Making a Case for Creativity

Who doesn't love John Cleese?

Contrary to popular opinion, being creative does not simply mean being artistic or crafty. Creativity comes from deep inside and is often in response to a challenge or problem. Sometimes this process is referred to as “thinking outside the box”, or “brain storming”.

I would really like to be the artsy kind of creative, but have to work really hard at it. The problem is not my understanding of the concepts of design, which I get on an intuitive level; implementation is where the difficulty lays. Thankfully, I have a family of artists at my beck and call (Well, mostly. It may involve a few FB messages that read something like, “Hey, Ian can you make an inverted version of the logo with the slogan?” “Yo, Ian!”) And, the header on our website is an amazing collage MacKenzie created for my birthday last year.  Our home is a gallery filled with all of that artistry.

Everyone has the capacity and capability to be creative. Yes, everyone! We all have thoughts and ideas. We all have moments of sheer brilliance, which we are sure will become the latest fad or at the very least get us some positive feedback.

The key to all of this is having the time and space to ruminate and tinker, combined with the confidence of knowing we can create something worthwhile.

People who are self-assured are more likely to produce ideas, concepts, services, or products that other people are going to buy into. These are the folks who are making it up as they go along, are the “experts”, and are successful. Translate that to happy, engaged and passionate about life.

So how do we produce these confident, creative, audacious, fear-less adults? We start with the fear-less, audacious, creative, confident children who surround us and watch them follow their interests and passions. We allow them the time and space they need to flower and grow. We celebrate their successes and challenge them to do their very best. We support them through disappointment. We understand there will be down days and mistakes, because that is all part of life. And then when it is time (and they will let us know when), we simply send them off into the world with love.

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