I teach a workshop on creativity called Unleash Your Creative Cow: A down-to-earth and utterly insightful workshop on creativity. I chose the cow theme for several reasons. A cow is wholesome, down-to-earth, and natural (more on this in future blogs).
Cow Tale – Myth #1
The only creative people are fine artists, writers and inventors
Truth
You were born creative.
We’ve mistakenly elevated creativity to ranks of the chosen few – the Michangelo, Jane Austin, Thomas Edison, and Steven Spielberg’s of the world. It probably happened because someone aptly described one or more of these individuals as a creative genius. And then somewhere along the way the ‘genius’ part of the description was dropped. Let’s put it back in. The truth is, there are creatives in the upper echelon just as there are olympic athletes. The rest of us are free to be simply be creative.
Dictionary.com defines create
–verb (used with object)
- to cause to come into being, as something unique that would not naturally evolve or that is not made by ordinary processes.
- to evolve from one’s own thought or imagination, as a work of art or an invention.
- cause to happen; bring about; arrange, as by intention or design: to create a revolution; to create an opportunity to ask for a raise.
We are all born with the ability to create. Being creative is as natural as breathing. Every morning you get up and you create your day. You make choices and decisions about how your day will flow, what friends you’ll chat with, what projects you’ll work on – you cause things to happen. That, very simply, is creating.
Maybe you’re a cyclist and you map out interesting (i.e. creative) routes. Or, you love to cook, throwing a little of this and little of that into the recipe. Or, you’re a businessman and you developed your own (creative) way of bringing your product to market. These are examples of creativity in action.
We are all born with the ability to create. What we do with that ability is another story. Creativity is a muscle. If you want to be more creative, you’ve got to exercise your creative muscles. Lucky for us, getting creatively fit is lot more fun than working out at the gym!
Milking the Creative Cow Exercise #1
In your own personal journal, write ten examples of where you exercised your creativity within the last week.
That’s the tales end for today. Next time, we’ll talk about the Four Steps to Generating Creative Ideas.