How To Be Creative When You Think You’ve Forgotten How To Be Creative

[Dan Goodwin]

Each of us have a huge well of creativity inside of us, just waiting to be drawn from, so the most wonderful ideas, visions, and creative projects can flourish into life.

As a Creativity Coach, this is one of my most fundamental beliefs. If I didn’t think you had an infinite source of creativity within you, I wouldn’t be able to do anything to help you nurture and encourage it.

But of course, sometimes it doesn’t feel like we have such abundant inner creativity. It doesn’t feel quite such a huge well. Maybe sometimes it feels more like a battered old bucket. With a hole rusted through the bottom!

It’s at times like these, when we doubt that we’re even creative at all, that we can draw upon our most primitive creative instincts and talents.

Even if you doubt you have these primitive creative tools and resources within you, there are ways you can easily prove to yourself that they’re still in there, always have been there, and always will be there.

Let’s look at a few ways you can do this.

1. Do what’s worked before. Being creative is not a great sacred mystery. Yes, parts of it are unexplainable and wonderful because of it. But each of us have patterns in creating, routines, habits. Or more simply, stuff we can do to help us be more creative, and stuff we can stop doing to help us be more creative.

Think back to the last time you were really creative. Even if it was just for a short burst of time. What were the major factors? What were your surroundings, thoughts, ideas, feelings? What are the key components to your creativity? Write a list. How can you now recreate some of these?

2. Create freeform. However creative you feel, or don’t feel, you can always create. The simplest form is to write, or sketch, or doodle. Take a note book, or sheet of paper, and a pencil, and without any expectation of the outcome, simple move the pencil around where it wants to go.

You will soon find either a few words forming, or patterns and textures. And your creative mind will make connections and associations and lead you to create further words and patterns. This is a very primal, very beneficial way of just letting your creative mind play, in a freeform way.

[Personal note: this is often the way I write, just write what comes, even if it seems “worthless”, then pretty soon some good ideas will appear that you can work with, and expand upon. Use these as a new starting point, and forget the first few lines you wrote, think of them simply as the water you used to prime the pump and get the wellspring flowing...]

3. Try to stop being creative. This is a failsafe way of proving to yourself that you are more creative than you realise and it’s actually impossible NOT to be creative. I’m going to suggest three objects, and all you have to do is promise to not be creative with them, not imagine them in your mind, not connect them in any way, and to not make a scene or a story from them. Deal? You promise?

Here are the objects: 1. A magic violin. 2. A snow covered forest. 3. A young girl with no name. So, did you keep your promise? Or are you wondering why the violin is magic and what it sounds like, whilst picturing trees covered in a blanket of whiteness, and coming up with a name and image for the girl? See, you can’t NOT be creative!

All three of these tips are effective in helping you be creative again when you think you’ve forgotten how. Use them all in combination and your creativity will soon be freely flowing again.

What you might also like to do is to come up with additional ways yourself to help you be more creative. A clever way of doing this is to imagine an artist friend of yours coming to you and saying they’re feeling uncreative, can you help them out. What would you say to them? What works for you, what helps you be more creative? What tips and advice can you give them?

Just asking these kinds of questions, and then making note of the answers, increases your underlying awareness of your own creative DNA and processes. And the more aware you are, the more easily you’ll continue to create in the future.

Share with us below your thoughts and ideas on realising how creative you are when you thought you’d forgotten how to be.

[image credit: Pink Sherbet Photography]

[DJ]

Oh, Jean, I just love your costume from "Where the Wild Things Are" ....You are one talented seamstress/costume designer!

[Dan Goodwin]

Jules/

"I often have the answers, I just do not know it until I tell someone else what I need to hear myself." - this is so often true with many areas of life! Reminds me of a quote that's something like: receiving good advice is hearing what we already could've told ourselves but were avoiding acting upon.

All of what you say is very relevant and true. Just remembering again that creativity is embedded in pretty much everything we do.

[Jean]

I had to chuckle a little just now, after writing that I haven't been creative at home....DJ knows about the costume I made for my 17 year old....and um...I think this just might qualify for creating at home :) I'll share....

[Jules]

Very good suggestions Dan...I especially think that imagining (a creative act itself) what you would tell a friend - I often have the answers, I just do not know it until I tell someone else what I need to hear myself.

I also agree with DJ that the sharing of others creative journeys helps my creativity.

I have expanded my limited idea of what creative is also. I think I mentioned this here on CCS before.

I used to think I had to come up with something wonderful that no one else has ever done before to be creative. The truth is, I just have to do something that I have never done before.

When I do that, I always feel creative. It does not have to be art related. I can change the order in which I get dressed- put my shirt on before my jeans...I can take a different route to work...toss a new spice into an old favorite dish.

If I have never done it before it is a creative act. When I intentionally do something different each day I get the creativity to the forefront and have it with me the rest of the day...I am more open to the unusual- or to seeing old objects and scenes in a new way.

[Dan Goodwin]

I love hearing how this particular lightbulb comes on for people, that being creative doesn't mean just sitting at a canvas with paints, or writing a new song or making a film. Our creativity is in the everyday too, in every thought, every motion, every action. The more we acknowledge our creativity, the more it rushes forth, with the eagerness of a five year old who's just been told their picture is the best picture their mum has ever been given...

[Jean]

What an awesome way to start my Sunday morning! I'm so glad that I took a few minutes to read your article, Dan! Your insights into the creative process are full of wisdom! And DJ...WOW! Your response gave me goose bumps as I read it. You've captured the truth about this CCS community - and I'm sooo thankful to be a part of it.

I've been spending most of my time and energy the past 2 or 3 months at my "day job" which hasn't left much energy for my "artistic" pursuits at home. I was starting to feel that I haven't been as creative as I'd like to be. But reading your article today, Dan, has reminded me that my creative energy HAS been on full blast - not at home for my personal creative desires, but very much "on" during my working hours as I teach and direct a preschool. You are so right....you can't NOT be creative!! :)

[Dan Goodwin]

DJ/ what a rousing and impassioned response!

The call is answered and we can call ourselves artist and writer and craftsman and dancer and musician and actor...........one more time.

It's not an option to not be creative. It's in us. It IS us...

[DJ]

Dan, Your first idea of thinking about one's routines and habits while creating has reminded me of this on a beautiful Sunday morning:
One aspect of CCS that I enjoy is the sharing of each other's processes. Some make art at a worktable, surrounded by colorful papers and markers and pastels. Some write with a notebook and pen leaning against a tree outside in the quiet. Some doodle in a sketchbook on their kitchen table while tea is brewing as a part of their morning routine. Some take a walk with a camera to capture interesting sights on a Saturday afternoon. Some of us have day jobs and snatch trips to the easel when time permits.
In all of these processes, we have things in common: the desire to produce something that wasn't there before...struggles with time/space/energy/psychological constraints...questions about sharing the work with others...issues of confidence when considering our place on the endless talent continuum...making decisions about composition, content, and editing...wondering if today's work is as good as our former...
We finally get one of these issues solved, and another frustrating factor pops up to snag us on our way to the work.
But, when all is said and done, even amidst the questions and blocks and struggles, the desire to create is a personal, glorious, passionate aspect of our lives that calls us back to the making of our product time and time again.
So, we answer the call.
Sometimes in a burst of glory and triumph. Sometimes with a whimpering attempt hidden in a drawer or closet that will only be discovered after we've left this earth.
But no matter our results!
The call is answered and we can call ourselves artist and writer and craftsman and dancer and musician and actor...........one more time.