What is Creativity Anyway?

 

What is creativity anyway

What is Creativity Anyway?

Hi Marita here…. I came across this article by Ian Philips and found it very interesting. Working as a coach I noticed that one of the essential keys in order to live happy, peaceful, fulfilled lives is: to be authentic and express who YOU are. To express your creativity is a way of expressing your gift. Sounds very simple doesn't it? Well unfortunately it's not, but it can be practiced.

The question is: "What inspires you to create?" Using your creativity does not mean you have to be artists. "Every day" creativity is expressed when you cook, or talk, how you dress. It can be expressed through gardening or how you decorate your homes. Even sports can be a great way to express creativity and of course there are many more ways.

As long as you are immersed in the activity and find joy…………. you are creative…. the key is to dare to "be it and do it", it's a life purpose… Enjoy the article!

"Creativity is our gift from god, using it is our gift to god" Julia Cameron

Have you ever had the thought, "I'm not creative. I can't even draw a straight line"? If so, you're not alone. Many people think that there is some essential relationship between creativity and the ability to make art. If they can't paint like Picasso, sing like Josh Groban, or sculpt like Henry Moore, they don't dare claim to be creative. It feels like an arrogant thing to say about yourself, if you're not an expert, not making a living from your creations, not well-known and publicly acclaimed for your imaginative gifts.

Why, when creativity is our very birthright, do so few of us feel creative? Why, when we're asked to think of someone creative, do we rarely think about ourselves, but of the public figures that have defined creativity over the years? We think of Monet, Mozart, Jackson Pollack, Martha Graham, Ansel Adams, always the figureheads, when the real truth is that every one of us is a born creator. That's the hallmark of being human: the ability to create, to turn something invisible into something visible, to forge a poem out of a feeling or a song out of a sorrow.

Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, author of Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention, says that creativity doesn't happen in our heads but in the interaction between our imagination and our social context. It's a matter of experience and response, a matter of relationship to others and a commentary on the significance of our encounters. Creativity is the vivid expression of who we are in the world–our imagination begets our thoughts, our thoughts beget our words, our words beget our actions, our actions beget our experience, our collective experience and expression begets our culture. Each of us is contributing to the creation of the cultures we participate in.

The world is not divided into two groups of the creative and the uncreative. If there's a distinction, it's between those who are creatively productive and those with unexpressed potential. We're creative by default. We're genetically predisposed to create. Each of us, to varying degrees, is intrinsically motivated to create, to be original and to solve challenging problems. The question to ask is not, "Am I creative?" but rather, "What inspires me to create?"

Personal creativity is not about intelligence or information. It's about inspiration, from the Latin spiritus, meaning "breath, courage, the soul." Creativity is about being fully alive, living courageously, or as the painter Joan Miro´ says, "Expressing with precision all the gold sparks the soul gives off." When is the last time you felt fully alive? What is it that calls forth your courage and trumps your fear of sharing your soul? Knowing this is the key to discovering the creativity that is waiting to be expressed through you.alive, living courageously, or as the painter Joan Miro´ says, "Expressing with precision all the gold sparks the soul gives off." When is the last time you felt fully alive? What is it that calls forth your courage and trumps your fear of sharing your soul? Knowing this is the key to discovering the creativity that is waiting to be expressed through you.

…….I hope this article was useful. Now I will inspire you to use some very basic tools to get into the creative zone.

Morning pages are a great meditation and very simple, all you do is: write 3 pages freestyle, whatever comes up and do this every morning. The only rule is not to think and not to edit. It's a way of getting all the rubbish out of your head, that prevents you from doing what you love to do.

Here is a sample of my morning pages: I hear the birds singing, oh I forgot to buy coffee, this woman really bothered me, I cannot believe she said that. Oh my god I don't want to judge people, but I don't care, I think I need another cup of coffee, I can write what I want. Somehow my nose is itching, this is such a beautiful song on the radio, I feel like dancing, it reminds of when I was on one of my beach walks………The beach is so beautiful, I miss the beach, I should have gone to the beach more often. Sometimes I like to write………….there is a big pile of stuff on my desk, why do I get so messy, oh well, right now I just write.

Try it, it's one of my favorite practices, I get addicted to it…

How do YOU express your creativity? Please leave a comment, it's always great to hear what YOU have to say.