Why Creative Success Isn't As Impossible As It Seems And How To Make It Yours

The creative mind has been valued and highly appreciated for centuries.

When taking into account the works of Leonardo Da Vinci, who represents an era that emphasized the essence of beauty manifested through art, and Walt Disney, who created an alternative reality that promoted imagination and curiosity, it’s impossible not to acknowledge that some people leave permanent marks on the world.

Some people would call it divine intervention; others would call it pure luck. What’s the secret? Creative minds have special mechanisms that distinguish them from society’s normality. They put pieces together like jigsaw puzzles and manage to connect the dots as precisely as possible.

It is important to realize how invaluable a creative mind truly is in our modern world. Without creative minds, you would be in a deficit of filters for your Instagram photos, selfies for whatever you please and Facebook updates for a sense of instant affirmation from your “friends,” so to speak.

With a drastic increase in technological advancement comes the drastic increase of instantaneous gratification from our everyday lives. We want affirmation immediately; we want our desires to be fulfilled and we don’t want to wait longer than 10 seconds for any of this to happen.

More than anything, this creates an ongoing dilemma for the creative individual, as anonymous pressures of societal conformity can interrupt the creative flow. It isn’t predetermined, but rather, a process filled with personal experiences and external inspirations.

When you are filled with creative energy to draw, act, sing or partake in anything that involves creating an idea, life isn’t always as easy as the successes portray it to be. We live in a society where conformity is the norm and if you aren’t part of the norm, you are essentially a crazy outsider.

If you haven’t reached the economic goals society expects from you by the age of 25, you’ll be stuck in poverty forever. If you don’t graduate from college, you won’t have any shot at becoming successful. If you don’t conform to other peoples’ perceptions, then you are doomed for eternity.

Well, this is complete utter bullsh*t. What if you stay on your route for creative success? Then what? Do you believe for one second that the most impactful innovators spent their energy caring about what others expected from them? To put things in simpler terms, this will ruin your creative flow.

Every genius and his respected successors faced adversity plus a number of undesired difficulties and hardships along the way. Many encountered poverty for years, others had substance abuse issues and most were thought of as useless to the world.

Success likely won’t transpire over night. Your big break may not even happen until you’re halfway through your life. You must introspect and question whether you would risk never getting a break at and living a normal life, just like everyone else. The choice is ultimately yours.

Every person in this world has the ability to achieve greatness in whatever they desire to do.

We all have intelligence, creativity and capability. But, the one thing that not everyone has is the ability to be is patient. Patience is the secret to success at every level.

It took Leonardo Da Vinci 16 years to create his first masterpiece. Stephen King wrote for 19 years before his first book got published. People think success is instant and happens overnight; they crave fame and riches, but they don’t necessarily want to wait to glorious hours that success demands.

It’s a lot easier to leave behind your creativity, your passions and your dreams for a college degree, a dead-end job and never-ending bottle of alcohol in which you can drown your self-inflicted miseries. There’s always more beneath the surface of every person’s story. Preserve your creativity.

Stop expecting everything to happen all at once. Time is our most valuable asset and just because you don’t see instant results doesn’t mean you won’t move forward. Trying to do things the way everyone expects you to do them is the worst way to go.

It’s increasingly difficult to be patient in a world rampant with instant gratification. Breathe, work and be patient. Things will come together; you’re a creative mind, too.

Photo Courtesy: We Heart It