You are creative. You are curious. You have to use your creativity to solve problems. You have to use your curiosity to lean into new ideas and concepts.
Your creativity attacks the challenge. Your curiosity attacks the opportunity. They complement each other. You are designed with both qualities and you're meant to use them both. No ifs or buts.
The Early Years
In childhood you naturally used both your creative and curious side and there was no saying “I'm not creative” or “I don’t want to explore that [idea] further”. You accepted these qualities were part of you and so did everyone around you. When you produced a drawing you received praised for your effort. Whether you drew a dog that looked like a cow or visa versa, it’s likely you were encouraged to keep drawing even if the result wasn’t life like. Same too when you built a tower with blocks. You received compliments for your achievement. Family, friends and carers cheered you on to build some more. It didn’t matter if it toppled over a few minutes into the build. It only mattered that you applied yourself and allowed yourself to have the experience. You picked up the blocks with curiosity and applied your creativity to produce something new. What you achieved was without limits because you didn’t limit yourself.
The Feedback Trap
As you got older this thing called 'feedback' started to appear. It started out innocent enough. Well meaning adults dished advice to get you to improve on your drawings or the slant of your tower. This feedback was always delivered with the best of intentions. Always with the aim to ‘help’ you. Adults or well meaning friends thought their feedback would make you more resilient and future ready. However over time, the repeated feedback, started to destabilise your creativity and curiosity muscle.
It's important to recognise that feedback is simply the opinion of others, versus the opinion you hold. Feedback is like a noisy market. It becomes the clutter in your brain that stops you from being clear on what’s important to you. It can cloud your vision or ideas. You can get addicted to it and rely on this feedback to make your next move. Feedback, so often disguised as ‘good intentions’, can actually serve to slow you down and cause you to doubt yourself.
The Impact of Doubt
When you doubt yourself, it’s easy to think that more feedback is needed to affirm your creative projects or validate your curiosity. When you rely on others to validate you and what’s right for you, it's easy to lose sight of what’s important to you. Doubting your ability to create or explore is tied to people pleasing. It’s a fact that you’ll never please all the people all of the time and worse still, you won’t please yourself either. You’ll end up angry and frustrated instead. You’ll end up blocked in the areas you want so desperately to make progress. Those blocks can show up anywhere in your life, from your professional to personal priorities.
Your ability to get on in this world is based on you pleasing yourself first. That’s where you start. This isn't selfish. It’s about you doing what’s right for you so you can then make your best contribution to help others. Your strength comes from inside you.
Doubt Leads to Inaction
When you choose to doubt your creativity what tends to happen next is you deny that you are creative and curious at all. When feedback leads to doubt it’s easy for the words “I’m not creative” to come out of your mouth. You lose the innocence you had when you drew that dog. Your creative doubt can balloon into a self defeating fear that you can’t do it. Now when you draw anything you judge and criticise your effort instead. When you lose your confidence it becomes easier to compare rather than create. You stifle your creativity because you believe it’s a competition and if you can’t compete with the best, well then it’s not the game you want to play. Somewhere along the way you decided not to be creative, thinking you and the world would be better off without your contribution. You were wrong.
Remember, your creativity, in whatever way you choose to express it, is exactly what you need to tackle problems. It’s how advances are made. How progress happens. Otherwise we’d still be living in the dark ages.
Benefits of Being An Explorer
A child doesn’t know to accept a norm or 'this is the way it's always done' ideal. No matter how much you know or think you know, you don’t know it all. When you’re not open to challenging a past behaviour or process you limit your progress. If you have any inkling or gut feeling that you need to pursue another angle, a project possibility or ask another question, then it pays to follow it and see where it takes you. Being curious demands that you follow the thread to see where it leads. It requires you to explore the ‘what if’ even when it feels scary or time consuming. Only the ‘what if’ or ‘where does this lead to’ moments uncover something new. They open the door to possibilities. They reveal a new way of looking at an old problem. They are priceless and available to you when you choose – so long as you keep an open mind.
Some Pointers
Create in the way you know how. In the way that’s most natural to you and you enjoy the most. If you don’t remember how to express yourself creatively, then think back to your childhood. What did you love doing then? Then do that again to get started. Make it a part of your life even if you don't get paid to do it.
Be curious in your life. Accept that you don’t know everything. Challenge yourself. Treat opportunities as doors to be opened, not closed. Live with wonder. Channel your inner child to see everyday occurrences with a fresh eye.
Be self aware. When you listen to others it's easy to drown out your own voice. The key is to know your own mind first by being self aware. After that, you’ll be in a stronger place to invite the feedback when you want it, and be clearer on whose you want to take.
Final Word
No one wins when you block your creativity and put limits on your curiosity, least of all you. They go together and they are a part of you. You owe it to yourself to use them, always.
*This blog post was first published to LinkedIn on 1 December 2015.
