Now we are entering the ‘get strategic’ realm of living creatively. Enabling great relationships. This advice is important for social relationship as well as professional ones.
If you want to live a creative life you will need other people to work with you. Living creatively is not just about holing up in your garage and sculpting the next David. Living creatively means thinking bigger about your life and how you live it. If you want to sell your art work for example, you need a bunch of humans to buy from you.
Human requires social interaction to make it whole. The level of engagement is of course varied according to the human. Some people like to spend a lot of time around other people. They are at every social engagement, they walk down the street and say hello to people, and they are always on the phone or connecting with someone. They meet someone and immediately make a connection, they swap emails or phone numbers or connect on Facebook. These are the ‘people collectors’ as I call them.
These people are great to know because they know everyone. They will also help you to know other people as well because generally these people love to connect people together. These people are fantastic at leveraging their relationships. They network, they pass work to each other, they pick each other’s kids up from school, they connect each other with people that can help them. They are people connectors as well as collectors.
Leveraging other people’s relationships for your own learning, business, networking, friendships, or whatever you need is a way that success can find you. This is not a manipulative or nasty thing to do. If you remember we used to live in villages and help each other out all the time. Old time humans would never think twice about asking their neighbour for help. They know that what goes around comes around. They help the neighbour and the neighbour helps them.
This is just natural human behaviour, so don’t feel bad or embarrassed about asking for help or a connection. Just think about it from your perspective. If someone came to you and said, “I want to introduce you to Jill. Jill is new the the world of [your speciality area] and she loves your work and would like to connect with you. What do you think?”
I’m sure that you would feel honoured that Jill wants to meet with you and would say yes. Most people say yes.
Note of warning…If the person that you are engaging with is not well liked within the industry that you are working in then linking your career to them is a disaster waiting to happen. Be friends sure, but be aware. If they are well liked then managing a good working relationship with them and ensuring that they know your interests and most importantly, what you can contribute, is critical.
Social interaction is on one level essential for our wellbeing, and on another level essential for your ability to live creatively and create a profit from your passion.
Enjoy your relationships.
Ask for help.
Stay connected.
Michelle Holland is a creativepreneur, author, speaker and coach who works with creative people who have an idea burning in their mind and want to start living creatively, and perhaps even start a business in the creative arts. Michelle has put together a resource for creative people to use to help you live more creatively. Feel free to download this resource to use here: https://michelletholland.com/creativefuturegift
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