I was talking to my Dad the other night about this exact subject, and felt that it was relevant to talk about it here as well. There is so much that I could say about on this subject, but I’ll keep it short.

My siblings and I were lucky enough in our childhood to be raised by parents who celebrated creativity. Every creative endeavour that we undertook was nurtured, grown, and raised to maturity by us and our parents. We are incredibly lucky. Our parents told us that we could do absolutely anything in the world that we wanted, and that it was up to us to make that happen. They never dreamt of us being ‘realistic’ and becoming an accountant, lawyer, or doctor. No, they encouraged us to ask the questions, to think right outside of every realm, and they knew that we would choose the right things that made us happy.

Each one of us is now working in our own creative endeavours. My brother is an organic gardener, and builds sustainable housing. My sister is at Art School, creating her life away. And I have done the whole design thing, the painting thing, and music in the past … and I now sit here tapping away on my computer dreaming up new worlds to mentally play in – 90 odd thousand words at a time.

I am one of those people who believe that every human being is born with an artist inside each of us. I think that this is because of the learning and development that our brains undergo as we grow.

I have met some truly incredible people through creativity. Some are from my tertiary education days, and are still in my life now. But even more so, I continue to meet these creative people. Do creative people recognise other creative types and draw them to themselves? I think that they probably do. This simple act of surrounding yourself with like-minded people nurtures your creative soul. I talk to other creative people about things that they are working on, their thoughts and opinions on different things, and just life in general – every single day. No, I am not kidding. This is because I no longer have my parents to help nurture my creativity every day. Now I have people surrounding me that help me with that, on a day to day basis – just as I help them. And the foundations of our friendships – apart from the creativity we share are: encouragement, love, laughter, celebration, and being who we are.

There are those people who profess to not have a creative bone in their body. But if that really is the case, then how do they ever think outside the square, or how do they come up with solution focussed ideas that they supposedly use in their corporate worlds.

Creative people don’t see the world as a black and white object. They see world in swirling shades of grey. They see colour. And they use those variations in their everyday lives to nurture their creativity. They ask the questions like: “Why does it only have to be black and white?” “Why do I have to do it this way?” and finally, they ask the question, “Why not?” (Oooh, I think Edward De Bono would probably be quite proud of me right now!)

This is a really interesting presentation by Sir Ken Robinson. He said something that really rang true in me:

“We don’t grow into creativity, we grow out of it, or rather we are educated out of it.”

I thought that this message is something that everyone needs to hear – regardless of if they are a creative or not.