That word means a lot of things. Creativity has a lot of connotations. Creativity. Just say it. What do you feel? What images do you think of? What ideas come to your mind? Creativity has a lot of juice, a lot of meat, a lot of fruitful vegetation, ... and the possibility to get a whole lot of people STUCK as soon as they hear the word.
I am an artist but I spend a great deal of my time working in expressive and creative art therapies. I do this with myself as well as with others. In my training and in my experience with others, there is one word that has the ability to stop the creative process... Creativity. It is not just in this atmosphere though. My friends who know me as an artist will often say things to me like "I wish I was creative". I will be at the Art Hop in Kalamazoo on the first Friday of the month and hear others walking around whispering to one another "if only I were creative...".
I have tried to explain on so many occasions to so many people that we are all creative. Every human being is creative. Everyone has creative potential and uses it. Creativity comes in many shapes, many forms, and is expressed in a variety of ways. Unfortunately-- we've been taught to think of creativity narrowly. We have also been taught to value creative endeavors and products through narrow lenses. The truth is... or one truth I suppose, albeit many creative people believe it... everyone has creativity in them.
When we are young we are all creative. We all play, we all dream, we all imagine. As we get older we are taught how to do those things "correctly". We are given scripts by society and told what is the "right way" to do things. This scrunches our creativity-- sometimes it takes the breath right out of it. Do not be fooled, creativity doesn't die, and no one is born with out it. It just means we have to learn to be free again. Creativity needs freedom. To be creative we need to be free of constraints.
When I decided I was going to blog on this topic I started by looking up definitions of creativity and reading about it in some of the books I have on the topic. No surprise to me that no definition was the same, and the books all discussed that that there are different ways to look a it. Some of the authors began to give theories of creativity and discussed that based on the origin and the reason for the discussion (business, etc.) the discussion and definition will develop in one direction (that is with agenda). They went on to define what it takes to be a creative person. I wasn't sold on this last part-- that is, "what it takes to be a creative person".
The truth of the matter is that there are a lot of ways to be "creative". You can think creatively, you can build things creatively, you can do your finances creatively (and in this economic time-- many of us do!). You can cook and bake creatively, you can teach creatively, you can garden creatively, you can take walks creatively. You can be an artist-- of any sort-- and be creative. The end result is not what makes you creative... it is the process, and it is the way you approach it.
My final point... you all... we all... are creative beings.
I am interested in your thoughts. Do you think you're creative? How do YOU define creativity? Do you think about creativity differently now? Did you hop over to any of the links and read the definitions and learn something new about creativity and it has made you think differently about it? Drop a comment and let me know.
Great post. I feel the same way. Creativity is a personal trait that is defined in many ways to that person. I'm a marketing manager full-time, so it's a daily occurrence to have someone tell me how creative I am. I hate hearing that. I almost always try to point out something about that person that illustrates their creativity as well. For instance, accounting is the polar opposite of the marketing function. I see their spreadsheet full of formulas, etc. I always tell them, there's now way I can do that. I think that's a "creative" talent that they can do.
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