Cultivating Creativity & Letting Go of Comparison

What if you found out unused creativity transforms into rage, grief, shame, and judgment?

The reality is, this is a fact. “Unused creativity is not benign. It metastasizes.” – Brene Brown.

When we don’t use it, it doesn’t go away, rather it festers into the darkness of our souls.

Around 4th or 5th grade there is a tremendous drop in creativity in children, a.k.a. the creativity slump, all a result of comparison. Kids believe they don’t fit in anymore once they start comparing. It is no secret we take comparison with us into adulthood, and it is ever more present in today’s culture.

The biggest reason we do not use creativity is comparison. Comparison kills creativity.

Most of us can recall something so shaming that happened in school, that it forever changed how we thought of ourselves as learners and it directly impacted our own sense of worth/value by directly assigning a meaning to a learning experience that is simply just that - a learning experience.

Thus, the root of our insecure thoughts birthed beliefs that say “I am bad at…” fill in the blank…math, reading, etc. At least half of us experienced this specifically with art so we believe “I can’t draw” or “I am not creative” because we were either belittled as a student and/or compared our crayon drawn horse to the “better one” in the room when no judgment ever needed to be assigned to the act of just learning, creating, playing, and simply being.

 Consequently, “art scars” are born from being laughed at. In turn people believe they are not creative, but of course they are!

There are simply those who use it, and those that do not.

So how do you use it? How do you cultivate creativity and lose comparison?

Play! That’s right, Play! Be a kid and lose the judgement. Make the world your play ground!

Playing is comprised of two imperative principles:

1.       Time spent without purpose

2.       Doing something you don’t want to end. Something you want to extend.

Something so great where you lose track of time. Something that helps to lose that hyper sense of self consciousness, you lose the “do’s and don’ts”, the fears, the hesitations, the rules, the responsibilities… Something that makes you FEEL joy like a kid for a split second. Remember that feeling? Now why not try to extend it and play.

What do you consider play? How can you cultivate creativity? How can you lose comparison?