The Mastermind Effect: Why Brainstorming Partners Are Essential

This post is geared more toward those in the Creatives category. You know who you are. Ideas buzz in your mind at all hours of the day and night, and you're constantly looking for things or thinking outside the box at any given situation. If you're a creative person, you already know the particular loneliness of having a mind that won't quiet down.

• The ideas that arrive at eleven o'clock at night when you should be sleeping.
• The project that's been living in the back of your thoughts for months, half-formed and insistent, waiting for the right conditions to become something real.
• The vision you can see clearly from the inside but struggle to explain to people who don't naturally think the way you do.

Creative minds are a gift. They're also, at times, an isolating one.

Over the years of working in a creative field, I've discovered that the ideas themselves are rarely the problem. Most creative people have more ideas than they'll ever have time to execute. The challenge is finding that small, trusted circle of people who can help you see what you're actually building, ask the questions that move you forward, and tell you the truth when something isn't working yet. That makes an enormous difference!

You may have heard this called a mastermind group. I much prefer the phrase finding your people.

Why General Community Isn't Enough

A broad creative community is sustaining and necessary. The workshops, the guilds, the online groups, the conferences. All of it matters.

But there's a difference between being known generally and being known specifically. A large community knows you as a creative person. A mastermind circle knows your particular project, your particular voice, your particular way of approaching a problem. They also know it well enough to meet you exactly where you are when you're stuck.

Anyone can offer encouragement, though. A true brainstorming partner offers insight. And that's far more valuable.

• They can stand at a distance and say, I think the problem is here, and here's why.
• They can ask the single question that reorients everything.
• They can remind you of what you said about your project at the beginning, before you lost the thread, and help you find your way back.

That's what I used to have in the early years of my writing career. Then, through a series of unforeseen circumstances and betrayals, I lost it all. It wasn't until recently that I realized just how deeply the impact affected me.

For years, I struggled to maintain the writing pace and the engagement I had established. With each passing month, the community, the interest, and the support dwindled, until no one even knew I was an author anymore. My days got consumed by reacting to life instead of planning it. I ended up living day to day, without much of a plan, reacting to the immediate without any intentionality or progress toward my goals.

Eventually, I started believing that what I did didn't matter to anyone, because no one was reaching out. No one was asking when my next book was releasing or about any current projects. And instead of squaring my shoulders and first *being* the engagement I needed, I watched life happen all around me. Watched others enjoying and celebrating the community and support they had found. All the while, feeling like an outsider and trying to find my place again.

How to Find The Community You Need

Of course, these relationships develop slowly and can't be forced. For someone like me who tends to move at high speed with my fingers in multiple things at once, it's not exactly what I want to hear. But I need to listen, regardless. I need to rebuild....on several levels. And this is how:

• Start in community.
• Pay attention to who asks good questions.
• Watch those who engage with specificity and care.
• Look for those who shows up consistently.
• Find those who demonstrates genuine interest in other people's work.

Those are the people in whom you want to invest more deeply. And when you're ready to invest your time or attention:

• Be willing to offer before you ask.
• Show up for someone else's creative process before you need them to show up for yours.

The relationships that grow into real brainstorming partnerships almost always begin with you giving first. You need to extend generosity without any expectation of immediate return. And while I've spent years sowing into others, my giving always came with hope attached to it. Hope that someone would return the favor.

It's definitely a fine line to walk, as you ARE hoping to form relationships, but you don't want that to be the condition of your generosity.

I'm definitely still learning. Even though I'm quite outgoing and help others smile when they see me, the intimacy of those sustained and mutually beneficial or rewarding relationships still eludes me...even at nearly 50 years old.

Just remember. Your brainstorming circle doesn't have to be made up of people who do exactly what you do. A novelist and a visual artist and a musician can form a deeply effective creative circle if they share the qualities that matter:

• Curiosity
• Honesty
• Genuine investment in each other's work

The medium is less important than the mindset. Your ideas and passions deserve that kind of company. And so do you.

Have you found the people who understand how your creative mind works? Who can meet you in the middle of a stuck project and help you find your way through? How did you find them, and what has that relationship made possible? I'd love to hear about it in the comments.