The new decade is advancing swiftly along and here we are Marching into month three already! If you haven’t taken any steps yet to develop, or even to investigate, your creativity, today is a good day to start. Today is the first day of the rest of your life. One of my favourite sayings goes: The best time to plant a tree is twenty years ago; the next best time is now.
A huge breakthrough for me in developing my creative intelligence has been getting over that first step. As a business science graduate who started out in banking and finance, I had misguided, old ideas about creativity belonging to artists. I also had a lack of understanding – no let’s just call it what it is… ignorance – about how malleable and changeable my brain and my thinking really is. Dr Caroline Leaf’s work (in particular, her book 'Think, Learn, Succeed') created a seismic shift for me in this regard. When I finally ‘got it’ that at a neurological level, we get new brain matter every day (neurogenesis) and we can enhance our intelligence and our creativity by how we think and choose (neuroplasticity), I was prodded out of my safe little cave of Not Trying and out into the bright light of Daring.
Julia Cameron, in her powerful book, The Artist’s Way, says that if only you took your creative potential seriously, you might:
- Stop telling yourself, “It’s too late.”
- Stop waiting until you make enough money to do something you’d really love.
- Stop telling yourself that dreams don’t matter, that they are only dreams and that you should be more sensible.
- Stop fearing that your family, friends <or colleagues> would think you crazy.
- Stop telling yourself that creativity is a luxury and that you should be grateful for what you’ve got.
What are you waiting for? Set out on the trek today of connecting with and developing your creative mind. Take baby steps. Keep at it. You’re going to need your creativity in the years to come.
