IMAGINE

Creativity and I have a very interesting relationship.

Like most kids, I just assumed that I was as creative as anyone else. When we're young -- crayons, markers, construction paper, and Elmer's is never far from reach. You’re constantly encouraged to doodle, imagine, and create with little thought for purpose or reason.

Filling the role of most adults in our culture, my family didn't consider themselves the ’creative types' so they didn’t really push or encourage me to tap into the artistic side of my self.

As I reflect back on the situation, I realize just how much bullshit that was. Because, once again, science is showing us what we should have known all along.

There is no such thing as a ’creative' or 'non-creative' person. EVERYONE IS NATURALLY CREATIVE. Our brains are naturally designed to create new informationfrom old ideas. That's exactly how we evolved into being.

By expanding on good ideas, and making them better.

Anyways, I just want to talk really quick about how this applies to me personally.

At some point, even though creativity became MORE important to me in my teenage years, I started to believe that I just wasn't creatively talented.

Like, since I wasn't born with a natural tendency to paint or draw, I wasn’t ’creative’.

Sadly, I didn't have anyone to point out to me that even artists, painters, film makers, musicians had to WORK THEIR ASSES OFF to posses the skills that eventually came to them.

It wasn't just something that happened. They didn't just wake up talented and ’creative’ they had to work for that ability.

It isn't supernatural. It isn't metaphysical or divine. It is humans doing human things. Sometimes enjoying the hell out of it, and sometimes not...

But either way, they kept working and trying and reaching into themselves.

I'm still struggling to gain confidence in my own creativity. I went through years of both blatant and subversive shaping teaching me that I contained no creative ability.

But like I said, I now know just how unfair those teachings were.

Sadly, most of the time I still feel like I'm trying to prove to myself that I can be creative. And it's hard not to measure up to others who seem to have such ease making new things.

But that is also a false idea. Creativity isn't easy. Not truly sustained projects. It takes practice, confidence, conviction, and vulnerability.

And my friends, one doesn't just wake up with those things.

So I say, open yourself to the creativity you have inside yourself. You might be surprised to find what it brings out in you.