How My Relationship with Creativity Changed

After reading Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert

So here’s how my relationship with the word “creativity” changed. Until this time I write this story, I have read until part 4/6 of Big Magic.

I am so excited when the book arrived. First, because I work on myself to be more creative this year and I want to live a creative life.

I asked myself, like other self-starters who doubt themselves if they can be creative.

Do you think you have creativity?

I don’t think you have it. In fact, all of us don’t have creativity.

Why?

#1 Creativity is a living being.

The author of Big Magic thinks creativity is a living being — if I can say so, floating around us and deciding if they want to collaborate with us.

This is the interesting part. Creativity wants to exist in the human world, but it needs our help to get it here. So when creativity knocks on your head, you have a choice to execute them or let it go.

If you don’t want to help the creativity, it will knock on other people's heads.

So if you imagine creativity as living beings, when you decide to help, there’s also a deadline. Like people, if you ignore them they are gone. If you ignore creativity, the idea will vanish or flee looking for other people who want to execute them to exist.

What I am trying to say, as long as the ideas are still fresh, you want to execute them because later is never.

#2 Creativity wants to have fun

This is for the result.

When you decide to help creativity, sometimes the result is not satisfying. Why? Because creativity like people knocks on your heart just to play around for have fun.

So when the result is not what are you hoping for, remember, it’s not your fault. Don’t judge yourself for being not creative enough because you are never creative.

This reason makes me bring to another point.

#3 You have creativity not you are creative

Back to point #1. Creativity is a living being. So you are never creative, but you have creativity.

Being versus having. It helps you to frame yourself as people who borrows creativity for a specified time.

Think creativity as you borrow a book from the library. After you return the book, your job is done. You have done your work with creativity. You don’t get bothered about what happened after returning it.

Having that thinking will help you not be so hard on yourself when the result, frankly speaking, is crap.

Remember sometimes it comes only for having fun. Sometimes it’s crap, other times it’s taught you a lesson.

#4 Creativity wants intimacy

Creativity is tired of floating around because of not finding the right people to execute them. It gets lonely.

Sometimes you are helping them will leads you to an unexpected awesome result. But it’s not always the case. Creativity gets lonely too, so it tries to gamble on yourself.

Next time you try to help but the ending is crap, please remember:

What important is you enjoy the time when you are with them. Spending time on creativity doesn’t need to be in a hurry or under pressure. Enjoy them when they are last.

You need creativity in your life. Not necessarily number one, but it’s essential. Because you need to forget about yourself once in a while forever.