How Nurturing My Own Creativity Changed Everything

“Creativity is intelligence having fun.” — Albert Einstein —

A few years ago, I took an online course in creativity from social scientist and highly acclaimed researcher on vulnerability (among other things), Brené Brown.

I have a slight obsession with personal development and am game to try (almost) anything if I think it might help me evolve as a human and improve my experience on planet Earth (not that it’s been bad so far but there’s room to grow, you know?).

Armed with supplies including paint, markers and a sketch pad, I began the course with enthusiasm.

I was feeling excited that I was about to explore a different side of myself. And then the course began and the assignments began to roll in. Draw this. Paint that. Dear Reader . . .

I.

Drew.

Stick.

Figures.

And I can’t even remember what I painted. I just remember that it didn’t feel inspiring.

Because I couldn’t remember what it feels like to just draw and paint with abandon. To feel my creativity unleashed. To not judge what I was creating. And at the end of the course felt like an utter failure.

I didn’t get the point of the exercise which was to meet myself where I was and to find what sparked joy for me.

Instead, I compared myself to Brown and her artistic friends (who said they weren’t artistic but I mean, come on).

So, I put the markers away, gave the paints to a friend, stashed the sketch patch deep in a drawer and promptly forgot about my intention to explore my creativity completely.

Writing about this experience makes me a little sad.

I wish I’d just drawn what came to me and painted what inspired me. Instead of worrying about what it looked like I could have focused on what it felt like and that might have been . . . joyful. Maybe I’ll give it another try.

Find what lights your soul on fire

One medium that I am comfortable with is photography. I got my first SLR camera when I graduated from high school having shown both an interest in and an aptitude for photography as a teenager.

For a few years I continued to make time for taking photos as I travelled the world for my “day job” and shared them with family and friends.

And then somehow I stopped. Maybe life became too busy. Whatever it was, I lost a part of myself in that process.

Last year one of my nieces encouraged me to start taking photos again so that she could get a better sense of my surroundings and the things I see in my daily life.

So I did.

I started an Instagram account just to share photos with my nieces. I have two followers, two very important people, and that’s how I like it.

Posting photos for them to see and engage with motivates me to see new places which forces me to experience new things, which leads to new ideas.

Curating more rebel ideas

Addressing the global challenges that face our world today will require moving beyond the current set of ideas that we recycle over and over again.

We need rebel ideas.

As author and thought leader Matthew Syed argues in his excellent book Rebel Ideas: The Power of Thinking Differently, to inspire new ideas we need teams of rebels who think differently from each other.

Syed explains that, because of the coverage they provide as a collective, groups of rebels have “vastly higher levels of collective intelligence” and that leads to better problem solving.

As with all things, building work cultures and environments that encourage and incubate the creativity that leads to creative ideas comes down to strong leadership.

In his article on How to Build a Culture of Originality psychology professor Adam Grant explores cultures of nonconformity. He writes:

To fight that inertia and drive innovation and change effectively, leaders need sustained original thinking in their organizations. They get it by building a culture of nonconformity . . . leaders must give employees opportunities and incentives to generate — and keep generating — new ideas, so that people across functions and roles get better at pushing past the obvious.

Grant maintains that it’s important to “strike a balance between cultural cohesion and creative dissent”. He argues for quantity over quality (at least initially) when it comes to generating ideas because as we generate more and more ideas they get better.

According to Grant, research has shown that humans generate more and better ideas alone. He recommends that we create space for individuals to write ideas down and then evaluate them in groups.

We can’t generate ideas, however, if we’re perpetually overwhelmed. We need dedicated time and space. I find I have the best ideas when I’m out in nature but everyone is different.

I urge you Dear Reader to find a bit of time each day to do something that inspires you or find space just to be quiet in the midst of your hectic day.

This will change every aspect of your life.

We deserve to create just because

Yes, nurturing our creativity will help us in our work. It will help us generate the rebel ideas we need to mobilize trillions to address both economic and non-economic loss and damage at the scale of the needs on all fronts and in all parts of the world.

And that’s important. Of course it is. But we are more than the work that we do.

We are all artists and creators. We deserve full, adventurous, exciting lives.

We deserve to do things that light our soul on fire just because.

We deserve to dance.

We deserve to make music.

We deserve to appreciate art and create art that’s appreciated, if only by ourselves.

I want that for you Dear Reader and I hope that reading this has inspired you to carve out more time to create in your daily lives.

This is an excerpt from a recent blog I wrote on how we need to nurture creativity to cultivate rebel ideas to solve the climate conundrum. You can find it here.

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