What is creativity good for?
I recently read Oli Mould’s book ‘Against Creativity’ and I have been thinking about it ever since. (The sign of a good book Kris Gage! Thanks for your timely article, btw!)
You see, I’ve begun writing a creativity app for Android. And, I am taking a MicroMasters course in Corporate Innovation. Maybe unsurprisingly, these two things dovetail at times and conflict at others! Mould’s book has helped me get a better understanding of the nature of conflict I was feeling. I’ve looked in various places to try to find a model for my thoughts, but none seem to fit very well. So, I’m going to start prototyping my thoughts and see what kind of model emerges.*
Following thoughts
Because I’ve also been reading any and all research that has been done around the topic of creativity and its benefits, I thought about promoting my app in a similar way to the (plague of) mindfulness apps that are now around. In fact, studies show that practising creativity leads to many (if not all) of the same benefits as mindfulness practice (with a few key others on top), so it would be easy to do.
However, what I’ve been thinking most about are those other benefits.
Specifically, I’ve been thinking about how creativity is uniquely good to:
- find (create) more meaning in our lives
- find (create) connection
- find (create) a sense of fulfillment
Most importantly, I think that these things are necessary to be able to find (create) solutions to some of our world’s most pressing problems.
Because, yes, I think it is not only within our power to create these things, but it is increasingly an imperative that we do.
Finding meaning
Going (or already gone for some) are the days when our jobs provided that sense of meaning, fulfillment, connection. For more and more people, religion has also ceased to provide these. Yet, these are basic human needs: we will try to find them somehow, some where. Or, we will suffer. Individually and collectively.
“Life has no meaning. Each of us has meaning and we bring it to life. It is a waste to be asking the question when you are the answer.”
— Joseph Campbell
We have meaning. We don’t so much find meaning, as create it. It is this ability that a creative practice helps strengthen. This is especially true if we can tap into that internal resource and value it for itself, and not for what it can ‘earn’ us.
Finding meaning in anything external is precarious at best. Anything external can be taken away. However, if we create meaning for ourselves, if we are given the means of rediscovering that ability, that is something that can never be taken away. It is something that can, quite literally, change your life.
Finding connection
One of the things that creativity teaches us is to be aware of and respond to the world around us. Increasing our awareness increases our connection. Responding begins a ongoing conversation that enriches both our experience, our work, and our lives.
If we also approach things with an inherent sense of curiosity, we open ourselves to the richness that is all around us. We can begin to understand others with more empathy only after we become curious about them as individuals (rather than thinking we know who or what they are based on our stereotypes).
Being creatively curious puts us in the optimal state of mind to experience all the world has to offer (yes, the good and the bad). That ongoing conversation with everything is the basis for our understanding of and engagement with ourselves and others.
Finding fulfillment
When we focus on and enjoy the process, rather than just the end result, we are then free to find our fulfillment in each moment, rather than in some imagined future.
When we find innate satisfaction in the doing, in the process of creating, we are not so easily convinced that we are lacking <insert whatever feeling someone is trying to sell us> and that purchasing <insert product that is promised to make us feel that feeling>will instantly resolve that for us. (Hint: it never does!)
Finding joy in the process of creating in the normal course of our days, rather than just the external validation from end results or big events, increases our chances of lasting fulfillment. We learn that we are the source for creating that fulfillment. And we can access it whenever we choose.
Feeling confident
Feeling confident in our ability to create is the key.
“At its core, creative confidence is about believing in your ability to create change in the world around you.”
— “Creative Confidence” by Tom Kelley & David Kelley
The trouble lies, as Mould points out in his book, when “creativity” is subverted. When it is used, not to create change, not to create something truly new, but instead to produce “more of the same.” Read the book, I think you’ll like it!
I didn’t want to perpetuate more of the same with my app (or any of the other projects I’m working on). I want to help create (what I see as) much needed change. A shift towards intrinsic value of the creative experience. A shift towards cooperation and free exchange, rather than individual competition. So, I am taking small steps, practising what I preach.
The good news is that building that confidence is something that anyone can do. It involves taking many small steps over a period of time. Like the famous saying about a journey of a thousand miles. Except that with creativity, the journey never needs to end.
In our experience, the best way to gain confidence in your creative ability is through action—taken one step at a time—through experiencing a series of small successes.
— “Creative Confidence” by Tom Kelley & David Kelley
Practising creativity
Practising our creativity helps us strengthen our belief that we have the ability to create the art, the life, the world that we want. Start practising, strengthening, that ability now.
Until next time, Festina Lente, my friends.
*Having just now read @RSAMatthew’s latest on the principles that form the RSA’s “21st Century Enlightenment” slogan, I can see definite parallels with the three he pulls out as key: autonomy, universalism, humanism.
