Closing Our Creative Gap: Chase Jarvis

In an interview on Episode 321 of Lewis Howes’, “School of Greatness” podcast, the award-winning director and photographer, Chase Jarvis talks about the importance of visualizing success for everything that he does. In reference to the work of Ira Glass, Chase mentions, “When we are first starting out on something, what we see in our mind and what we are actually able to create is our creative gap. Through repetition, practice, skill, self-talk, and visualization, our goal should be to close the gap between what we envision and what we will someday produce.” Ultimately, the practice of acknowledging our creative gap and moving towards closing our creative gap is what separates those who achieve their ambitions, dreams, and goals from those who unfortunately do not.

When Chase talks about closing in on his creative gap, he mentions that he believes he can make the things that he sees in his mind. This is because he has developed the experience, resources, and tools that have taken him years to build upon. As Malcolm Gladwell denotes in one of his best-selling books, “Outliers,” it often takes close to a decade or longer before we really begin to zero in on our life-long creative gap(s).

How Can We Apply This Method To Our Life?

Lewis Howes and Chase Jarvis

Photo courtesy of lewishowes.com

Are you one of those people who feel as though you are just not a creative person? Guess what…our personal belief is that we were all created therefore we are all creative. We can all create a vision. Our lives are a creative process. As Gary Vaynerchuk would say, we can all reverse engineer our ideal outcome. If our creative gap is unfulfilled, most likely we will be unfulfilled! Think about the impact this has on our careers, lives, and relationships. This causes us to think, what is the correlation between lacking creative fulfillment and living an unsatisfied life? How might our creative gap affect our economic, educational, and social gaps? This may serve as a great hypothesis for a research study. Stay tuned, we’ll keep you posted!

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(Uh • Kway • Us) Aquaus Kelley is a forward-thinking Brand Strategist, Educator, and Music Publisher. As the Founder of A Lovers Ambition Lifestyle Group, he specializes in identifying talent and creating opportunities for brand development, exposure, and growth. Aquaus has worked with companies and organizations such as Cornerstone Agency, City Year Miami, Universal Music Group, and W Hotels. He is extremely passionate about helping companies adapt to culture and building value between brands and their consumers centered around love. His ultimate mission is to use his influence to project positivity across the globe and invest in the collective future of society through the arts, education, entertainment, and leadership.

3 Ways To Get Unstuck: Chase Jarvis

When Lewis Howes recently interviewed Chase Jarvis on Episode 321 of his “School of Greatness” podcast, they discussed many topics. Some of what they discussed include the topics of creativity and the art of entrepreneurship. In particular, they also discussed what it takes to get unstuck and overcome creative blocks. “When it comes time to overcoming our creative blocks, it’s important that we have many solutions” says Chase. We at A Lovers Ambition couldn’t agree more. Facilitating creative ideas requires a certain type of freedom and headspace that as Chase mentions, “Requires us to have a variety of tools in our toolkit.”

Thanks to Lewis Howes, here are Chase Jarvis’ 3 Ways To Get “Unstuck:”

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1. Have Many Solutions

As creative people, it’s important that we learn how to extend our artistic expression across various mediums. For example, if we are a writer, we may want to have an essay, a journal, a novel, some poetry, and a short story. Having multiple activities to tap into within the same main sphere of artistic expression allows us to stay fresh and shift gears from one project to another when necessary.

According to a study read by Chase, he mentions that the ideal number of creative projects to have for a designer is five. It’s important to keep in mind that there are certainly different levels of attention, development, and intensity required for each project. However, if we’re stuck on one thing, having a few options allows us to shift gears and work on something else.

2. Get Away

Sometimes walking away from something allows us to come back with a fresh state of mind and a fresh set of eyes. At times, this may require going to bed. At other times, this may entail seeking adventure, exploration, and discovery. As author Charlie Hoehn would say, “Play It Away.” One of the best strategies to relieve anxiety and stress is to get outside and let it all go. We must ask ourselves, what gives us joy? Is it playing frisbee, going for a walk, people watching, etc? The choice is ours!

3. Tap Into Our Creative Community

“Whether we have mentors, friends, business partners, or teams, we always need people to exchange ideas with” says Chase. Through communicating with other people and sharing ideas and perspectives, we are able to see the world from a different point of view. What better people to reach out to and seek inspiration from than our own creative community? Keep in mind, this doesn’t have to be limited to the people we know in person. Why not seek out some “Virtual Mentors?” There are so many creative and inspiring thought leaders across each and every industry who are delivering highly valuable content on a daily basis. As we like to say, “Find the leaders, learn from the leaders, become the leaders.”

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(Uh • Kway • Us) Aquaus Kelley is a forward-thinking Brand Strategist, Educator, and Music Publisher. As the Founder of A Lovers Ambition Lifestyle Group, he specializes in identifying talent and creating opportunities for brand development, exposure, and growth. Aquaus has worked with companies and organizations such as Cornerstone Agency, City Year Miami, Universal Music Group, and W Hotels. He is extremely passionate about helping companies adapt to culture and building value between brands and their consumers centered around love. His ultimate mission is to use his influence to project positivity across the globe and invest in the collective future of society through the arts, education, entertainment, and leadership.

How Might We Close Our Creative Gap?

When Chase Jarvis appeared as a guest on Lewis Howes’, “School of Greatness” podcast, Chase referenced the work of Ira Glass and the concept of closing our “Creative gap.” Who is Ira Glass I immediately asked? Because I am constantly curious, I decided to look into his work. Ira Glass happens to be a radio personality as well as the host and producer of, “This American Life.” One of the first videos that I decided to check out is a video that I came across on Vimeo entitled, “The Gap.”

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The Gap is shot by visual storyteller, Daniel Sax and was inspired by David Shiyang Liu who created his own version back in June of 2011. Both of these videos were created using the audio from Ira’s interview with Current TV. In his interview, Ira discusses the creative process behind the art of storytelling.

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What interests me the most about Ira’s piece on storytelling is that it addresses the creative process throughout all of it’s stages. For example, when we initially begin to create, what we actually create rarely yields a good product in the beginning. However, as a beginner at anything in life, we usually have a particular taste or vision that we’re looking to fulfill. The space between our ideal taste and the fulfillment of that taste is what Ira calls, “The Gap.”

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When it comes to closing our creative gap, it requires a few key components. The one major and most important component entails not quitting. Our creative process can certainly take a while. It may take 5 years, 10 years, or possibly even 20 years before we begin to see the fruits of our labor. Despite this, we must get over the phase and possibility of creative disappointment. It will happen. The good news is however, it will not last forever.

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Creative disappointment is totally normal. The most important thing that we can do is produce a large volume of work. “It’s only by going through a large volume of work that we’re actually able to catch up and close the gap” says Ira. “When this happens, the work that we create will be as good as our ambitions.” Until we achieve our ambitions, and even when we achieve our ambitions, we must keep fighting!

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(Uh • Kway • Us) Aquaus Kelley is a forward-thinking Brand Strategist, Cultural Curator, and Educator. As the Founder of A Lovers Ambition Lifestyle Group, he specializes in identifying talent and creating opportunities for brand development, exposure, and growth. Aquaus has worked with companies and organizations such as Behind The Hustle, Cornerstone Agency, City Year Miami, and W Hotels. He is extremely passionate about bridging the gap and building value between brands, communities, and culture. His ultimate mission is to use his influence to project positivity across the globe and invest in the collective future of society through the arts, education, entertainment, and leadership.

7 Days of Wisdom (Episode 27)

7 Days of Wisdom is an original weekly video series presented by A Lovers Ambition Lifestyle Group and hosted by Aquaus Kelley. Our mission is to foster growth and create a community of success and significance. Through sharing meaningful advice, knowledge, and insight gathered throughout our daily experiences, we aim to empower, encourage, and inspire our community to achieve their most passionate aspirations.

In This Weeks Episode We Discuss:

  1. The Creative Gap (0:13)
  2. Quotes of the Week (13:20)

This Weeks Resources Include:

  1. Closing Our Creative Gap: Chase Jarvis

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(Uh • Kway • Us) Aquaus Kelley is a forward-thinking Brand Strategist, Educator, and Music Publisher. As the Founder of A Lovers Ambition Lifestyle Group, he specializes in identifying talent and creating opportunities for brand development, exposure, and growth. Aquaus has worked with companies and organizations such as Cornerstone Agency, City Year Miami, Universal Music Group, and W Hotels. He is extremely passionate about helping companies adapt to culture and building value between brands and their consumers centered around love. His ultimate mission is to use his influence to project positivity across the globe and invest in the collective future of society through the arts, education, entertainment, and leadership.