Accepting your creativity
I have a confession to make. Up until a few years ago, I didn't really believe I was creative.
Yes, I was a singer and a teacher, enmeshed in the arts and bringing the innate musicality out of my students, but I was not creative, I'd say. I was just an interpreter. I followed directions like a dutiful student, doing my best to give a voice to what was on the page.
To go along with this belief, I felt like a fraud, suffering from serious Impostor Syndrome. Who was I to call myself an artist when all I did was try to do what I was told by my teachers and the music? I felt like I didn't have an original spark in me.
And I couldn't believe anyone who told me otherwise.
Fast forward a few years, and a lot of personal growth, and I know now that everyone is creative. Including me. Including you.
By very virtue of being alive we are creative beings.
For if you believe, as I do, that the Divine Creator made us in his/her/its image, then ipso facto, we too are creators. It's in our souls, whether we choose to express it or believe it or not.
That creativity can take lots of different forms. Yes, it can look like creating something from scratch, like composing a piece of music or crafting a new recipe or designing a new building. But it can also look like reorganizing a dishwasher to fit in more dishes or writing a social media post or gathering a group of people together for a specific purpose. It can look like writing a book or planning a meal or solving a problem or picking out your clothes in the morning or creating exercises for your students or interpreting a song, poem, or dance.
Creating simply means acting on an idea, bringing a spark of imagination into form.
If it is an idea that originates from your true self, then it will be original.
Julia Cameron writes:
“We are the origin of our art, its homeland. Viewed this way, originality is the process of remaining true to ourselves.”
I came to realize that I was engaging in creative acts. But I was engaging in them in order to gain others' approval: my teachers, my students, my husband, my parents, instead of as a means of self-expression - so they didn't feel creative. It's not that I wasn't creative, or that I wasn't original, as I so feared and insisted on believing. It's that I wasn't creating for myself, as a fulfilling process in and of itself, that kept me feeling like a fraud and believing in the lie of a lack of creativity.
I was disconnected from my soul, more focused on my perceptions of those around me than on myself, so I couldn't see what was right there.
As I shifted my focus to my own joy and expressing my own soul and releasing the need to please others, I was able to accept and even embrace my innate creativity. My life has never felt more alive!
Yes, I am creative.
Yes, you are creative.
We are ALL creative.
Accepting and embracing that fact opens us up to new inspiration and ideas and allows us to step into creative flow, bringing joy and vitality into our art and lives.
How about you? Have you embraced your creativity? Comment below!
