This series of articles explores the 6 milestones that I have identified make up the creative process. These steps are repeatable and can be applied to any situation, goal or dream you want to achieve. Go ahead; follow these steps to your wildest dreams. Your success is only limited to what you can imagine.

Step 1 The Creative Mindset - Positioning yourself for the creative process
Step 2 Conceptualize - Creating, processing and prioritizing your ideas 
Step 3 Visualize - Turning your ideas into virtual reality
Step 4 Strategize - Laying out your road map from here to there
Step 5 Exercise - Organizing, executing and practicing self-discipline
Step 6 Materialize - Accepting the reality of success

Now that you have positioned yourself for the creative process by clearing your mind of distractions and unnecessary clutter you are ready for the process of filling it with ideas.

Someone once said that conceptualizing is the collection of objects, concepts and other entities that are assumed to exist in some area of interest and the relationships that you hold among them. Conceptualization is an abstract, simplified view of the world that we wish to represent.

Gray matter matters

This is an intellectual exercise. Stepping into the cerebral universe is more than a simple challenge to many people. If you have prepared properly in step 1 you are now free to explore the world of ideas unobstructed by interference, static and distractions.

Now that you have a base to build on you need to collect the ideas. The concept could be social, lifestyle, material, business, it makes no difference. The process is the same. It does not exist yet, so you have the opportunity to create it the way you want it to be.

I like to acquaint it with creating a fine painting. The canvas is your surface. You first draw your grid. You select the theme of your picture, and then select the medium (oil, watercolor, pencil, etc.). Next you conceptualize the objects you want to include in your creation. You might include architectural elements like a building or bridge, perhaps a tree, a person or water feature.

Conceptualizing is a completely free-spirited exercise. Let our imagination run free with the theme of your ideas. This is not the time to limit yourself, there will time later to refine and structure your ideas. This is the starting point so open to all of the possibilities of your success.

Once you have a chosen an objective and accumulated a full basket of ideas it is time to organize them. To begin with, you need to establish a base line, a point of reference. In many of the creative arts like graphs, drawing, architecture, organizational planning or process charting this is accomplished with a grid upon which you draw or position your objects, tasks or processes. The lines provide a point of reference to form relationships between objects, tasks, function to optimize the desired interaction between things, thus producing the desired results. This step is one dimensional, you are not yet building, you are laying out the concept of what you want to build.

While this is initially an intellectual exercise emotions play a principle roll in you selection process. You want to be satisfied and happy with the outcome you need to make choices that bring that potential in the end.

Things have to fit into your concept. I have learned the hard way over the years that if something doesn’t fit at the outset it will likely be a misfit to the end.  The axiom is “if it’s not all right, it is not right at all.” The objective is to make your mistakes at this level, before you are heavily invested.

Don’t make it hard on yourself. Now is the time to explore the stuff that dreams are made of. This is the realm where dreams reside.

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