You are creative!

Everyone is creative. Don’t listen to what other people say. You are creative! Because you may not be an artist or a writer, for example, doesn’t mean you’re not creative. Being creative makes us human. Because we are human, we are creative. 

Express your creativity in your unique way!

We all make creative decisions every day. We decide what outfit to wear. We add new spices or herbs to a favorite recipe. We take an alternative route to Mom’s house. We take our camera to the beach and take a variety of shots of the kids playing in the sand. We make up excuses for why we didn’t get to work yesterday. We pursue our hobbies, which require many creative decisions. We redecorate a room. We rearrange furniture or pictures. We help the kids make things from Lego. We arrange a party for our friend’s birthday. We arrange flowers we picked from our garden. All these things require creative decision making. They require the use of our inspiration. We gather inspiration for these decisions from many places as we go about our daily lives.

We used our imagination without limitations when we were children. We made up games, invisible friends, and stories. We daydreamed. We pretended our bicycle was a horse. We pretended to climb mountains. We were royalty or cowboys. Nothing was out of bounds.

Then somewhere along the way we were told to “grow up.” Why? Because our parents and society expected us to become mature, responsible, respectable, logical adults. So we stopped. Or at least we didn’t exercise our imagination muscle nearly as much as before. 

I remember an instance where, to my surprise, my English teacher rewarded me for my imagination. In fact, I thought I was being rather lazy. It was in the tenth grade when we’re expected to be responsible and serious. Our assignment was to analyze a poem, any poem of our choosing. I chose an Ogden Nash poem. Instead of writing the obligatory analysis, I printed the poem nicely in the middle of the page and added pictures from magazines and catalogues that I thought embodied the poem. To my surprise, the teacher gave me a mark of 100 percent. My friends rolled their eyes in disbelief. Some wondered why they didn’t think of it. Others, I think, were rather envious. 

You must trust your own process and your own passion. Your creative passion and process will rarely be like someone else’s. You are one of a kind, and you express your creativity in a way unique to you. The creative things you do express the spirit in you. Never do what someone else is doing in exactly the same way. Put your own spin and your own talents and skills into whatever you do.

If you can’t resist drawing with colored pencils or writing blues songs, then that’s what you must do. Trust that this is the right thing for you. Don’t let anyone tell you that what you are doing isn’t marketable or trendy. Trends change. People change. With art, everyone has an opinion. They’re all wrong, and they’re all right. You are right to trust your own path.

Believe in yourself. You are creative, and you are capable of great things. Don’t wait for other people to believe in you and your talents. Only you know what you are good at and what you enjoy. If you want to cut pieces of paper and draw designs in a daily art journal, then that’s what you do. You needn’t show your work to anyone if you don’t want to. For many people, art is personal. It expresses their ideas, beliefs, and spirit.

So, the next time someone asks you if you’re create, shout from the hilltops, “Yes! I am creative!”