I cringe when someone tells me, “I don’t have a creative bone in my body.

If you weren’t creative, you would have no bones… you’d be dead.

This is the truth. Plain and simple.

Your body needs creativity to function.  I’m not saying you have to do an oil painting or draw your dog. I’m stating the fact that your body is constantly creating, every day, 24/7, 100% of the time. It is creating blood, sweat, and tears. It’s breathing in and out. It’s digesting food and churning out nutrients and then transporting to all the billions of cells in your body.

This is no small feat! Think of it, your body is generating billions of new cells every day. Your body is BREATHING. Your body is PUMPING BLOOD. There are thousands of things going on at any given moment in your body.

What does this have to do with “creativity”?

The energy that is driving this magnificent machine you live in is the same energy that lifts your fingers when you type, picks up a paintbrush, thinks your thoughts, puts on your underwear in the morning, decides what you will wear for the day.

There is not a single moment of a single day that you are not using the Divine Energy, the Divine Creativity that is coursing through your body.

You have to navigate traffic, decide what color shoes you’re going to wear, decide what chair you’re going to park your ass on all day, and what color the sofa will be for the potato to rest at night.

What is creativity?

This spark, this Divine Energy, can be fueled at any minute to do something you “think” is creative.

Like journal.

Write a book or a blog.

Paint a painting or doodle a mandala.

Student mandalas

These are all student mandalas!

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Devise a new way for numbers to flow through your spreadsheet and create a presentation that others will understand.

The energy is always there, working hard for you. But you need to activate the creative energy.

Focusing on a task is like blowing air on a fire to get it hot enough for ooey, gooey s’mores!

Your creativity is like a muscle. The more you use it, the stronger it becomes ~ Brian Tracy Click To Tweet

So why do we feel we’re not creative? Why DO so many people say “I don’t have a creative bone in my body?

In our society, we have very high expectations for success.

There is a belief that if you’re not making a lot of money at something, it’s not worthwhile. We believe we have to work hard (not fun) to be successful and save the rest of our time to be creative (have fun).

But, as we all know, that kind of lifestyle leaves very little room for fun. “Thank God it’s Friday!” is a common saying throughout our culture. But the hidden meaning is, “I’ve been doing something I hate all week, now it’s time to have fun.” And what do most people do? Go out, have drinks, eat a bunch, watch a movie and go to sleep. Or go out, drink too much and wake up on Saturday wondering, “what happened?” The weekend is filled with housework, cooking, and spending time with the kids, or worse, recovering from all that drinking on Friday night.

I am familiar with thinking I wasn’t being creative while running a large tech company for 14 years.

At first, it was great, I was working on an interactive program for kids doing artwork, writing storyboards, working with animators, and having fun. However, it became a “job” when I stopped doing artwork and creative storyboarding and just managed the projects, people, and corporate funders. After 12 years I burned out.

It wasn’t until I found a “creative” outlet that I began my journey to realizing just how creative we all are.

The outlet was, as you most likely know, was creating mandalas. It was my ongoing fascination that lead me to research not only the power of the mandala but the power of creativity.

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I came to understand that creativity is not reserved for artists – it is the actual life force that keeps us alive.

How can we be more creative? The key is, we have to work our creativity! We have to own it! Click To Tweet

According to Jeff Dyer, Hal Gregersen and Clayton M. Christensen in the Harvard Business Review:

You can actually become more creative by changing your mind-set. Anyone can innovate, if they choose to. Disruptive innovators do it by choice, not chance. Their everyday actions swap out an “I’m not creative” mind-set for an “I am creative” one. And then magical (not mystical) things unfold.

The bottom line is pretty simple.

Tell yourself you are creative.

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This simple act of doing anything creative will open your imagination naturally.

You will begin to see the world in a more colorful way. You’ll notice the magnificent creative force all around you, in nature, on the subway, in your car, at home. Your mind will open up to ideas that have been waiting for your attention.

Commit to taking on something that will stretch your creative mind: draw mandalas, take a writing class, go for a walk, start a blog, doodle in your journal, take ANY class, read a great fiction novel, go fishing, learn to ski, take a painting class.

According to Elizabeth Gilbert, the author of “Big Magic

“Creativity is a crushing chore and a glorious mystery. The work wants to be made, and it wants to be made through you.”

It doesn’t matter what you do to exercise this divine, creative energy.

Get outside of your “routine”, stretch yourself mix things up and get creative!

Let me know how YOU plan to get creative already. I’d love to hear from you.

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