Creativity: A Plant We Must Tend
Creativity: a word we have heard so many times before. A word that everyone uses so frequently, whether they are specialists in the subject or not. But, are we really sure of what this tool implies in our daily life? We have always considered it as a quality of childhood, and even of adolescence. But it would be a mistake to think it disappears in adulthood.
Creativity increases your possibilities of resolving problems
Creativity is underestimated. It is viewed as a thing of crazy people or of great geniuses. Fortunately, little by little we have been able to popularize this ability, which is actually within us all. It is simply a little more asleep in some of us, a little more awake in others.
To be creative we must be flexible
Creativity comes from the verb “create”. And creating is nothing more than the act of inventing or generating something new. It’s not a quality owned exclusively by painters, artists, architects and musicians, as it’s commonly thought. A creative person is every single person who manages to create original solutions for the emerging problems in their daily life. It is also that person who wonders and asks questions about subjects no one had considered before.
Many of these people have been able to develop their creativity during their childhood. This is due to the fact that it was demanded and reinforced by the people who participated in their education. Let’s say there’s a child who drew a sheep with wings. We know that sheep don’t have wings. In fact, it sounds funny to affirm it.
This is a fact, sheep do not have wings. That’s fine. But, what is the problem with a kid drawing a sheep this way? Why must we censor this particular “work of art”?
Especially during childhood, the important part is the process itself and not the final result. There must be no hurry to qualify the artistic expression of a child with words like “good” or “bad”. By acting this way we are punishing his spontaneity and, therefore, encouraging him to abandon it. If I give my child the freedom to put imagination into his drawings, he will be able to generate other possible alternatives. Ones different from the ones that already exist.
On the other hand, if I reinforce that inventiveness, I can help that child keep expressing what his effervescent imagination longs to offer to the world. “It must be a very free sheep. It wants to fly!” “How great is it that you can help it fly like that!” “Where do you think it wants to go?”…
Being witty is not a thing of crazy people
Many creative adults received permission when they were little kids to be free in their expressions. They received that enforcement to be genuine. In contrast, the childhood of people who are now not creative was probably marked by the censoring of these types of expressions. Or the censorship of anything which does not correspond with what is expected or what is common.
Let’s step into the shoes of these people. If in our childhood, people didn’t value something that was going to be useful in adult life, we will learn that it is “a thing of crazy people”. That expressing ourselves freely using these types of ideas might lead to people viewing us as “improper.”
Nothing is further from reality: being creative means possessing a very rich inner world, which is full of possible alternatives to each one of the steps I could came across in the staircase of my life. It means have a backpack full of resources, of colors of different shades, of multiple textures…
