Creativity is a skill

Creativity breeds ideas, thoughts, meanings, patterns, connections, inventions, etc.

Although it is easy for some to see their creativity as an ever-filling goblet or as an innate ability, I would like to debate that is simply not the case.

‘To think creatively’ can mean so many things.

There are those who think best with abstract ideas, those who think best with concrete ideas, those who use creativity combined with critical thinking–the way humans think are limitless.

I once was on the side of thought that my goblet was continuously supplied.

I didn’t worry about forcing a topic, I simply let it exist. Writer’s block is not something I experience often and on the rare occasion that I have, it does not last.

My problems with anything creative tends to come from having too many ideas rather than having none. Then I am unable to choose which idea would be most efficient.

Does that mean my creativity is truly limitless as I once believed it to be? Not at all.

As I started to reflect on my past I realized that creativity was one of the first skills I ever started to shape.

Many children, including myself, took part in pretend and make-believe play.

My parents didn’t squash that creative play. My mother read to us until we could read ourselves. My siblings and I played make believe or recorded videos of us singing.

We drew, we colored. We used chalk, paint, pencils–anything we could get our hands on. This included a random, soft black rock which we used to draw pictures on our house’s white siding (our mother was not pleased with this creative outlet).

My maternal grandmother would create stories and would recite them every-time we stayed the night with her. Back then, every grandchild had their own personal tale and nickname to go with it.

As I aged, I day dreamed.

If I’m being honest, I day dreamed to an unhealthy extent but eventually I learned to start writing them down.

My creative writing began in fourth grade. It never stopped.

I have always viewed the way I think as unlimited.

By believing I can think from all sides, from every angle, without a box to contain me, my thinking therefore does not depend on common sense. For me, there is rarely a box to think inside of.

Eventually, I learned to apply critical thinking and somehow the creativity and the analytical meshed together.

Yet there was still so much to learn because, as I mentioned before, creativity is a skill. Those things that stem from creativity such as writing, painting, drawing, inventing, etc–those are crafts.

We work at craft: we study it, we review it, we practice it, we strive to do better at it everyday.

Creativity is no different.

Creativity is trusting your mind and all the dark or fluffy places it finds itself in.

Creativity is letting yourself be vulnerable to the unexplainable and trusting your instincts enough to follow a rabbit into a hole where the ground cannot be seen. Then realizing there may not be a ground, in fact perhaps you just jumped into a sky that simply never ends.

Creativity…

will never have a clear definition because it is different for everyone.

Perhaps what makes it so frightening, intimidating, painful, prideful, egotistical is that creativity cannot truly be measured nor compared.

It is a skill of the mind.

Some of us may be more primed to learn certain skills faster because of our experiences, because of what we had growing up. But like any other skill, it can be learned.

It won’t be easy. Even those who consider themselves artistic or creative get lost too.

There often seems to be an invisible barrier between those who label themselves in some artistic manner and those who are distraught or intimidated over it.

Yet all of us are humans and nearly all humans engage in creative play when they are children.

The barrier exists only in our minds and in a way, is like another type of box that traps people into common misconceptions.

One of the first steps to bettering the creative skill and therefore those crafts stemming off of it, is to realize that there is no barrier.

We are all simply at a different stage of learning and nothing is wrong with that.

We only get better at a skill or craft with struggle, constructive criticism, study, practice, trial and error, but most importantly–by accepting that we can learn it so long as we put in the effort.