Want to Boost Creative Confidence?
Get Silly!

I recently had one of my clients send me some follow up homework on an assignment I had asked him to complete. It was a story completion about creating a Giant Billboard for his business and included some questions like what does it smell like or taste like? He sent me his completed story saying he felt a bit “silly” doing the activity.

I told him that a bit of silliness is great for boosting business and creativity! In fact, the story he told about his business billboard felt so welcoming and inviting, because of all the sensual details he added. We have to learn to think differently about the world around us if we want to boost our creative confidence and use that confidence and our innate creativity to grow our business. Today’s fun activity might take you back to your own childhood. I have a 5 year old nephew who loves coming to visit because his 16 year old cousin (my son) makes paper airplanes with him.

Here’s a super fun activity to get everybody engaged and thinking creatively!

The Ultimate Paper Airplane

Grab a piece of paper and make a paper airplane. Try to remember how you made paper airplanes when you were a kid. Chances are, it’s been a while and you don’t remember well.

Launch it and watch it fall to the ground (unless you’re already an astute paper airplane maker). Pick it up and try to figure out why it won’t fly the way you want it to.

Go back to the drawing board and refine. Experiment with different types of paper and different folding patterns. Try to figure out what makes the perfect paper airplane.

This exercise isn’t just a juvenile waste of time. It teaches you to refine ideas and solve problems. It’s not hard to figure out why a paper airplane won’t fly and fix it. What you do with your paper airplane is the same thing you do with your ideas. You tweak them until they fly.

Once you have what you think is the ultimate paper airplane, get together with some kids, set up some targets and have a competition to see which one of you is the best paper airplane thrower.

Don’t you love this idea? I am going to have a competition with my two teens. What a fun way to practice coming up with multiple solutions to a problem! It reminds us that there is more than one way to solve any problem.

I find that in business, we tend to get too focused on the outcome rather than on creative solutions. So take an hour off this afternoon and go make some airplanes 🙂

 

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