Are you living a creative life?
I live a creative life.
There.
I said it.
Openly, unashamedly…I own that I am a creative person.
There seems to be a stigma around creativity, like it is the Harry Potter lightning scar – a mark signifying mysterious aptitude to defeat the dark arts of boring living. It has become a label that we use to describe the few people we designate in our circle who make great posters, plan great parties, and come up with great new ideas.
Creativity seems to be confused with the concept of originality or ingenuity. How often do you compliment someone’s handmade card, and she laughs it off and says, “oh, no I’m not that creative, I stole this idea from Pinterest.” Even though she made something with her own two hands, made something assuredly at least slightly different from the inspiration she found online, made something at all, she sees herself as a thief and not a creative person.
The definition of “creativity” from Merriam-Webster is simply, “the ability to create.” That’s it!
And the definition of “create” is, “to bring something into existence.”
When you make something – a song, a poem, a cake, a drawing, a finger-painting, a banner…when you draw with your finger in the sand on the beach – you are being creative!
Elizabeth Gilbert, author of “Eat, Pray, Love,” as well as “Big Magic – Creative Living Beyond Fear,” has a must-read Ted talk called, “Your Elusive Creative Genius.”
This woman has a way with words, my friends. I love how she describes genius as a thing, a magical thing that comes to us and wants us to do something with it. I love everything about Gilbert’s lessons of “thinking smartly about creativity.”
You can read an overview of the talk here.
Here are my favorite quotes from Gilbert:
“My experience with having a creative mind is that if I don’t give it a task, a ball to chase, a stick to run after, some ducks to herd, I don’t know, something, it will turn on itself. It’s really important for my mental health that I keep this dog running. So give your dog a job, and don’t worry about whether the outcome is magnificent or eternal, whether it changes people’s lives, whether it changes the world, whether it changes you, whether it’s original, whether it’s groundbreaking, whether it’s marketable. Just give the dog a job, and you’ll have a much happier life, regardless of how it turns out.”
“The frustration, the hard part, the obstacle, the insecurities, the difficulty, the “I don’t know what to do with this thing now,” that’s the creative process. And if you want to do it without encountering frustration and difficulty, then you’re not made for that line of work.”
“Perfection is the death of all good things, perfection is the death of pleasure, it’s the death of productivity, it’s the death of efficiency, it’s the death of joy. Perfection is just a bludgeon that goes around murdering everything good.”
So what will you do to live creatively? What are you already doing that is creative, that you have been afraid to label as creative? I’d love to hear your thoughts!
-Keri
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