Creativity is dying. Why we need to save it and what we can do.
Creativity is proven essential for happiness and positively influences well-being. Yet it’s dying every day with the way our world runs. How can we make this important part of our lives more of a priority? Keep reading to learn why there’s a crisis, an example of ultimate creativity (Taylor’s version), and five tips to nurture your creativity.
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Creativity is dying. Everything from kids having less recess and too much adult monitoring to adults working in industrial-age corporate structures. Our culture encourages a lifestyle of constant connectivity and instant gratification. Making the slower pace and space that creativity needs less and less attractive. To the point where people feel irrelevant if they slow down.
Creativity is proven essential for happiness and positively influences well-being. While there’s no one-stop solution, I can offer some ideas. Keep reading to learn why there’s a crisis, an example of ultimate creativity (Taylor’s version), and tips to nurture your creativity. Let’s dive in.
A creativity crisis
Our world doesn’t reward or encourage creativity. Rather than give people the freedom to create from their unique experiences and skills, they’re often boxed into pre-determined work hours and tasks. Peter Gray Ph.D. says, “Creativity is nurtured by freedom and stifled by the continuous monitoring, evaluation, adult-direction, and pressure to conform…In the real world few questions have one right answer, few problems have one right solution; that’s why creativity is crucial to success in the real world.”
For most of my life, I felt like a weirdo for pursuing songwriting, singing, and blogging instead of corporate, security, and safety. Fresh out of high school, I moved to Los Angeles, determined to make it in the music business. After a year, I landed my first job at a songwriting production house and assisted a music manager. After almost seven years, I left for a temp marketing job, feeling burnt out from the industry.
My soul died a little on that first day when I saw the brown cubicles, stacks of paper, and dim fluorescent lighting. After five months, I tried working for a tech company. That wasn’t a fit, either. As luck would have it, my husband got a job that moved us to Switzerland. I had the space (and privilege, yes) to figure out what I wanted. Now, we live in New York City, and I own a copywriting business and self-development brand.
It took me years to embrace my atypical path. I thought something was wrong with me for wanting to lean into my creativity over getting typical milestones: land a corporate job, then a boyfriend, husband, kids, house, promotions, etc. But I learned there isn’t one way to live a good life. That, as Dr. Gray said above, not every problem has one right answer and most don’t.
There’s a way to appreciate and nurture our Creativity while still making a living. Whether that’s creating a business or working for someone else’s. What’s important is we carve time for Creativity. This won’t be easy, but the first step is knowledge.
How creativity heals us
Creativity shares our point of view with others. It’s a vulnerable and brave act. When you create, it’s from a combination of unique experiences, dreams, and knowledge no one else in the world will have.
Even if you’re bogged down by work and responsibility, play and creativity needs a place in your life. Too many of us feel unsafe in the world. Roy Hutton, Ph.D. says, “Words, song, music, laughter, running, jumping, shared engagement around language, all these help us develop the expectation of joy yet to come. Any activity… that lets a…person play, to have joy, to embrace the resilient spirit of youth — that activity makes us all safer.”
When I lived in Europe, I volunteered at a local refugee camp. It was filled with families forced to leave their country because of wars or drugs. My colleagues and I went there to do creative activities with the children. When we’d arrive, you could see the light gone from their eyes.
Yet their childlike spark came back when we’d make pizzas or play instruments. They felt safe being kids again and using their imagination. Creativity is a matter of spiritual life and death. It lets us see what we’re made of.
Creativity builds confidence. Teaches collaboration and instills lessons quicker than boring repetitions otherwise would. Art helps the body regulate itself. Through flow state and capitalizing on the senses, depression, and anxiety can be mediated. Cathy Malchiodi, Psychologist, says:
“Immersion in art expression is an experience of slowing down the body’s sympathetic nervous system and one that engages the individual in what creativity expert Csikszentmihalyi calls the flow state. Art making also capitalizes on the senses in ways far different from a joystick and a digital screen. It provides a brain-wise, hands-on experience that helps us to feel better through experiences of rhythm, pattern, color, play and movement that mediates depression and anxiety. In brief, art expression is not just an effective prescription for stress reduction; it creates a pathway to personal inner peace.”
If this doesn’t convince us of the need for daily creativity, I don’t know what does. Let’s see an example of what’s possible when we create regularly.
Creativity (Taylor’s Version)
A great example of ultimate creative expression is Taylor Swift. She allows what Abraham Hicks calls “the expansion of growth that your life experience has inspired within you.” Taylor creates from a place of total alignment with who she is and what she wants.
She attracts everything to her like a magnet. She’s in a space of no limit, pure potential, and joyful creation. Things come quick and fast. Even as I explain this, I feel the quality of that energy. If everyone allowed themselves to create from pure joy without expectation of a result or outcome, how different would our world be?
Yes, she grew up wealthy and can pay anyone to care for anything that’s not songwriting. But at the core is a little girl who believes in her talent and ability to connect with others through song. Taylor’s expression of creativity took raw dedication, practice, and connection to her intuition (plus the right mentors). She’s created an environment that encourages and enables her creative expression. We can do that for ourselves even if we don’t have her resources.
Four doable tips for nurturing Creativity
Creativity is THE portal to individualism, expression, healing, inspiration, and connection. It’s how we connect with and inspire others. Its importance can’t be overstated. Here are things you can do now to encourage creativity.
1. Morning routine
There’s something raw and renewed about the spirit when we wake up. It’s a sliver of time where we’re not sliding into the slipstream of same. The same thoughts, routine, actions, etc. It’s the best opportunity to prime ourselves for a new way of thinking.
Cue the morning routine. It offers an easy way back to regular creative output and anchors our day. It gives us a safe container to feel like ourselves again. Drawing us inward before we catch ourselves on the endless treadmill of social media, work deadlines, and emails.
That inspires me to write The Good Space morning mail for overwhelmed people. It’s a way to get motivation and peace in five minutes or less before they start their busy day.
2. Make space
It’s important to schedule regular blocks of time to create or dream. It must be scheduled even if it’s a recurring 10-minute calendar event on your phone. If you’re struggling to find the time, consider this: What part of your life feels most overwhelming? What could you stop doing to give yourself more space?
Think of one or two distractions or things you don’t enjoy doing and commit to removing them from your life. For me, I deleted all social media apps from my phone and lessened the calls I take. My brain already feels like it has more space, and I’ve written more deeply because of it.
3. Keep your inspiration tank full
Inspired by Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way, she recommends a daily morning pages practice and weekly artist date. Morning pages consist of writing three pages of stream of consciousness upon waking. This opens the gateway to inspired creation by getting the ego out of the way. She recommends writing by hand. If typing will get you to do it, then start there.
On an artist date, you take yourself out once a week to have a novel experience and soak things in. Whether watching a movie, going to a store, or wandering down a bookstore aisle. The key is exposing yourself to different sights, sounds, and experiences. Schedule this in your calendar weekly and enjoy.
4. Do what you can
I’m not sure where this image of the illustrious author sitting in their big brown desk with views of vistas, writing novel after novel, became the ideal to strive for. In On Writing, Stephen King said he used to write novels in his tiny laundry room with a typewriter propped on the dryer as it vibrated.
He said when he did make money, he still didn’t let himself have a big desk in the middle of a spacious office. He stuck a small chair and desk in the corner of his office because he believed your life shouldn’t revolve around your art. But your art should fit into and be a piece of your life. Creativity doesn’t require your undying attention and sacrifice to enjoy it.
I’m writing this as I wait for my daughter’s bottle warmer to beep. If I waited for the perfect conditions, I’d never write. Creativity is in the cracks. It’s in the time we can give it. It’s everywhere. Don’t be afraid to let it come with you in life.
5. Create accountability
It’s hard to change when we have habits working against us. Getting other people involved moves the needle faster than being by ourselves. I have two accountability friends. Every morning, we send quick voice notes sharing the top three things we’d feel good accomplishing today.
I’m finally finishing this article because I keep telling them I will. The act of someone being aware of your goal inspires us to take action. Ask a friend or two today to be an accountability buddy.
Affirmation
I find joy in every aspect of my life. Feeling good is important to me.
Writing Prompt
How can I make a goal of mine more bite-sized/manageable?
Good Quote
“Soul-making is a process of revealing what is already there. As we grow and engage in our inner exploration, we discover and peel away old beliefs, erroneous assumptions, and meaningless rules and restrictions imposed by family, society, and culture.”
- Peggy Tabor Millin, Women, Writing, and Soul-Making
