Don’t Grow Out Of Your Creativity

There was a little girl in a drawing class who was drawing something very intently. The teacher was fascinated.

She went to the kid and asked her, “What are you drawing?”

The small girl said, “I am drawing a picture of God.”

To which the teacher said, “But, nobody knows what God looks like.”

The girl, continuing to draw intently, quipped- “They will in a minute.”

There is something we can all learn from this little story that Sir Ken Robinson shared in his seminal Ted Talk “Do Schools Kill Creativity”

Creativity comes from believing in an Idea you may have in your head AND not being afraid to express that Idea.

Children do this brilliantly. They have an extraordinary capacity for creativity. The kid in the story was not afraid or worried about whether the image she was drawing was good enough to be God or not. She believed that whatever she drew would be the representation of God.

This story inspired me to create my own mental model for creativity that looks like this.

Conviction in your Idea or perspective X Courage to express the Idea or perspective = Being Creative

You will notice in this equation; there is no reference to whether others accept the Idea as being good or not. It doesn’t matter. There can never be any value judgment on someone being creative.

Don’t fall into the trap of thinking that only the good singer, painter, or marketeer is creative. Every one of us is uniquely creative in whatever we do. You just need to have conviction in your own ideas, and you should be willing to express or share them. Don’t let your creativity be hostage to how the world responds. The world may appreciate, ridicule, or ignore your ideas; that’s just the way the world is.

Picasso said all children are born artists. The problem is to remain an artist as we grow up. We don’t grow into creativity. We grow out of it.