How To Prove You’re Far More Creative Than You Think

[Dan Goodwin]

If I were to say: “How creative are you?”, it’s likely you start to think in your mind about all the time you spend actually making art.

For example if you’re a painter, you’d be thinking of how many hours you’re at the canvas each week. If you’re a writer, you be adding up keyboard time to estimate how creative you are.

You might not even get that far though. You may just have an instinctive pre-programmed, off the shelf answer: “ME? Oh I’m not very creative at all. It’d be a insult to artists to even THINK of calling ME an artist!”

Do these reactions seem familiar? Are they like the way you might respond to that question: How creative are you?

They’re very common, and you’d be far from alone in reacting in these ways. But I can guarantee you’re selling yourself short, and vastly underestimating how creative you really are.

Let’s look at the first reaction, where you add up all the time you’re actually physically at your canvas/ lens/ screen/ desk. Here there are two major shortfalls when you’re trying to weigh up your creativity only in this way.

Number one: You’re only taking into account the classically recognised or traditional art forms.

What happens then is you completely overlook all the dozens of others ways you’re being creative each and every day.

What about the way you dress? The way you’ve decorated and organised your creative space or studio? That delicious meal you cooked last night? The social gathering two weeks ago where you created a wonderful space and atmosphere for everyone to have a good time? The way you manage your finances? The way you organise your work colleagues? These are all highly creative acts, and just a handful of examples.

Number two: You’re only counting actually “creating with your hands” time.

We each have our creative processes. And yes a significant part of those processes are where we’re physically making the art, or writing the words. That’s how our art comes into being.

But is that the beginning and end of your creative process? Of course not. Anything that anyone creates starts with a tiny seed of an idea. And ends when you’ve created and presented your art to the world, and begun working on the next idea. This process takes into account a far wider range of creative acts than just the time you’re physically creating.

Can you start to see already that you’re far more creative than you gave yourself credit for?

By having a very narrow view of what creating is, and when you’re being creative, you dismissed so many different creative acts before you even realised they WERE creative acts.

So when you feel you’re not creative enough, or that you’re not creative at all, give yourself a break. Step back, take a look at that last week or two and list ALL the many many different moments and ways you’ve been creative.

The fact is, you can’t NOT be creative. You want proof?

Ok, I’m going to suggest an idea for a story, and I want you to read it, and not having ANY further ideas, or images about how it could evolve. Ready?

Imagine there’s a kingdom of talking rabbits. And the rabbits all dress beautifully, like royalty from medieval times. And they hold lavish banquets with ornate furniture and cutlery and the finest, tastiest food any rabbit could ask for.

So, you’re not creative right? When you read that paragraph, you had no images come to mind whatsoever? You didn’t think about what the rabbits would be like, what they might be called, what their banquets would look like, what “the tastiest food any rabbit could ask for” might be?

Of course you imagined all these kinds of things. You have a highly creative mind and imagination!

Follow the suggestion above, make your list of all the many creative things you’ve done the last few weeks. Once you get started you’ll amaze yourself at how creative you REALLY are...

How often do you limit YOUR perception of how creative you are? What are you thoughts and experiences relating to this article? Share them with us below...

[image credit: jef safi]

[Dan Goodwin]

Great points June. The concept of "mistakes" comes up a lot here on CCS, and happy accidents. When you just let yourself create freely, often it goes in unexpected directions. Sometimes these don't really come to anything, but other times you have an idea that you wouldn't have had otherwise, if you'd followed very strict rules in creating and not given yourself any freedom to experiment.

A crucial point too is that we don't have to make some incredible creative masterpiece every time we create! It's impossible. We don't have to even finish every project either. Sometimes they just doesn't work out and our creative time and energy would be better spent elsewhere. And obviously all of this awareness increases and grows the more we create.

[June Walker]

With the 'fear' issue, I think one very real help in getting over it is to participate in creativity forums where you can post 'silly' work to an audience of friendly fellow creativity journeyers. If you feel 'safe' that they will encourage you, it can stop you from obsessing about whether your work is 'good' enough, or 'right' or any such stuff. I admit, though, I have felt that fear and trepidation... when I ventured out first. But now I am getting more confident about making 'mistakes'. And often the mistakes are better anyway than the 'right' stuff. If you like to talk in terms of left brain /right brain...its possible that we need to coax that controlling self to let the creative side do a little on its own. Play a little. The world won't blow up if you made a bit of a rubbish painting or crappy poem...and you can always keep going on. To get to the place where you feel relaxed and good about your efforts.

[Dan Goodwin]

I think leading on from this Craig, it pays to remember that even the areas of creating we are familiar with and confident in, at one point we weren't. If you're a writer for example, there was a first poem, a first story, a first memoir. It's very unlikely it was the best work you ever created, but it was a brave venture into something you felt drawn to. The more we create, the more we evolve, our confidence grows as does our experience and competence.

By acknowledging how creative we already are, we realise that to create more, we're simply rediverting the river of creativity that's already flowing within us, rather than trying to fill a dry and parched lake bed that hasn't seen water for years.

[Craig Campbell]

I think we all limit our sense of creativity whenever we come up against an experience we are not familar with or have little experience with or have "fear" about. This "fear' is different than being threatened physically. it's more about the fear of failure, looking inept, being less than excellent or looking dumb. Powerful motivators which we can avoid with one statement:" I'm not very creative!" After that , anything we do has already been apologized for and any small creatve act is a "breakthrough"! It happens to us all in the areas of our lives where weare not our not experts.

[Wendy]

GREAT post/article, Dan. I particularly like "number one" and "number two"!

[June Walker]

I rather like that mosaic photo image you've posted in this article, Dan.