Do you feel unfulfilled or stuck in a rut? Do you doubt your ability to create anything meaningful or worthwhile? Or, on the other end of the spectrum, are you overwhelmed by creative ideas that you never find the time to bring to life?
You are not alone. It is surprisingly common for people to doubt their ability to create, even though, unlike any other species on the planet, we are wired to be creative. Better said, as human beings, we have these unique and powerful minds that are plastic in nature, minds that are responsive and constantly morphing and reforming based on our interactions with the world around us. Herein lies the source of our natural creative capacities.
The reason it feels so good to create — to be caught in the enlivening flow of creativity–is because creativity is our natural state. The first step in claiming our natural creative abilities, therefore is to simply proclaim, “I am a creator!”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” you might be saying to yourself. “Sure I’ve done some pretty interesting things in my life. Sure I snapped some artsy photos back in high school. But a creator? Me?” That’s a tall order. That sounds a bit arrogant, does it not?
Not at all. Claiming your seat as a creator is not arrogant but the fearless proclamation of who you really are as a human being. Children, for example, are naturally creative. Most adults, however, learn not to be creative, dropping our natural wonder, curiosity, and exploration for the sake of conformity. The reason for our doubt and disbelief in our own creative powers is that we ascribe creativity to the gods (as in The Creator) and to god-like super humans such as Mozart, Shakespeare, and Einstein then believe that we don’t measure up. In other words, instead of claiming our natural creative capacities, we, in the worlds of psychologist Carl Jung, project our creative capacities out onto others, and choose to admire them instead of putting in the effort and taking the risks needed to bring our creations into the world.
Let’s face it, it takes courage to create, especially when, in our minds, we feel that we have nothing of value to contribute or that we risk the judgement and condemnation of others.
But this, again, is our own hang up. A child doesn’t worry about failure and not measuring up. A child simply delves into the task at hand, exploring without fear or shame, trying new things, molding then remolding the brain again and again as the process unfolds. The real courage as adults, then, is claiming our seat as creators, as human beings in this unique liminal space between the animals and the gods, allowing our body, mind, and spirits to come into alignment and flow with the unfolding of the universe, and working from this place of infinite possibility and pregnant potential.
When we drop all the limitations of who we think we should be or what we should be doing, when we reclaim our childlike qualities of just being and just doing without shame, second guessing, or embarrassment, our lives become a continuous expression of creativity.