Unleash Your Creative Potential
Creativity it’s not just for artists. It’s for anyone who wants to see the world in more than one way and for those who want to keep on reinventing themselves. Flexible and multidimensional thinking helps us to come up with new ideas and solve all kinds of challenges in our day-to-day life. We become more playful, have less fear, and are able to see more opportunities. I believe creative expression serves our wellbeing and thus, it should be part of our self-care routine.
Creativity can be defined as the ability to produce original and unusual ideas, or to make something new or imaginative. This is a very broad definition. As James Clear, the author of the book Atomic Habits, points out in his blog post, creative thinking does not need to be about generating something new from a blank slate. It can be about taking what is already present and combining it in a novel, innovative way.
We often believe that creativity is a talent that few people have or that only artists would need it. Creativity is a trait, some are primed to be more creative than others. It’s not that one is better than the other: we need all kinds of personalities in this world. Everything from highly logical and strict to highly bohemian artistic souls. They all can have a valuable contribution to our societies. Almost every person is born with some level of creativity and the vast majority of creative thinking abilities and skills can be improved with regular exercise.
In psychology each personality type has creative potential. Recently, I watched this interesting conversation between Dr. Jordan B. Peterson, author and psychologist, and Marc Mayer, director and CEO of the National Gallery of Canada, about the psychology of creativity. Dr. Peterson explained how the Big 5 personality traits - extraversion, agreeableness, openness, conscientiousness, and neuroticism - relate to creativity. Of all the Big Five personality traits openness (or openness to experience) emphasises imagination and insight the most and is the most strongly linked to creativity. Therefore, people who score high in openness tend to be creative. They are often curious, love learning new things, have a wide range of interests, and enjoy new adventures. Moreover, highly creative people tend to have multiple personalities. On the contrary, those who are low in openness tend to be more traditional, logical, and resist new ideas. One does not need to be an artist in its typical sense to be creative. As Peterson points out, for instance, many entrepreneurs are the same types as the creative artists: they keep coming up with novel ideas and innovations.
How Creativity Serves the Society
Creativity is essential for innovation and communicating messages in our societies. I hope at some point we will start to value artistic work more because arts are the platform for creative expression and imagination. They can serve as a source of inspiration for businesses. Various artistic methods can also help individuals to find their path in life, and to become liberated and more creative. Furthermore, artistic work can raise important social questions and start uncomfortable conversations that the society desperately needs.
Artistic methods can also be used as a form of therapy to heal from the past, accept the present, and plan for our future. Even though people have been using arts for healing for thousands of years, art therapy didn’t become a formal program for psychological disorders until the 1940s. I think arts or any creative exercises can be powerful for all of us to improve our mental wellbeing and to elevate our mood. Things like journaling, playing an instrument, drawing or painting asks for deep concentration: it’s like cognitive centering or meditation: we can forget everything else around us. Other impactful creative methods include role playing, improvisation, and dancing. When we express ourselves freely, we can learn to become kinder to ourselves and accept ourselves as who we are.
The sad thing about our society is that in many professions or in life in general we have become very narrow minded. The education system is made for factory workers: it effectively trains creativity out of us - unless you go to arts school. Worse still, we are encouraged to choose very specialised fields of profession and are supposed to stick with them and forget everything else. Our system mostly rewards loyal, hard-working professionals who don’t dare to speak up or challenge their supervisors. In certain things, I guess, high levels of specialisation can improve productivity and quality but sometimes what we need the most are people who are not afraid to challenge the status quo with new ideas and new ways of thinking.
Enhance Your Creative Potential
One of the most important factors when trying to improve this area in our life, is how we view our talents internally. It’s vital to embrace a growth mindset: the belief that our abilities can be improved with effort and practice. Creativity is a process for all of us, and to make it a part of a life requires willingness to make creativity a habit. There is a great book, The Creative Habit by Twyla Tharp, which I recommend for anyone interested in developing this area in their life.
You may have noticed that there are periods in your life when you have felt more creative and times when you hit a plateau. At least personally I feel more creative and open to opportunities when I practise positive thinking and mindfulness. Likewise, I struggle with creativity when I feel sad or depressed. This is the reason why I always highly recommend journaling for anyone who feels sad or lost because it helps to pause, and observe. Through journaling we are able to put things into perspective and often come to realise that things aren’t as bad as they first seem. When we express ourselves fully and authentically, we free ourselves from suffering. Through journaling we can also brainstorm new ideas for a better future. We start to notice that we are the creators of our own lives.
If you are not familiar with the idea of writing “Morning Pages”, aka journaling, I recommend checking out the book, The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron which is full of exercises to help you to tune in with your creative source. It’s perfect for “creative recovery”. The book is famous for its primary exercise, the Morning Pages. It asks you to write three pages, by hand, first thing in the morning whatever comes to your mind without any specific goals or restrictions. In our digital world this is a valuable tool to get into a creative state and quiet the noise. Most of us have the habit of checking our phones right after we hit snooze but the trouble is this practice hijacks the morning and raises stress levels even before our feet hit the floor. Instead we should allow our senses to awaken slowly and naturally. This way we can concentrate on the type of energy we want to invite in. And when we are in this beautiful and calm state of mind we can let ourselves be free and allow our minds to wander; Journaling becomes effortless.
The Curse of Creativity
Being highly creative comes with its own challenges. If you are someone highly creative and want to make creativity (arts, innovations, etc.) your livelihood, you may have a hard time at the beginning - especially if you do not have existing networks, marketing skills, and financial safety net. As Jordan B. Peterson well explains here, it’s not an easy profession to monetise. However, for highly creative people that’s often their life: they need to have a channel to express themselves to feel alive. They cannot imagine doing anything else; Creativity is what nourishes their soul. They can always try to suppress it, but it’s not good for them.
This is the reason why finding a middle ground can be helpful. You don’t need to leave your artistic pursuits to have a happy life. You can and you should keep on doing your thing even on a very small scale. It does not need to be an all-or-nothing thing. Having some sort of income coming in is essential so that you don’t need to become desperate. Too much stress and lack of time kill creativity. The tricky thing here is that the best creative ideas often come when the mind is still and you have time just the right amount: not too much, not too little. Next, I’ll share ideas on how you can make your creative process work.
The Process
Practise discipline: choose your primary passion
The key to success with anything is to choose your primary passion, stick with it, and master it. If you don’t know what your passion is, just choose one thing, so that you can train your discipline. Later, you can branch out but you need to train your discipline first.
Create your schedule
Theorising a piece of art or writing a novel never helps. Don’t leave it up to choice and wait that you would one day just wake up and feel inspired to create something. We need to build habits so that we can build the skills we need to become masters - that’s what differentiates professionals from amateurs. For instance, you can block two days a week and on both of those days commit to your creative interests for a few hours. Or schedule “15 minutes of creativity” into your calendar every day.
Examples of exercises:
Draw whatever comes to your mind for 20 minutes - coffee cup, stilettos, submarine, parrot, umbrella, hammock, galaxy, ancient bicycle, witch, etc. - and don’t erase!
Write a quick poem about your day.
For the next 365 days take a photo each day and write a new adjective on it describing your mood.
Go to a museum or festival with your sketchbook and draw something inspiring you just saw.
Go to a farmer’s market and pick up one new vegetable, fruit, and herb, and prepare a meal using them.
Walk via a different route to your home and take some photos.
Give yourself permission to create without judgement
We tend to be our worst critics and this can prevent us from even starting anything at all. Perfectionism kills creativity! Focus more on the process than the outcome. Most of the time when we are learning a new skill embarrassment and shame are part of the process. Have more compassion for yourself and keep on producing the thing that you love. What I have noticed is that we often need to practise a lot and produce a volume of work until we gain enough skills to create something beautiful. It takes effort, and trial and error to find our consistent style that we can become known for.
Finish something
Stop researching, planning, and preparing - Just do it! No more postponing. I know how hard it is but it is better to do something than nothing at all. Set a deadline and produce something so that you can prove to yourself that you can accomplish things.
Hold yourself accountable
Share your work publicly because that will hold you accountable to create your best work. You will also get valuable feedback from your audience which helps you to improve. You can also connect with inspiring people which will motivate you to work better.
Sending You so much love and so much gratitude!
Resources:
Articles:
NYTimes: Julia Cameorn Wants You to Do Your Morning Pages
Books:
The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron
Atomic Habits: An Easy and Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones by James Clear
The Creative Habit: Learn It and Use It for Life by Twyla Tharp
Videos:
Jordan B. Peterson: 2017 Personality 19: Biology & Traits: Openness/Intelligent/Creativity II
Lectures: Exploring the Psychology of Creativity - Dr. Jordan Peterson & Marc Mayer