Earlier this month, Kathryn Haydon addressed the insidious personal belief that one is not creative. I use the term insidious because I view the belief as something that undermines something essential about a person. While belief that one does not draw well may be erroneous because you haven’t given yourself time to develop the skill, denying you have the capacity to be creative denies something that one possesses almost naturally at birth.
While you may have to work at getting better at a certain set of skills as you get older, Haydon cites studies conducted with the same subjects over a period of decades that almost seems to show people work at being less creative.
Basically she says people perceive themselves as being less creative for two reasons- they compare themselves to those held up as examples of creativity and they fear judgment for being wrong.
It just might be that the main reason you think you’re not creative is because you compare yourself to others who are famous for their creativity (Steve Jobs, Pablo Picasso, and Lady Gaga) or to people in your own life who are known for their creativity.
When you’re in a comparison mindset, you inadvertently diminish your own creative ability. You envision Picasso and your highly divergent friends on a pedestal that you cannot possibly ascend.
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Society has perpetuated the myth that creativity has to be comparative, and if comparative, mutually exclusive: “If Picasso is creative then I am not.” This reasoning is incorrect.
and later,
…fear is the only thing standing in the way of training it back. (Fear can also come in the form of saying, “I’m not creative” to protect yourself from risk. You now know that this is false, so if you keep using this line it is heretofore a cop-out. Everybody is creative.)
It is no mystery that society and our educational system emphasize discovering the right solution rather than discovering the creative solution which stacks the decks against creativity.
In order to get back in touch with your creative ability, she suggests some exercises like “Try thinking like someone else: an alien, a rock, a stray cat, a high school math teacher.” She cautions against deciding to go all-in, 100% on creativity in one shot like a resolution to start a diet on Monday.
In other words, don’t let the first risk you ever take be taking out a second mortgage on your house to try a new business idea. Start instead by doing something that gives you slight discomfort, like driving a new route to the grocery store or sharing an unconventional insight in your next meeting. As you practice taking small risks you will become more comfortable sharing the fresh perspectives that you have gained by practicing your creative thinking.
For people in the arts, talking a new route to work may seem a little elementary a step, but for some people it might be a significant step. It could be a version of “failing fast,” especially if they turn off the GPS while taking an unfamiliar route.
The strategies for cultivating creativity are all just on a relative scale of risk taking and potential failure. For an arts organization it might be new programs. For an individual, it is looking at something with a new perspective.