Are
you officially not a creative type either ?
“Of all human activities, creativity comes
closest to providing the fulfillment we all hope to get in our lives. Call it
full-blast living.”
Mihály Csíkszentmihályi
- leading researcher on positive
psychology
As a child, it is normal to just play and enjoy
being and doing
without time and result obligations, to just experiment. Then
we enroll into school, and our round way of thinking is adjusted into the structure and conformity.
I am convinced that by doing creative activity, life gets a wider perspective and is less restricted than by only looking for
challenges of the mind.
I like to think of myself as creative, but officially I am not. I once had myself officially tested whether I could work for the creative industry or not, and I was not chosen. In any case, I enjoy fully creating almost anything until it starts becoming a routine activity. In fact, I realised that the more I let go of the result of whatever I do, the more exciting and fulfilling the activity is.
Every adult is creative to some extent, but it often happens that children get more applause for bringing good grades or achieving at sports events or are announced by the school or their parents to be smart, and so they automatically take this as the secret of the best way of living.
By the time we get through formal education, probably whatever school system it is, we have developed our ways of thinking and conformity, and unless we are picked to be real artists, we believe we cannot be creative.
In the Swiss local schools children have a large number of creating „basteln” classes until they go to secondary level from the 5th or 6th grade primary school depending on the Kanton. Roughly until the age of 10 or 11 they learn to use many different techniques and material to create a great variety of handmade things. No wonder there are so many hobby artists at different fairs all over the country.
In my life and work, in those cases when I was designing and building any project, concept, market, program, or our private flats and houses the same feeling of fulfillment and joy came. From the time, when in my work it became a must to plan the result in advance and to that result adjust activity, work started to be less fun and less fulfilling. What we are payed for is to bring the right results of someone else’s vision.
Structure, intellectual development in a narrowed area or the feeling of security from wanting to know what will happen in the future are inevitable in adult life.
This does not mean that we shouldn’t play and bring our own “free thinking and feeling childhood” back for a short time.
I like to think of myself as creative, but officially I am not. I once had myself officially tested whether I could work for the creative industry or not, and I was not chosen. In any case, I enjoy fully creating almost anything until it starts becoming a routine activity. In fact, I realised that the more I let go of the result of whatever I do, the more exciting and fulfilling the activity is.
Every adult is creative to some extent, but it often happens that children get more applause for bringing good grades or achieving at sports events or are announced by the school or their parents to be smart, and so they automatically take this as the secret of the best way of living.
By the time we get through formal education, probably whatever school system it is, we have developed our ways of thinking and conformity, and unless we are picked to be real artists, we believe we cannot be creative.
In the Swiss local schools children have a large number of creating „basteln” classes until they go to secondary level from the 5th or 6th grade primary school depending on the Kanton. Roughly until the age of 10 or 11 they learn to use many different techniques and material to create a great variety of handmade things. No wonder there are so many hobby artists at different fairs all over the country.
In my life and work, in those cases when I was designing and building any project, concept, market, program, or our private flats and houses the same feeling of fulfillment and joy came. From the time, when in my work it became a must to plan the result in advance and to that result adjust activity, work started to be less fun and less fulfilling. What we are payed for is to bring the right results of someone else’s vision.
Structure, intellectual development in a narrowed area or the feeling of security from wanting to know what will happen in the future are inevitable in adult life.
This does not mean that we shouldn’t play and bring our own “free thinking and feeling childhood” back for a short time.
Nowadays that I deliberately do more creative activity, I am just more fully me, more alive, and I feel much happier. It can be any small activity like jumping on a trampoline, painting pictures during travelling, cooking without a recipe, playing anything with children, dancing, sewing...
It does not have to be anything great, just do it
for the sake
of playing in some way. Making pictures with pastel for me is a good start because I need to make an effort to be patient for bigger projects. With pastel I can quickly make a picture or
express an imagination. It covers the
page well and
has a ready look. It is a nice and short experience of playing and fun without being trained or without having any special artistic talents.
Specially at the Christmas Season when everything is about creating internally and externally, we spend more time with decorating, creating ideas, gifts, plans, environments. Luckily we do not need to wait for the year end. In the everyday life it is necessary to think in new ways, do new interesting things which keep us alive and energetic. Even if we are not working in a creative field boosting, discovering and bringing our creative self to surface brings fulfillment to our lives.
We need to be able to think in different ways, because problems can only be solved with a different thought than which the problem was created by.
If you know you need more fulfillment and joy, it is time to slow down, look for the creativity inside you, buy paint or show up at a class.
Do not think. Thinking is the enemy of creativity. It is self-conscious, and anything self-conscious is lousy. You can not try to do things. You simply must do things.
–Ray Bradbury
Specially at the Christmas Season when everything is about creating internally and externally, we spend more time with decorating, creating ideas, gifts, plans, environments. Luckily we do not need to wait for the year end. In the everyday life it is necessary to think in new ways, do new interesting things which keep us alive and energetic. Even if we are not working in a creative field boosting, discovering and bringing our creative self to surface brings fulfillment to our lives.
We need to be able to think in different ways, because problems can only be solved with a different thought than which the problem was created by.
If you know you need more fulfillment and joy, it is time to slow down, look for the creativity inside you, buy paint or show up at a class.
Do not think. Thinking is the enemy of creativity. It is self-conscious, and anything self-conscious is lousy. You can not try to do things. You simply must do things.
–Ray Bradbury
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