. And this makes sense if you’re just seeing the surface level of things.

This is also why most people will try something new hoping it to bring them the success they want, and when it doesn’t, they will just move to the next thing wondering why it didn’t work.

The reality, is there is not ONE thing that you can do to achieve success.

The reason is because success doesn’t happen, it EMERGES.

Let me give you a few real life examples…

Think about a car.

A car is made up of several components – a steering wheel, brakes, tires, ignition, etc.

What makes a car move forward is not any one of those individual components. For example, a steering wheel by itself isn’t going to do anything.

It is when ALL of these components are combined, and work together that the result we want to have happen – the car moving forward emerges.

The key thing to realize here is that it isn’t any one particular thing or action that causes success.

Success emerges when you put the right components together.

Another simple way to think about this is baking a cake.

Typically, you need eggs, butter, flour, baking powder, and milk or cream.

Just like with a car, individually none of those “parts” on its own resembles a cake.

If you bite into the egg or the butter, it certainly wouldn’t taste like a cake at all.

But when you mix all the ingredients together, and in a specific order, and then bake the mixture, what emerges is the result we are looking for – a cake that tastes good.

Success is the same thing – whether it’s in business or in your personal life. The secret is instead of trying to find that “one” thing to make success happen, find the various components and work on putting them together in your life.

Success is not a cause-and-effect result … It is an Emergent.

And this is why understanding emergence and how success really happens is so important to your journey from employee to entrepreneur.

Success happens naturally when you put together a unique set of components. It happens on it’s own. It’s not a simple “cause and effect” result.

In every area of life – health, relationships, or money – there is not one single thing you do to create success. Success is always an Emergent.

Where most people fail is trying to do one thing and hope it causes success as an effect. But that’s not how it works.

Even becoming a successful “Entrepreneur” isn’t a cause and effect relationship.

Entrepreneurship emerges when you put certain skills and behaviors in place (which I’ll be covering throughout this series).

I’ll give you an example from my own life…

I knew I wanted to become wealthy, but there wasn’t one particular thing I did to become wealth.

Some of the components I put together were:

Reading books, finding a mentor, developing a high paying talent, automating my savings, learning how to invest.

It was all these skills together, when combined that success and in my case wealth naturally emerged.

So now that we’re on the same page, and understand how success works…

What Are Top Skills That Help Entrepreneurial Success Emerge?

The main three skills you’ll need to develop to start with are:

1. Creativity
2. Productivity
3. Leadership

Of course, there’s still a lot more that goes into producing business success – things like innovation, marketing, creating fantastic products or services, and more.

But let’s walk before we run right now, and start with entrepreneurial creativity.

Einstein said:

“Imagination is more important than knowledge, for knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution.”

And when it comes to entrepreneurial creativity, imagination is what will set you apart.

Most people think you have to see something before you can believe it. But as an entrepreneur, you’ll need to learn how to believe in something BEFORE you can see it.

This is how you’ll create new and innovative products and services.

And it’s how you can make a lasting impact (and leave a legacy).

Remember, it’s not seeing to believe, but believing to see.

The next part of creativity is that you’ll need to create your own beliefs, your own reality, and your own way of viewing the world. As you do this and combine it with execution and speed of implementation, you’ll find that things start to shift for the better.

Eventually, what you once only believed in your mind becomes reality, and then one day it’ll “hit” you that what you’re seeing is the very thing you imagined a while ago…

That is what my journey looked like before I bought my first investment property.

I didn’t know much about real estate back then, but I knew that I wanted to get into real estate and start creating wealth in my life.

What I did was started to visualize myself buying and investing in real estate.

It was only once I fully believed it was possible, and saw this happening in my mind, that my reality came true and I purchased my first investment property.

I first made that purchase in my mind, that’s the key point.

The Two Kinds Of Creativity

The next part I’m going to share with you about creativity is that there are two types.

Most people don’t realize there is reactive creativity and proactive creativity.

Reactive creativity is what you use when you’re solving problems. Typically, life will throw something your way and you’ve got to react in the moment and find a creative way to solve it.

Proactive creativity is where you deliberately set time aside in your day to be creative and produce something new – whether that’s an idea for a new product, marketing campaign, etc.

Most people – especially business owners – never think to schedule time to be proactively creative.

But it’s super important if you want to be successful. It’s the “highest power” we have as entrepreneurs.

Finally, there’s one more area where you’ll want to use your proactive creativity …

The Critical “Counter-Intuitive”

This idea comes from the observation that the path to success is typically not obvious and often counter-intuitive.

Us humans evolved in a time that doesn’t exist anymore, and we’re no longer well suited for the reality we find ourselves in. things have changed so much over the past several hundred years with technology, etc.

We now find ourselves in an environment where pretty much everything we need to do to succeed is not the thing we’d automatically do.

For example, if you have some wheat, the natural thing to do is eat it.

The counter-intuitive thing is to store it until spring, plant it, and harvest it in the fall.

If you’re mad at someone, the natural thing is to assume you’re right and they’re wrong. The counterintuitive thing is to see that if you were them you would have done the same thing, and see things from their side.

If you’re attracted to someone, the natural thing is to want to call them 3 times a day and tell them how much you like them.

The counter-intuitive thing is to relax and allow some mystery and intrigue to happen.

You get the picture.

And this is why it’s so important that when it comes to your own success, to get creative and really think about what the “Actual” counter-intuitive solution could be.

For example, maybe you’re facing a challenge, like wanting to lose weight. The natural instinct is to try and exercise your way back to health and fitness.

But by using your creativity, you might see the counter-intuitive truth is that you can’t out-exercise a bad diet. In fact, 80% of your health and weight loss will come from your diet.

Maybe you always feel like you’re busy and overwhelmed with work and life’s responsibilities. So your instinct is to try and find techniques and “hacks” to be more productive and efficient.

But perhaps after using a little creativity you discover that in fact, the best thing you can do is go to bed an hour earlier at night, so you get a good’s night rest … which results in a clearer mind, sharper focus, and the ability to do this in half the time it normally takes you in an “unrested state.”

Just remember that when you’re facing a problem and not getting a result you want, it could be because of the critical counter-intuitive. So let that be a trigger for you to set aside time to be proactively creative in finding what that solution might be.

Alright, that’s a LOT of information I’ve given you for today.

To recap:

• Success isn’t what it seems – there is no direct cause-effect relationship. Success is an EMERGENT that is the result of many different things interacting with each other to produce a higher-order result, which is success.
• Creativity is one of the key ingredients you’ll need so that business success can emerge
• There are two types of creativity – reactive and proactive. Aim to set aside time each week to be proactively creative
• Often, the “right answer” or “right path” is the one that isn’t obvious and goes against your natural “instinct. This is known as the critical counter-intuitive and you’ll find it appears in every key area of life. So keep this in the back of your mind as you move forward on achieving your goals.

In the next article, we’ll talk about another key ingredient to your entrepreneurial success … productivity.

I’ll also share a cool technique that can help DOUBLE your productivity and make it “automatic” for you – so you won’t have to use “will power” or even think about being productive. You’ll just naturally BE productive.

– James Mel