You Are Not As Creative As Me and Other Myths
Apr 20th, 2010 by David Svet
“I’m not creative.”
“I can’t draw.”
“I’m not artistic.”
If I got paid every time I hear this I could stop building my lottery ticket origami collection. It makes me sad when people say these things. It makes me sad because it is not true and their beliefs rob them of their innate ability to express themselves and live to their full potential.
Do you remember drawing as a child? Did you make up stories and draw pictures of them? Does drawing dragons, castles, firemen, princesses, knights, or hand-turkeys ring a bell? You used to play all the time too. Did you ever pretend you were something or someone else? Did you ever pretend that you were in another place in other circumstances? Do you remember pretending that a stick is a gun, magic wand or something else? As a child you probably made up some fantastic tales. This is all creative thought.
But at some point some of you stopped. Now you limit your storytelling skills to explaining away sick days and slowly sucking the life out of your colleagues with PowerPoint presentations. The problem with all of this is that it limits the people who believe this way and consequently limits their contribution to society.
The fact of the matter is we are all creative. Some of us are just more practiced at expressing it than others. The operative word here is practice. Creativity is a skill. It is refined through practice. To practice creativity you design. Design is a process of change — assessing the current state, conceiving of an altered state, creating a plan to change and executing the plan. Simple.
We all do this every day. We learned to do this as a child by playing. That’s how a pile of pillows became a fort or a refrigerator box became a spaceship. Now it’s how a pile of meat, vegetables, herbs and spices becomes dinner or how the iPad is created.
Do you want to fine-tune your creative mojo? Reexamine your life in a designful way. Look at the mundane tasks that you do and see them with childlike joy. Do you always cook with recipes? Try winging it — make your own recipe! Do you make a to-do list at work? Try designing your day instead — assessing the current state, conceiving of an altered state, creating a plan to change and executing the plan. Are you happy with your wardrobe? If not, design a new you. Are you happy with your career? What would it look like if it were perfect? Now design a plan to take it from the current state to the desired state. Do it all with a sense of play and childlike joy. Have fun creating change. You’ll be surprised at how creative and powerful you really are.
