incites

The Creativity Principle

Many people don't see themselves as creative if they are unable to draw or lack artistic abilities. There's good news for you! Everyone is creative—to some degree. If you're feeling particularly lacking, you may not have discovered your medium as yet.

First let's talk about what creativity means. According to the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, "creativity is the ability to transcend traditional ideas, rules, patterns, relationships, or the like, and to create meaningful new ideas, forms, methods, interpretations, etc; originality, progressiveness, or imagination." Seems pretty straightforward so why do we think it is so elusive to most of us? Maybe some examples will help illustrate.

In the 1980s, there was a television show called MacGyver, in which this secret agent would get himself into seemingly impossible situations. He, ingeniously, would pull out a roll of duct tape, dental floss and/or a paper clip and spring himself to safety by manufacturing some gizmo out of his supplies on hand. When was the last time you used an object for something other than its intended purpose? THAT was being creative.

Still not convinced? Ok here's another one. The great chefs of the world combine ingredients and methods of preparing the food in order to create pleasing taste sensations. When we are fortunate, they take the time to translate their dish into a recipe so that we may try to recreate it. The devising of the original recipe is extremely creative. They made something out of nothing. Our using the recipe to make the dish—not so creative. However, some adventure-seekers take the general ingredients of the dish, use their own quantities, add a couple more spices, possibly change the cooking process and voila! They've created a new dish. Hopefully it still tastes as good or even better than the original.

It's worth mentioning here that being creative doesn't always guarantee good results. Maybe this is why people have such a hard time with the creativity principle. They think that good results mean creative and bad results mean not creative. Really the idea to try something different is where the creativity lies. Those chefs had to do a lot of experimentation before giving those creations a spotlight on their menus.

By the way, I bet you don't think your accountant or financial advisor is creative. Of course they are. They devise ways to save you money, build your money, sometimes spend your money but no two plans are the same. Their creative medium just happens to be money.

When defining whether you're creative or not, it all boils down to your approach to the problem you need solving. If you generally try to find new ways to satisfy the need, then you are being creative. This is not to say that you need to have a non-traditional approach in all that you do. It would be impractical to operate your life in this way, since oftentimes the creative approach takes more time. So it means that all ideas are creative. Odds are you've had an idea or two in your lifetime.

When you find the medium that gets your ideas flowing you'll know you've found your creative purpose. Whether it be with food, money, car parts or grass cuttings, your creative future awaits you.