Here’s the transcription of my Monday Morning Movie…
The other day I attended a small group session on creativity. Less than a dozen people were in the room, from all walks of life. Most of them weren’t from the world of business.
The facilitator asked the question, “What is creativity?” I decided to sit back and see what others would say.
I heard the types of responses that I would typically hear if I asked that question in a corporation. For example, it’s about new ideas. It’s about novelty. It’s about doing something different, doing something better, maybe problem solving.
I really took a hard look for myself. I decided that for me creativity, at its core, at the essence of what it is to be a creative human being, is about inspiration.
I purposely chose that word “inspiration” because it comes from the word “spirit,” and it technically means to breathe life into something. To me, that’s what creativity is about.
It’s not the same as innovation, which is a purposeful act of creating something that ultimately generates value.
Creativity is about tapping into our spirit. It’s about tapping into something deep inside of us. There are numerous studies that have looked at creativity levels as we get older.
For example, one claims that 98% of 5-year-old kids test as highly creative. 98%. Then, by the time they get to 10 years old, it’s down to 30%. When they’re 15, it’s down to 12%. The study showed that 200,000 adults over the age of 25, only 2% of them tested as highly creative. I’m convinced that it was the 2% that didn’t test as highly creative when they were 5-years-old and they went through some sort of metamorphosis through their life.
The point is, we are inherently as human beings, creative. We have it inside us. It’s how we are wired. But as time goes on, we learn a lot of things to fit in. We go to school at the age of five. We’re taught to regurgitate facts. We go to university. Instead of gathering and being inspired, we start to focus, narrow, and dig deep.
I think the opportunity for all human beings is to tap into that spirit, to tap into that creative part of us, that inspiration. It’s not so much necessarily, as an individual, about what it achieves, but maybe what it does for us as a human being. What does that creativity do for us?
So ask yourself, what are the things that you can do to tap into your creativity on a regular basis? For me, I love to go walk on the beach. That, for me, is my biggest source of great ideas/inspiration. Or I love to sit in a hot tub as often as I can, which isn’t very often. Maybe take a hot bath.
Sometimes it’s as simple as just quieting my mind or journaling. It is important, I think, for every individual, no matter who you are, to tap into that innate creative spirit that you have. This will be useful in so many different ways, not just in terms of achieving things in life, but generating passion and creating excitement. It is to me, the source of everything else that we do. It helps us be more alive when we’re doing our more left-brain/analytical work.
To me this is an important thing for everyone to do. I encourage you to find something that you can do every day, on a regular basis, that will help you tap into your creativity, tap into your inspiration, tap into what it is for you, as a human being, to be alive.