Almost all office mission statements nowadays emphasize the desire for superior creative faculties. While human resources departments everywhere now include creativity on their list of qualifications for hiring new employees. But do we even know what these mission statements or job requirements actually have in mind when they use this word creativity?
When we really look at the term all by itself, it really is quite a vague word after all.
Yes, I believe it’s true. Creativity is such an all encompassing, general and abstract term that it’s much too difficult to define it in a universal sense that all people can understand once and for all. It can only be more directly identified when placed against a specific concept, like advertising creativity or writing creativity.
However, despite all the attention given to this idea over the centuries, little is know about the daily innovative movements that have happened throughout the centuries. Yes, we know they have happened but what caused them to come into existence exactly?
How exactly have the famous musicians been able to compose such unbelievable music and so much of it while the next guy can’t even carry a tune? Or how have the famous painters throughout history been able to create hundreds of paintings at a rate that just boggles the mind while someone like me can only draw stick people and animals?
Where did this talent and creativity come from and how is it acquired? Did the person who crafted them have certain traits or characteristics that others don’t have in order to come up with such fantastic works of art and creative ideas?
What kind of environment supports this kind of innovative and imaginative thinking? How can it be born or stimulated?
In the quest toward finding the real meaning of creativity and what it entails, we are left with more questions than answers.
Despite the presence of various schools of thought on the subject, there are misconceptions about creativity that are common to most people. Since we find it much to difficult if not impossible to answer may of these questions on our own, we will instead discuss a few of these so-called creativity myths below.
Creativity Myth 1. Only The Creative “Artsy” Types Have Creativity
Although there seems to be a group of exceptional people with talents none of can find answers to explain, all people are born with the capacity to think rationally and the ability to make our own decisions. Given these, it certainly follows that we each also have the power to create or be creative.
Creativity is not just limited to a select few people who can mix colors and paint a beautiful fresco, or those who can string words and musical notes together to come up with the most awe inspiring music, scripts, stories and poetry. Anyone of us has the ability to be creative. The question lies not in whether we have it, but in how we cultivate it (which is a different story, altogether).
Creativity Myth 2. Pressure Leads To Creativity
The more the mind is pressured, the more it feels stifled and restricted. Creativity shouldn’t be bounded by time or space. It needs to be able to move about freely and openly. How can one’s creative faculties come up with innovative ideas and concepts if they’re confined to a particular set of rules or timetables?
In fact, many of the great works of art, music and drama have come to people during the night when the mind is most free to explore any and all possibilities.
Creativity Myth 3. Competition Is Better Than Collaboration
Achieving a creative endeavor whether through competition or collaboration doesn’t really matter. One isn’t better than the other. The objective of creativity is to think up and perform something innovative, something that has never been done before, or something that would introduce new meaning to mundane things. If anything the synergy of the group effort can often bring forth ideas and concepts that no one person could have even developed on their own in a vacuum.
In other words, developing creativity is accomplished by coming to terms with one’s limitations and learning to make the most out of whatever it is that we have been blessed with. Once any of us takes this journey toward creativity, there is nothing stopping us from creating something extraordinary. We shouldn’t limit ourselves by disbelief in ourselves but instead allow our own creative juices to flow freely and just spread its wings and grow.