Do you consider yourself to be creative? Let’s take it one step further: are you a creator? Do you believe you create your own life?
Well, the first one is the easiest to consider, and in my opinion, the answer is yes, of course we are all creative – it is part of being a human being, we are creative beings. That is a fact.
What usually comes next though is comparison. We might think that we can paint, but we are not as good as so and so; or we can write, but not well enough to write a book; we can cook but not well enough to be a chef; we can dance, sing, do sport, but not well enough to do it professionally; we have business ideas, but the ideas aren’t good enough to set up on our own – the list is endless.
Somewhere along the line, we decide – because we compare ourselves and see ourselves as not as good – that this somehow means we are not creative and we start to hide that side away.
I spent time with my grandchildren this half term, and being around children just reminds me how creative we naturally are. I spent all afternoon creating stories, characters, homes, scenarios and having endless fun with the little one. Whilst with the older one we played board games and chess, which are totally creative, using our right brains to ponder on your opponent’s next move and work out creative ways to stop them. As children we embrace our creativity without fearing judgment, without fearing comparison, we just accept it as part of who we are.
Imagine if we embraced our creativity like children do: think of what we could achieve, how satisfying, enjoyable and just lovely our lives could be.
I know it’s hard to put yourself out there, I know it takes courage to do the things we long to do, but if we just realised that each and every one of us is a creative being with our own genius and allowed that to shine bright, how lovely would that be?
Do we create our own lives? Are we the creator of our lives?
Again I think yes, all the thousand of thoughts we think (that arise from our beliefs) create the emotions we feel, and we react or respond according to those feelings, which in turn creates our life. Now, clearly things happen that we have no control over. In fact if we think about it, we have very little control over anything in our lives (scary thought for those control freaks amongst us). We do always have control over one thing though, and that is how we choose to respond to whatever comes our way and because of this, we do create our lives. We run a business because we think we can, or we don’t run a business because we believe we can’t; we travel the world because we believe it is wonderful to explore, or we don’t because we believe it isn’t available to us; we eat healthily because we believe that we are what we eat and want to take care of our bodies, or we don’t because we believe that it doesn’t make a difference. Everything we do comes from our beliefs, whatever they may be, and we act on these and this creates the life we are living.
The right side of our brain is all to do with creativity, the left side is far more logical, analytical and methodical. Our society is set up for left brain thinkers, our school system, university and work are all set up for left brainers, yet some of the most successful people are those who tap into their right brain, they allow their creativity to shine through. I’ve spent the last few years tapping into my right brain, it brings amazing results – isn’t it time to play with your life more and let your creativity expand?
As Colin Wilson said,
“imagination should be used, not to escape from reality, but to create it”.