So How Can You Improve Your Creativity?

Listen to your inner voice. Grab your markers and create.

Maybe it's silly, but I believe that everyone is born creative. We all get handed a box of markers in pre-school or kindergarten. But then we mature and the world snatches away our markers and replaces them with textbooks, bills, and responsibilities. Ugh. Years later we recall how fun creativity is. It's that little kid inside...and we want our damn markers back.

But we doubt ourselves because that's what adults do. We overthink everything. Can I really write a screenplay? But I don't know anything about sculpting? My recipe for cookies can't be good enough to sell, can it?

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But asking whether you can do something or if there is a pot of gold at the end of the creative rainbow isn't that kid voice begging for markers. That's your adult voice who wants to tediously analyze the situation and find a way to get your inner child to shut the hell up.

The kid inside is not trying to hard sell you on the merits of creativity or trying to calculate the benefit/cost ratio of following your passion. He or she just wants to make something. Something freaking awesome that will amaze anyone who sees it. That voice doesn't care if an idea fails, or if it doesn't fit the needs of some hypothetical market. It wants you to make something honest and real, and it believes you'll succeed if you try. It knows there's something you haven't sketched, or sang, or stitched that needs to be spawned, some match that needs to be struck into a new flame, and that fire needs to burn. Now.

So improve your creativity by listening to that little kid talking inside of you...before he or she loses their voice. That voice will die if you don't listen, and it will take a piece of your soul with it when it does. Reach for your markers. Make something new. Don't second guess the impulse or doubt the merits of trying. Allow yourself a chance to be creative. They're just markers. You weren't scared of them as a kid...so don't fear them now.