***The following is a post from my good friend John. If you're feeling stuck in your creative journey, this one is for you. Please enjoy***
There’s a bit of mystery and romanticism around the concept of creativity.
Some people are praised as being creative, others aren’t. It’s easy to think creativity is some hard-do-define talent you either have or you don’t. If you have it, great. If you don’t, too bad. And there’s no helping you!
But if you’re willing to put on your detective glasses and look a little closer, we can knock the mystique off of creativity, and recognize anybody can be creative.
Creativity is Common
Let’s start by looking at two statements about creativity. I’ve found both of these helpful in shaping my beliefs about who can be creative, and how.
The first statement came from Peter Drucker when he politely declined an invitation to be part of an interview series about creative people. As recorded in Greg McKeown’s book Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less, Drucker wrote “I could not possibly answer your questions. I am told I am creative—I don’t know what that means….I just keep on plodding…”
The second statement is an ordinary dictionary definition for creativity. I found it by searching on DuckDuckGo. It defines creativity as “The quality or ability to create or invent something.”
The definition of creativity suggests Mr. Drucker’s comments were closer to the reality of creativity than folks who romanticize creativity. While they were talking, and leading people to think creativity is some mysterious force, Drucker was working. And since creativity is about creating or inventing things, work is necessary to get it done.
Creativity isn’t mystical. It’s practical. Creativity happens every day, in every walk of life, in every social and economic class on planet Earth.
I’m sure creative people don’t mind charging high dollar to offer their creative services to folks who think creativity is elusive. And there’s also no doubt some people are more creative than others (meaning in some cases it’s worth paying somebody high dollar for their creativity). But you are creative.
And if you aren’t creative, you easily can be. You have been in the past, and you can be again.
If you don’t feel particularly creative, now is a good time to revive your creativity. You can do so with a little CPR.
C is for Competence
You’ll recall our definition of creativity was “the quality or ability to create or invent something.” If you don’t know how to make anything, you can’t create. If you’re only able to make the same thing anybody else can make, nobody will consider you creative either. A copycat is only imitating, not producing something new or different.
You can think of competence as the ground floor for creativity. Competence won’t make you creative on its own, but it will give you the base skills you’ll creatively utilize later.
You might think of creative artists as people who broke the rules of their genre. Yet, many creatives realize they have to know the rules and conventions of their craft before they break or manipulate to produce something new.
If you aren’t feeling creative in a certain area of your life, start by learning more about that area. You can get creative once you’ve established core competence.
P is for Personality
Creativity involves doing something in a unique way or producing something unique. Of all the tools in your toolkit, what do you have that’s more unique than your own personality?
Isn’t this how so many “creative” people have made their mark? They combined competence in their chosen area with their own personality to bring about something different. In industries where the products and services are effectively the same, personality becomes the only meaningful distinction among competitors.
It’s not creative to copycat somebody else. But applying your own personality can bring about innovation to existing things, or the introduction of something new.
This area of creativity is particularly dear to my heart. There are so many people with brilliant minds and creative solutions, but they don’t share them with the world because they’re afraid to assert their own personality: those specific thoughts, feelings, and actions that make them who they are.
How much creativity is inside you waiting to come out, but it can’t because you’re afraid to let it come through? How much longer are you going to let it stay hidden inside of you?
R is for Restraints
It seems counterintuitive, but restraints stimulate creativity. Why wouldn’t they?
Think about this! Being able to do the same thing everybody else does, the same way everybody else does isn’t creativity. But being able to do the same thing other people do in a way nobody else is doing it is creative.
Restraints force you to accomplish a task in an unorthodox way. They demand creativity.
They also demand you assert your personality on the task at hand. If you’re doing something in a way nobody else has done it, where are you going to look for help? Nobody has a set of directions to hand you!
Instead, you have to look at yourself—what you know, how you think, how you do things—and figure it out.
If you feel like you’re really in a creative slump, put some restrictions on yourself and watch what happens. The end result might not be pretty, but it will be creative!
What kind of restraints might help draw out your creativity? You could take away a tool that you’d normally use. Or you can give yourself significantly less time than you normally would. Restraints like these force you to focus, and they force you to use who you are and what you have to get the job done.
The Wright Brothers were not the only ones trying to produce an airplane for powered human flight. But they also didn’t have the resources their chief competitor did. They made an airplane anyway, and were creative in the process. They drew on their own skills as bicycle builders, used their own talents, and did their own testing. Their creativity blessed the world with an invention that transformed travel.
Having too many resources can hinder creativity. What motivation is there to be creative when you have unlimited resources, unlimited options, unlimited time? But when time is short, money is tight, and you MUST get results, creativity abounds.
Yes, YOU are Creative
I hope I’ve been able to convince you that creativity is within you. Even if you never become the most creative person in the world, you can at least stop holding yourself back with the limiting belief of “I’m not a creative person.”
You are creative. And you can choose to assert your creativity.
John Allan
John Allan is an author, speaker, and coach who helps ambitious Christian introverts embrace and assert themselves to they can live with personality and purpose. You can learn more about John and his work by going to www.johnallan.cc.