How I Reconnected With My Creativity And Why It Matters

I am a business law graduate and my current job is Head of Guest Experience in a big Retail Group.

One of the most exciting things I have recently done is co-founding an online program called “Activate Creativity” with Nathalie Sejean, my sister.

Our purpose? Help people to stretch, nurture or reconnect with their Creativity.

I wanted badly to reconnect with my own Creativity, but I needed help.

My sister proposed me a ‘Creative Challenge’ on September 1: draw a 4-images comic every day for 30 consecutive days.

I took it with excitement and terror: I don’t know how to draw.

I created a character (me) called ZE SQUARE (the only shape I can more or less draw correctly). This was 25 days ago.

Since then, I have repaired the connection with my Creativity faster than I thought.

If you too feel disconnected from your Creativity, this article is for you: here is how you can fix it.

1- STOP WAITING FOR IDEAS TO CREATE

You don’t need ideas to create. You read well. But I’m going to say it again: You don’t need ideas to create.

Before starting ZE SQUARE comic strips, I thought ideas would ‘come to me’ like some kind of magic.

However, when I started, I felt stressed every day hoping inspiration would bump into me and whispers me what to do.

It worked for the first 3 days.

On day 4, I got stuck. I had no idea. I couldn’t create.

This is what I faced on my iPad:

4 empty squares.

After long minutes feeling miserable and powerless, I finally found my way out.

How?

By doing something. Yep doing. I stopped thinking and waiting for magic to operate.

I just took my pen and did a drawing of ZE SQUARE. It worked more than I could ever imagine.

Here are examples of how I overcame my absolute lack of ideas:

• BY EMBRACING IT

On this one, I decided to draw on the fact that I had no idea. I did my first drawing as if I were talking to God. Since I didn’t know how to draw God, I googled it (I googled ‘God’, such a strange world we live in). My Creative engine was activated.

BY ASKING A SIMPLE QUESTION AND ANSWERING IT

Here, I did something similar except that after doing my first drawing, I asked myself a very basic question: What have I done today that was nice? I wrote the question on the drawing. That was it, I finished the rest fluidly — My Creative engine was activated.

• BY CHANGING CANVAS AND TONE

On this day I was so clueless on what to do that, after a good while staring at my 4 empty squares, I used them to draw my character and throw a kind of a joke. Not sure how funny it was. But I did it. My Creative engine was activated.

Creating is Doing. You don’t need ideas to do.

That’s not all. Here is a second realization that helped me activate my Creative engine.

2- ACCEPT YOU’RE NOT CREATIVE BUT YOU HAVE CREATIVITY IN YOU

Since I was a kid, my parents have always welcomed my love of art and music: I played music at an early age and was a member of an Acting company for years.

However, starting Law university, I gradually lost my focus towards those two disciplines I loved.

I somehow moved on believing that, because I was just playing music as a hobby and was not creating anything new (composing an original song for example), ‘I was not a Creative person’. Along the years, I kept music as a hobby in my life but stopped acting completely.

I would see friends who became professional musicians and whom I considered ‘Creative’ and couldn’t help feeling a bit of envy.

They were Creative and I wasn’t. Bad luck.

What did I confirm by doing my Creative challenge?

That what I believed was wrong.

Every day that passes, I understand deeper and deeper that none of us is or isn’t Creative.

We all have Creativity in us. What we often lose by growing up is the connection to it.

Give a piece of wood to kids, they will create games with it, make it a magic sword or a starting line to a race.

Kids create all the time. Is it because they are Creative or because they are connected to their Creativity?

I now choose to believe it is the second answer. And it works pretty well for me.

This is easier to say than do though. Stopping to think that people are or are not Creative is hard because it is embedded in our culture and our language.

Spotting myself saying “I am not Creative” and saying instead “I am not connected to my Creativity” has helped me activate my Creative engine big time.

In front of my blank page, I sometimes had to mentally recite: “I have Creativity in me. I just need to connect to it”.

If this happens, to help me activate my Creative engine, I try to think of my Creativity as a muscle. Here is what I visualize:

I also acknowledge the fact that activating a muscle that has not worked for a long time hurts badly in the beginning and provokes mixed feelings. A bit like that:

I know it is only painful in the beginning. This thought helps me go on and take my pen with good energy.

WHY DOES IT MATTER?

Because activating my Creative Engine is having clear positive impacts on my daily life:

· Mental boundaries are opening up.

· My level of energy is increasing a bit every day.

· My efficiency at work is improving.

· My ‘presence’ at what I am doing (family time, time alone or with friends) is transforming — I can be ‘present’ where I am, at least much more than before.

These are small and still fragile improvements. I deeply feel they are linked to this time I dedicate to do something every day without failing.

There might be more benefits to come, I don’t know them yet. You might experience different effects of reconnecting with your Creativity on your life. My bet is that they will be positive.

I still have a few days to complete my Creative Challenge with ZE SQUARE.

If you want to see them, check #ZESQUARE on Facebook or click here.

And if you want to start reconnecting with your Creativity and do something every day for a limited period of time, you can download the Creative Break. It takes less than 10 minutes per day and it should give you the first push to activate your Creative engine.

Joe Sejean is the co-founder of Activate Creativity, a platform that helps people reconnect, stretch and nurture their creativity.

10.28 Detox™ is a CREATIVE Detox that takes 10 minutes per day, for 28 days. It starts every Monday. Join and reconnect with your creativity