Yup…that is what I believe.  People say to me often, “I wish I was creative like you…I don’t have a creative bone in my body.”  I respectively disagree.  My very first art business thirty-five years ago was called Co-Creations.  The name came from my belief that the same energy which created the universe courses through our bodies.  We are not separate from creativity…creative energy is indivisible.

It’s been over three decades and I have the same belief I had when first naming my business.  Now if we compare our ability to that of Picasso or Van Gogh, we might feel we fall a bit short in the artistic department.  But lets look at the definition of creativity.

Creativity is the ability to transcend traditional ideas, rules, patterns and relationships to create meaningful new ideas. It’s synonymous with inventiveness, imagination, innovation, inspiration and vision.  We all have the ability to think outside the box, to use our imagination and to be a visionary.

We are born creative beings but I believe the pathways that course creativity through our bodies get clogged by our minds. Life events shut us off from the flow.  We might begin to compare our art or creative endeavors to other peoples or it might have been that someone told us when we were young coloring outside the lines wasn’t o.k.  Our inner critic becomes bigger than life and starts an internal dialogue cutting off our creative expression.

A brilliant mentor of mine, Cultural Anthropologist Angeles Arrien, talks about what indigenous cultures do when people lose the spontaneity and wonder of childhood. An elder of the community asks the person four questions.  When did you stop dancing? When did you stop singing?  When did you loose interest in the storytelling and especially loose interest in the story of your life?  When did you stop being comforted by silence?  I would add a couple more question.  When did you stop belly laughing?  When did you stop creating?

My first memories were designing clothes with my nana and drawing pictures of my poodle.  I took endless craft classes with my mother and my hands were always making something.  And then in my early twenties something happened and my ability to create stopped.  Tune in next week for the explanation of what happened…how I got my creative mojo back…and more importantly how we can all stay in the creative flow.