What Does it Take to be Creative?
Are you a creative person? I bet you are, even if you don’t agree with me right now. But hopefully by the end of this post, you’ll be able to see that you are!
Creativity is usually showcased in the arts, like fine art, crafts, writing, etc. And those are all definitely creative things, but creativity also shows up in other forms too! I believe it's human to be creative. Being creative means to create. That doesn’t mean you have to be creating things from scratch to be creating. Creating solutions to problems is creating.
Not being able to draw us no measurement in how creative someone is. Often, growing up as an artist, people would look at my sketchbook and drawings and be like “wow, I can’t even draw a stick figure.” A response that yes, lifted me up, but at the same time, put themselves down. Often coming from a place of feeling lacking in creativity. But I don’t believe it is. Drawing, like many creative activities, is a skill. And a skill can be learned by anyone. But not everyone wants to learn certain skills, and that is okay. What makes humanity great is that we all have different skillsets, interests, and ideas. Engineers are just as creative as a painter. They just have different mediums in which they express their creativity.
Working in a corporate job can also be creative. Many of these jobs are like different gears in a machine of the company they work for. That may not sound very creative, but it’s the skillsets and personalities of the people in these jobs that amaze me as someone who often described as creative. The level of problem solving, organization, and precision often needed are all skills that can create room for creativity. Maybe it’s creating an organized and nice place for you to work, or it’s creating a system to keep everyone on task and moving more efficiently. Maybe you had an idea to solve a problem you and your team were having on a project. That is all still creativity, even if the outcome isn’t a finished painting or a choreographed dance.
So what does it take to be a creative person? All it takes is to look for creativity and allow yourself to create. Creations don’t have to be these huge, impressive, or artistic to be creative. It just had to be made by you, something that was formed as an idea and then brought to life!
