Is “I am not creative” really a thing?

Creativity is innate to you & brings freedom to your life.

Photo by Elena Mozhvilo on Unsplash

I honestly believe: no, “I am not creative” does not exist.

Today, I share with you why not just art and music are creative. Thinking is creative, living your life in a creative way is very important, solving problems needs creativity, conversations can be creative…

…basically: life itself is creative. In any second you live it. You are creative.

I will share some tips & tricks on how to bring back creativity into your life later, if you wish to do so. But first some thoughts on the topic:

I believe we are all born naturally creative.

Yes, every little human being is creative, if you don’t believe me, look at children playing or remember back to your own childhood.

• Children will built the biggest & most fascinating sand castles, while you might only see a deformed, muddy pile of sand.

• They will come up with roles to play and how to interact with each other to execute a certain storyline, while you dont get the point of imagining being a princess, cowboy or frog.

• They will imagine being chased by dragons, while you see them running around randomly while screaming and laughing at the same time. Maybe you are even annoyed at the loud sounds.

• They will play with what they find, build, construct & imagine the greatest stories ever, while you might see a pile of sticks, rocks & leaves that dont represent anything.

• They will draw and paint fearlessly, shamelessly & be proud to show you their creations, while you might see colorful scribbles that dont mean anything to you.

Childrens imagination & therefore creativity is endless!

So what happens to all that creativity, imagination and joy when we grow up?

I meet so many grown ups that tell me “I am just not creative” & it makes me a bit sad.

For several reasons:

for me, creativity is not just painting, drawing and making music. Creativity is building, dancing, cooking, writing, reading, walking, inetracting with other people, living your life in a creative way, solving problems, thinking creatively and exploring!

Creativity is accessible everywhere, all the time, at any time! We can tap into it whenever we want to.

Let’s just say, this is true. We take it as a fact: Creativity is all around us and within us.

We should wonder: why do so many grown-ups dont feel creative then? Why dont they seem to see the creativity around them? Or the options to be creative?

My theory is, because we are mostly educated out of it. Starting in school & maybe even from our closest social surroundings.

At school it is math, languages & natural sciences that counts the most. The rest is irrelevant. Art & music classes are unneccessary, a waste of our time. Even social sciences like pedagogy classes are deemed to be “housewife-classes”. At leats this is how I grew up.

I personally did not agree & cared, I choose my majors on what I loved, which was biology and art. The natural world & creative world combined!

We might have also heard:

“This is not a castle, its just sand, castles look differently.”, “You can’t be a frog”, “Shhhhh, dont scream so loud!”, “Don’t ask so much”, “You can draw better, I dont see what this is.”

These sentences might sound cruel reading through them and I personally have not heard such words from my closest family & friends.

However, it does not need these cruel words for a child to be inhibited in their creativity.