You’re more creative than you think

“You know, I’m just not very creative.”

A client said this to me the other day. And yet… she is. You are. I am, too.

I’m not much of a painter or an artist (which somehow has become synonymous with creative). I made loads of hideous misshapen cups and pots as a failed crafts student. I usually defer to a professional if I want graphics or a decent looking room. I can take a reasonably good photo (a lifelong hobby), and I love color. Organizations have paid me to write since I was 19; people who do the work I did for a good chunk of my early career are often referred to as “creatives”.

Yet we are all creators, creating all the time. We just may not see ourselves that way.

If you’re transitioning from one job or career to another, if you know something is ripe for change in your personal life and it’s up to you to change it, then go on and take a big deep breath. You’re about to tap into a wellspring of creativity. It’s all there. You’ve done all of this before.

Consider this:

I have never been good at holding any job that I didn’t reinvent somehow, and for the past many, many years, I’ve created my own work. I love to create healthy and colorful meals and plant soul-soothing and nourishing gardens. I’ve created a lot of really dear friendships. I create — over time and with a lot of practice — my ability to respond instead of react to the circumstances that life brings.

Maybe you prefer to follow all the rules at work, and maybe you hate to cook. Or write. But take a good look around at all that you have created in your life. Your current work. Your relationships. Your attitude. The stress that kept you up last night. Your debt or your lack of debt. That amazing vacation you took your family on. The healthy habits you’ve ingrained. The peace of mind you feel when you do that thing you love. The big promotion. These are all your creations, and they’re only a small start.

With every hour that passes, we’re creating. Let’s get more intentional about it.

In The Path of Least Resistance, Robert Fritz identifies the three major stages in growth and life building processes: germination, gestation, and completion. No surprise, these are the same stages that artists use in the (artistic) creative process. Idea or concept leads to internalizing or assimilating and then to an outward creation or completion.

Fritz suggests that changing how we view our lives can help all of us harness the creative process (as practiced by those people we call creative, or artists) to design more intentional lives. In other words, if you’re already creating all the time, why not harness that energy towards the qualities and practices that will move you closer towards what feels more authentic, more fulfilling, more YOU?

In coaching, we call this vision, plan & action.

If you’re feeling skeptical about the creativity that you already embody, think of it this way. I know that, in large part, I have created my life from the foundations. More than once. That is not to discount the supports and circumstances that we are all shaped by (those are both influential and real), but no one mapped out a plan for me. No one came to my house every day and made decisions for me.

I’d venture to say that the same is essentially true for you. No one showed up with the how-to. You invented that along the way, with the raw materials and the strengths and influences you were given.

And now, perhaps, it’s time to reinvent. To create something new.

You can do that because, the truth is, you’ve been doing it all along. And it’s easy to lose sight of that.

At the end of the day, we get to decide — and then create — how we want to show up and how we want to work with the situations that shape us, the opportunities and the obstacles. We get creative and we take one step and then another step closer to where it is that we imagine we want to be.

No matter what little corner of your life is waiting for a reinvention, the creation of what’s next is up to you. Imagine how creative you can be when you tap into what’s already waiting there.

Where would you like to begin?