Creativity is a muscle.

"The refusal to be creative is self-will and is counter to our true nature."      Julia Cameron

I spent years of my life saying - out loud - that I wasn't a creative person.

I assumed this had to be true because I'm not paid to be creative nor do I do "traditionally creative" hobbies like paint or sculpt.  I spent years of my life as a salesperson.

I work with a slew of creative "types," and I don't think that I'm like they are.  I am friends with classically trained artists and musicians who have creativity dripping from every pore, and I KNOW that I'm not like they are.

It's difficult to see yourself as creative if you work with numbers or engineer - well, engineer anything.  I negotiate contracts.  I work with legal, finance, engineering teams.

On top of that, I look miserable in a beret.

Traditionally, I never thought of creativity as being part of my "true nature."  Then a brief encounter with a writer challenged me on that thought.  She said that our world displays God's amazing creativity, and, she continued,  if I think that He created me, then He did so with His thumbprint of creativity programmed into my makeup.

Hmmm.  I hadn't thought of it that way.

I started researching - reading - talking to people about creativity.

I learned that creativity is like any other muscle;  it's incredibly useful when it's developed and exercised regularly.  However, if the creative "muscle" is ignored or suppressed, atrophy takes over, withers it away, and ultimately leaves the muscle weak, flabby, and irrelevant.

The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron had the most radical impact on my thoughts about creativity, but it was closely followed by The Creative Habit by Twila Tharp.  You'll see references and nuances of those reads throughout this blog.  I found the little video below, and every one of the 29 ways to stay creative is found in one of these two books.  So, in essence, what's below is a little foreshadowing of how you can be more creative in 2015.

Enjoy!

Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn't really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That's because they were able to connect experiences they've had and synthesize new things.

Try just one of these practices this coming weekend!