You Don’t Need Others to Feel Creative
By: Jean-Marc Buchert
Tags: Self-awareness, Productivity, Creativity, Self Confidence, Self Improvement

You Don’t Need Others to Feel Creative

4 positive steps to regain your creative confidence

Photo by Bernard Hermant on Unsplash

When constantly working in groups, it is easy to doubt your creative potential, as all your ideas are usually inspired by the ideas of others.

You may even think that you are unable to innovate on your own without group consultation.

But while the value of collective thinking is certain, human projects have always been fueled by individual brains. Your neurons make more unexpected connections than your meetings will ever do.

And the more you lose confidence in your creative potential, the more you will lose this intellectual energy.

How to recover your creative confidence to illuminate your projects with original ideas?

According to David and Tom Kelley in Creative Confidence, you can regain your belief in your creativity by forcing yourself into new experiences.

The most creative professionals have learned to reflect on their “creativity scars’’, reappropriating their self-mastery, embracing their mistakes, and creating in more visual and playful ways.

Using their examples, here are 4 steps to put a spark of creativity back in your projects and take them in hand.

1. Reflecting on Your Creativity Scars

When it comes to being creative, you may find yourself thinking that it’s not for you and that others are better at it than you are…

But being creative is natural, as shown by children’s innate ability to try and experiment with new things, and to use effortlessly their imaginations.

Your attitude of self-doubt, however, is not. It often comes from moments during your childhood when certain people have denied your creativity: the art teacher or friends who have denied the talent of your collages, drawings, photos…

Some people may have been a bad influence, making you lose your belief in the power of your imagination, and suggesting that creativity belongs exclusively to real artists and dreamers.

To change your views, remember the times during your education when your talents as a singer, painter, writer were denied. Analyze how they have taken you away from your passions for creative activities (drawing, acting, singing…).

Successful musicians like Paul McCartney and George Harrison of the Beatles were in music class together in high school, with a teacher who didn’t even recognize their talent and gave them no encouragement. Two decades later they were part of one of the most beloved bands of the 20th century.

That gives you something to put into perspective!

2. Regaining a Sense of Self-Mastery

When you try to test again your creative abilities, you may wonder where to start. You may fear that your actions will have no impact on your environment.

To dispel that doubt, you need to regain a sense of self-efficiency in your actions, by embarking on step-by-step experimentations.

For example, the famous social psychologist Albert Bandura has used an innovative method to help his patients confront their phobia of snakes: through trials that brought them closer and closer to the sight and touch of a snake.

It started by getting closer behind a door, listening to their sound, looking at them in a mirror, and then touching them. This process allowed them to overcome their fear by acting little by little on it, gaining more control over it.

A few months later, these same patients had learned to overcome their fear and problem by taking the initiative and using their creativity to gradually take control of their problem. They had also learned the belief that they could change something that seemed insurmountable at the time by taking action if only a little.

In the same way, you need to start with small actions to overcome your fear of being judged and your doubts. This will allow you to regain your self-mastery when it comes to using your creativity.

3. Owning Your Failures

One of the other essential keys to unlocking your creativity is to learn to accept your mistakes and even to seek out more and more of them.

The greatest innovators like Thomas Edison or the Wright Brothers have been as creative by having the ability and the environment to engage in broad and constant experimentation.

You may need to assimilate this optimism taught by video games, that behind your failures progress and success are never too far away.

It is a question of creating such a “virtual” environment around you, which makes you want to test your creative abilities where no one judges you and you don’t fear losing something.

For example, a juggling teacher has taught his students to accept their mistakes by starting his classes with “ball drop sessions”: the goal is to throw their balls and let them fall each time. This exercise reduces the pressure on new students and makes them take risks, as they usually tend to avoid dropping their balls at all costs.

In the same way, rediscovering activities with fewer stakes, such as writing in a diary, drawing at home, finding artistic hobbies you have given up for a while (theatre, acting,) are all solutions to regain confidence in your creativity. It enables you to experiment with your creative talents without doubting yourself too much.

They let you make your mistakes and teach you their creative value.

4. Creating in a More Visual and Playful Way

When you try to put a creative impulse into your projects, you may wonder what you may change first, and even if a change is really necessary.

You may be paralyzed by your perfectionism, as you don’t want to present ideas outside of your area of expertise or change your plans too abruptly.

But you don’t need to put too much pressure on you.

To add a creative touch, sometimes simple and playful means are enough: drawings, maps, and diagrams help you redesign your decisions and the situation of your projects.

Dan Roam, an expert in the art of visual thinking, insists that anyone can draw anything — even if they don’t feel naturally creative or gifted — just by deconstructing it into 5 basic shapes: a circle, a line, a square, a triangle, and an irregular shape.

Starting from these shapes, you can describe new emotions, relationships, and ideas on a board, and reconsider the scheme of your projects in new ways. You can retrace the arguments for your decisions, renew the presentation of your figures, reconsider the emotions of your clients with the help of a simple pencil.

All this without having to bother being a professional painter or drawer: only by making visual and natural creativity work!