Find The Courage To Be Creative With These Truths And Troubles At Your Feet

Standing out from the crowd is counter to our subconscious program. We are a prey animal as well as a hunter, so human beings have evolved to be safe and to stay part of the group. So, when we do something unusual or something that makes us stand out, we immediately become a target for would-be predators who need a target to focus on. In large groups, people are uninteresting and hard to reach. When you identify one person who has a good idea, that desire to be heard can be used and abused. This is a genuine reality, and many of us prefer to keep our heads down and carry on with what ever is given to us. Lack of confidence to fend off the predators can be a creativity killing sensation. We usually identify it as pride, shame, nerves, or some other common affliction. It can be whittled down to fear, in the end.
 
It's not just standing out from the crowd that makes creativity dangerous. There are many other problems that arise from this direction of thought. It all begins in the chaos of the unknown. To be creative or artistic is to push back the boundary of chaos and replace it with sensation, ration, likeness, and order. Painting a picture or writing a story takes elements of the infinite human experience and makes them solid and tangible, something everyone can relate to. Exploring this unknown darkness is courageous because we open our minds to the depths of our own imagination. A spiral of thought can carry us up, down, or away, with ideas linking in with symbolical meanings and loose translations that fit the emotional background.
 
Not everyone is able to create something useful or applicable from this depth of the unknown. It requires a confidence to continue and an instinct for the right direction when there are no maps or streetlights to help. Like an unchallenged landscape, the natural state of the chaotic and unordered human imagination is a huge story of choices and morality. The sense of being alive and enthralled with a story can be pulled like string from the swirling silo of personal inspiration. The art we create shows us the possible realities of mind and the metaphorical stories that connect and divide us. Manifesting a genuine piece of the world from a poignant or abstract idea that only previously existed in the mind is a huge challenge.
 
Like science, art and creativity make the world more tolerable and enjoyable, safer, and more fulfilling. Unlike science, in which the order of the world is used to make something useful, the arts take the chaos of the world to make something useful. In the sciences, it’s imperative that instructions are followed, and method remain identical throughout the entire regime. This is counter productive to creativity, in which subtle and major changes take place as the uniform behaviour. To apply scientific thinking to the art of creativity, the focus can be shifted from the individual to their process and habits. In this way, artists are often dehumanised and utilised for their textbook worth rather than celebrated as human beings who did something amazing. To be creative means to accept one’s fate to be objectified by many.
 
Although it’s possible to teach creativity by means of psychology, methods, history, sociology, and so on, the mental background for a creative person is something natural in them and cannot be replicated in others. Some of us have next to no creative ability and some of us have an excess of it. Creativity can be nurtured like a seed, but we cannot plant the seed. It’s a factor of genetics and early years nurture. Non creative people often do not want to be creative so it’s not necessarily an issue. It does become an issue when non creative people treat themselves as the standard and try to stifle differences in others. It’s important to encourage daydreaming and imaginative play during childhood so as they grow the adult can access the power of their inventiveness. 

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​Creativity is all about realising our desires. We want a result, we have some tools, and we use what we have to create the situation we were looking for. It’s a sign of creative intelligence to be able to do this, and many animals have the ability too. The process of telling a story via a series of processes that result in something new is not innate to humans, although complex syntax and abstract thought seems to be so, for now. The ability to achieve a favourable circumstance from what is available and within the rules takes the mind of a creative person unless a clear path is already laid out. Someone else’s creativity might be the answer, or else you’ll need to think of your own. Standing out from the crowd with an unusual solution can bring on new problems that we didn’t envisage or plan for.
 
When society or nature presents a problem that has no immediate solution for the group or the individual, a creative approach is necessary. Entire generations can go by without an effort to work through certain problems we face, however when artists begin to make these problems part of our regular language and imagination, society begins to tackle the issues. It requires the work of many people to tackle life’s big problems, but the problem of one person can often be addressed by that one person alone. A creative approach will help us to design a new and successful method that can be applied again. Before we have the approach, one must be invented.
 
This is where we separate the true inventive and creative people from those who just like to stand around in colourful clothes, making predictable statements. A creative and inventive individual will thrive in an environment where problems need solving and experience must be gained. An exhibitionist will want the attention even when there is a problem to solve, and the attention needs to be elsewhere. A sense of vanity and the desire to be recognised as a cut above the rest is not what people pay for when they buy art. They want something that works for them, not the artist. It can be difficult to bring yourself away from the wrong crowd, especially if social capital is at risk. To be able to work successfully on something new and inventive, we need to be free from the wrong kind of influence.
 
The marketplace is the theatre of successful creativity. Even if it’s a play, someone must buy it, invest in it, put their time into producing it, and then putting on a show. They’re not just buying the play; they’re buying weeks or months of dedication and work. To be successful as an artist or an inventive problem solver, we need to be able to demonstrate that what we offer really is worth the time, energy, and effort involved in applying it. Let’s say it’s a book, reading a book takes time, it puts images and ideas in the mind that were not there before. Is this a good idea? Is it worth money? These are the questions that the marketplace asks. Creative and new things are risky, because there is little evidence as to their value as an investment.
 
This is where standing out from the crowd is necessary, and the further out we go, the more likely we are to be noticed. Being noticed is a risk because we invite positive and negative interaction from the world at large, criminals, crazy people, buyers, superfans, the whole world. Again, the further away from the normal we go, the less likely that others will have a mental map of what we are for or what we do. To be able to recognise something as valuable or interesting takes an imagination unless it’s been previously stated. People with small imaginations find it very difficult to determine if something novel is a good or a bad idea. Some of us are completely blind to creativity and have no inner method of relating things that we do not already recognise. We need to be told exactly what something is and what it is for. When marketing creativity, it’s important to keep all these things in mind.
 
If getting your creativity out into the world at large is something you've been working on, then make use of this free course in creative and progressive leadership from Alternative Fruit.
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