Built To Create: Making, Doing, and Being
The Importance of Making Time for Artistic, Creative Endeavor
Image by Aedrian from Unsplash
Best-selling author and .com entrepreneur Seth Godin calls identity the “internal familiarity” that resides within each of us. Godin cites how easily we are confused by the phrase “I am.”
“I am five feet tall” is a given, while “I am a chef” is up to you.
Godin teaches and writes extensively on the role that process and practice play in identity-formation and who and what we become. Godin makes four primary points regarding identity and trusting ourselves:
Identity is a choice that fuels action.
Action creates habits.
Habits create process and practice.
The day-in, day-out practices we establish determine who and what we become.
In a 2016 study, the Adobe Company asked adults age 21 and over if they were artistic or creative. Just 41% of the 5,000 people surveyed associated themselves with being creative. 59% of people did not see creativity as part of their identity. In reality, imaginative thinking and creating are foundational human characteristics. We are innately, naturally creative and artistic. Every person is artistic and creative, but most adults don’t equate creativity with who they are.
Creativity, Personal Development, and Identity Formation
Image by Laura Adai from Unsplash
There is a circular relationship between creativity, growth, and momentum.
The relationship is this:
Creativity is foundational to personal growth.
Growth builds agency, self-efficacy, and momentum.
Momentum spurs creativity.
The important catalyst for the growth / momentum cycle described above is CREATIVITY. Scheduling and engaging in regular ongoing sessions to think and create is time well-spent. It is time that can lead to great personal growth, which spurs momentum to create and grow even more. Creativity is vital to getting to know ourselves, to contributing to the world, to self-actualization and to forming identity. Human beings are naturally artistic and creative. We are built to create, and we thrive in the realm of creative endeavor.
How might we shape and make time for weekly creative work? A few easy once-a-week ideas:
Sketch nonstop for 2 minutes.
Compose a four-bar melody. Then play or sing it in rock, jazz, and classical style.
Craft a haiku about something in your desk drawer.
Write out the rules for a new board game.
The point is to schedule ongoing recurring creative time with yourself to do something. Writing a screenplay, painting a mural, running a marathon, and every multi-stage endeavor boils down to prioritization and routine. Routine is comprised of habits, systems, showing up, and doing. Investing thought, time, and action into formulating habits/systems that will create space for creative endeavor can be game-changing in terms of our growth and the tenor of our days. We can make creating part of what we do, part of our identities.
We’ve been fooled into believing that roles like writer, leader, and artist are fixed in place — something we either are or are not. The truth is far more simple. If you want to be a leader, lead. If you want to be a writer, write. If you want to be an analyst, analyze, and if you want to be an artist, make art. We can show up and start where we are. Once we begin, we are.
DO. Then BE.