17. The Law of Creativity

Under the Laws of Success

Every advance in human life begins with an idea in the mind of a single person.

It is the ideas you generate, more than anything else, that will enable you to solve your problems, overcome your obstacles, and achieve your goals. Ideas are the keys to the future. It is not possible for you to achieve anything of value except to the degree to which you think creatively and do something new and different from what has been done before. All it takes is a small innovation to lay the foundation for a fortune and launch you toward great success.

The first corollary of this law is
Your ability to generate constructive ideas is, to all intents and purposes, unlimited. Therefore, your potential is unlimited as well.

Ideas are a mode of transportation, a vehicle that you can use to take yourself from wherever you are to wherever you want to go. Your job is to generate as many ideas as possible, evaluate them carefully against your current goals, and then take action on them. The greater the quantity of ideas that you develop, the greater will be the quality of the ideas you have available to you.

There is virtually no obstacle in life that you cannot overcome with the power of thought, with the power of concentration, with the power of ideas.

The second corollary of this law comes from Napoleon Hill who said,
Whatever the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve.

Your mind is designed in such a way that you cannot have an idea on the one hand without also having the ability to bring that idea into reality on the other. The very existence of an idea in your conscious mind means that you have within you and around you the capacity to turn it into reality. The only question you have to answer is, How badly do you want it?

The third corollary of creativity comes from Napoleon Bonaparte who said,
Imagination rules the world.

Everything you see around you is the result of what was originally an idea in the mind of a single person. Our entire man-made world is the result of thought brought into reality.

The fourth corollary of this law comes from Albert Einstein, who said,
Imagination is more important than facts.

There have been countless occasions in your life, and in the lives of others, where the facts say one thing but your ideas and creative ability have enabled you to do something completely different.

An idea or an insight at a critical moment can be the turning point in your life. All great changes in human life and destiny begin with an idea that enables you to see things differently and to take an action that you would not have taken in the absence of that idea.

Wherever you are, whatever you are doing, whatever your situation, you have the creative capacity, in the form of an infinite ability to generate ideas, to solve any problem and achieve any goal. There are virtually no limits to what you can accomplish except for the limits you place on your own imagination.

How you can apply this law immediately:

1. Practice the "Mindstorming" method of idea generation on every problem, question, or goal. More people have become wealthy and successful with this method of creative thinking than with any other. Here is how it works.

Select any goal or problem you have and write it in the form of a question at the top of a sheet of paper. Then, write twenty answers to the question in the present tense, as though you are doing them already.

For example, you could write, "What can I do to double my income over the next two or three years?" You could then answer, "I come to work one hour early every day and plan my day in advance." Discipline yourself to generate at least twenty answers in this way, and more if possible.

2. Select at least one idea or answer from your list and take action on it immediately. Your taking action keeps ideas coming all day long. It maintains your flow of creativity. And the more you practice this exercise, the more and better ideas you will generate. You will activate more of your brain. You will actually increase your intelligence.

Do this exercise every day for a week, first thing in the morning, for whatever question or goal is most important to you at the moment. You will be amazed at the quality and quantity of ideas that spring from your imagination when you ask yourself the right questions and then write down the answers.

Source: Brian Tracy, The 100 Absolutely Unbreakable Laws of Business Success, Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc, (San Francisco, 2000).