Choosing creatively = choosing well

Do you ever find it hard to make choices? It can be stressful: choices are super-important to defining your life's path.  How do you figure out what choices to make?

One answer is that how you make choices is important.  If you're the kind of person who dives right in without ever looking back, you're not really choosing, which doesn't always turn out well.  On the other hand, if you're the kind of person who endlessly thinks and re-thinks, you could get stuck in indecision. 

Luckily, our creative brain is designed to help us strike the right balance.  When we fit our choices into a creative process, we have a method that will help us to both think things through, and also move forward without regret. 

Here are the steps I recommend:

1) First, be really clear on what motivates you to make this choice at all.  If you don't know why you are doing something, you will never know what you should do. Imagine and visualize where you want to end up, and be sure that it's important to you. 

2) As you consider your options, first think, then feel.  Brainstorm your options, then get the information you need to build a "choice picture" that tells you what each option might end up looking like.  After you've done that, tap into your feelings--how much do you like each of those choice pictures?

3) Clear out the distractions so you can tune into your deepest self.  Listen for your inner voice. If it's in turmoil, you're just not ready to choose. Don't stop or run away, ask yourself "what's missing?" and solve it.

In the end, you will simply make a choice.  However, if you've gone through this process, it will be a conscious choice that brings you closer to understanding yourself and the world.  And that will keep your life's path pointing forward, not backward.

Unchosen paths of creativity

One of the hardest parts of working on creative projects is committing to one choice, and casting aside another.  In the middle of a process, you usually won't be able to prove that your choice was the right one.  It's just... your choice.

I take two approaches to dealing with that uncertainty.  The first is that I don't rush my exploration.  Deadlines or not, it's important to let the intuitive process take place.  Letting ideas slosh around in my brain, exploring and researching are all crucial to my ability to make choices.  Sleeping on an idea (and waking up with an insight) has saved me from mistakes more often than sticking to a perfect project plan.

Second, I have come to understand that no choice will ever be perfect.  All preparation aside, a choice is just a choice.  It's your choice because you chose it.  If you feel inspired, motivated, insightful, and then make a choice about your project, that's as good as it's going to get.  Someone else, or even you on a different day, might have made a different decision.  So be it!

Never be careless. Your project is too important for you to make choices lightly.  But choose you must, and that takes will and character.  Continue on down your path; if obstacles should arise and you need to go back and re-choose, do it with the same purposefulness and commitment.  Your attitude toward making choices will drive your achievements.