Category Archives: living creatively
Are you a creative or a conformist? Take the crayon challenge!
Everyone has the capacity for creativity, but as adults some of us just forget where we put it. Do you still know where yours is? Take the “crayon challenge” and find out.
First, print the coloring page found here: Crayola coloring page
Now grab your crayons and go to it! Once you finish coloring your page, watch the video and see if your brain is currently in creative or conformist mode. No fair peeking before you’re done! I’ll wait…
(Insert muzak here)
All finished? Okay, now you can look.
So how did you do? Send me a picture of your creative brain in action!
Creative Regression Theory
I’ve decided that I need to be 4 again. Well, maybe not the actual age — that could be problematic with the limited income and lack of driving skills — but I would love to rediscover that devil-may-care passion I misplaced somewhere over the last couple of decades.
Somewhere around the age of 4 we hit the creative “sweet spot,” where there is a perfect convergence of factors to produce incredible amounts of creativity. Around that age is when imagination fully emerges and kicks into high gear, motor skills improve to include fine detail, the brain is able to synthesize disparate pieces of information into original expression, and — here’s the best part! — self-censoring in deference to societal norms hasn’t really kicked in yet. To a 4-year old, anything is possible.
Have you ever really watched a kid at that age? It’s amazing. I hand my son some crayons or paints or legos or just about anything, and he will throw himself into his work with complete and utter abandon. He doesn’t worry about the “right” way to do it; as far as he’s concerned he is doing it the right way because he’s having a blast. And if he doesn’t like the way it comes out, he just starts over. No biggie. For him it’s just a reason to extend of the fun and maybe try something new. Nothing to sweat about.
He doesn’t really care if real trees aren’t purple, or that puppies aren’t supposed to have seven legs. So what? It’s his picture. If you don’t like it, go draw your own.
I think as adults we should all resurrect that inner 4 year old. Let’s give ourselves permission to pursue our passions and indulge our creativity. Let’s come up with crazy ideas, and try doing things in ways we haven’t tried before. Let’s stop worrying so much about whether we’re doing it “right,” or what everyone else will have to say about it.
Everyone’s entitled to their own personal vision. And if you don’t like it, go draw your own.
Are You Creative?
If someone asked you if you were creative, what would you say?
This is a question I posed recently to a bunch of friends and colleagues in various places. And I was quite surprised at some of the answers I got.
Of course my wildly creative friends belted out and emphatic “YES!” and proceeded to tell me all about the projects they were working on or just finished or had in their head for the future. No surprises there – I already knew what they would say, and it was fun to get an update on where they were going.
A few others said that they were decidedly not creative. The surprising part for me was not that these people didn’t think of themselves as creative, but that they were quite happy with that. They didn’t want to be creative; they were happy in their little box and didn’t really care to venture outside of it. Of course, as a creative myself, I had a very hard time wrapping my head around this – not wanting to be creative? To me that would be like not wanting to breathe. But to each his own.
The one that really floored me was an old friend from college. Probably one of the more creative people I know. Ever since way-back-when he’s had a very sharp wit and a wicked sense of humor. At college he masterminded quite a bit of creative stuff, although admittedly the campus Powers That Be were usually not as appreciative of his inventiveness as the rest of us were.
So I asked him the no-brainer “are you creative” question and he said…
“No.”
“I might have been once, but now I don’t feel that’s true.”
Totally blind-sided me with that one. What?!? That’s an answer I may have accepted from some people, but certainly not him. Really?? Just – poof – it’s gone?? It made me kind of sad to think that he had lost such a great part of himself somewhere along the way. (Or at least believed that he did.) Is it even possible to “lose” creativity, or does it just get beaten into hiding by social conformity and rusty from disuse?
I don’t believe he really lost it, he just thinks he did. Go find it dude, it’s in there somewhere. Did you check in the garage…?
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So what would you answer to the question? Are you creative?
