What is Creativity?

"What is Creativity?" is one of the questions I get asked the most. My answer is always simple: it is thinking without boundaries. Yes, I know there are a lot more precise, eloquent, and more correct answers out there but I never said or pretend to be anything but simple.

For me creativity is about letting loose. Everyone does this in their own way. Everyone sees the world differently, hears the space around us a bit different, tastes things that no one else can taste, feels the earth spin in their own unique way, and describes their environments in their own terms.

At least the above descriptions hold true until we get to a certain age; A certain age where we have to "behave". At some point in all of our lives we have been "shhhed" or given the glance that tells us that is not appropriate. For some of us unlucky ones perhaps we even got a gentle kick in the shin or a slight pinch on the arm when we have asked to many questions, or have spoken to loudly, or maybe even out of turn.

So we grow up and somewhere along the way after all of this squashing of our enthusiasm and our vigor to learn and ask questions we stop asking. We conform, we begin to wait our turn, we begin to say things we think others want us to say.

Creativity for me is about every once in awhile letting loose in whatever you feel comfortable doing it. Creativity does not have to be an amazing ART piece, or some aww inspiring design that you have concocted. It can be the way you tie your shoes, it can be wearing sandals until the snow hits, it can be about how you say good morning. Creativity is about finding a few things in you that you do just for yourself and that you do that some might even think is a little bit different. I mean imagine one day if you just decided to only write with a pack of crayons that you bought the night before and that you wouldn't stop writing with that pack of crayons until they were all used up? Would it be the end of the world? What if instead of making the same chicken meal you make every night you decided to go to the grocery store and buy everything and anything you have never ate in your life and tried making a dinner out of that?

My main argument for all of this is people (myself included) can sometimes be boring. So why don't you challenge yourself to just once colour outside of the lines and see what happens? Does the world fall apart?


Don't get stuck in life, be creative:

STORYTIME:

This post was inspired from a rather interesting situation I got to observe.

Imagine 7 in the morning standing in line at the grocery store in the middle of October. Yes that is right it is dark out, there is almost no one else in the store, and there is definitely not a whole lot of noise. When all of a sudden this beautiful voice belts out "Good Morning, you are here to check out and I am just the lady for you." This kind of singing certainly woke everyone up who was in the store and put a smile on everyones face.
Behind the cash one of the elderly ladies who was working said that she always sings her good mornings and sings her customers through the line because it is so early and that often she has been in the store for so many hours that she too needs to have a bit of fun.
It was amazing to see everyone in the store react so positively to this wonderful older lady who certainly was not afraid to let loose, be a little bit creative with her job, and inject a whole lot of fun for everyone around.
You know the old saying "sing like no one can hear you" well she did just that and she says that is what gets her through the late night shifts that last until the wee hours of the morning. This lady says she loves her job and she loves her job because the store manager allows her to be herself. Don't you wish more of us could be ourselves? Were allowed to be ourselves?

Dave Werner a young creative

So last night I was doing a bit of web surfing and looking for some creative inspiration-FOUND IT! I came across Dave Werner and his site okaydave.com.

I immediately fell in love with the simplicity of the layout but the complexity of the information. I know that the mix of video, audio, and text for me was just right, you know kinda Goldilocks and the three bears style.

Not only was the site a great looking site but as I searched through some of the links and really listened to Dave's messages I was impressed with his many unique and very creative projects.  In particular, after having worked for so many years in the coaching industry I truly can appreciate the effort Dave went through to put together his Reflect/Respect project. As well, any time people are given the opportunity to talk freely and openly I feel like magic happens so cudos to Dave for giving people one more opportunity to open up in this world. People open up and share things that they have been holding in for some days, for others weeks and yet for even more a much longer time and I know that this freedom of release can be  

I find it rare these days that so many people take the time to share their own stories and to follow their own imaginations and Dave has done a beautiful job of this. Even if some of his projects and imaginations were prompted by school projects, you can tell the Dave was passionate about the work he produced and he put a lot of himself into the projects he presented (hmm...I seem to know a lot about this guy for someone who actually doesn't know this guy, haha, ok so my perception is that he puts himself into most of his projects-I'm writing him an email so I guess I'll find out) . He has done some amazing projects and has done an even better job in telling the story of those projects, something that I know inspired me for sure and I know will inspire others as well.

Check out his site and let me know what you think. Which project connects with you the greatest? Do you have projects of your own that you are working on?

In the next couple of months I have several projects that will be revealed. The aim of many of my creative projects are about story telling and getting people to connect and reconnect, to share, and to put themselves out there. Just like in some of my other posts-I truly believe the more we put out there of ourselves the more we will get in return.

13 year old failure, really?

In the last little bit I have been doing lots of interviews with people for my new book "Career Chaos: What the hell are you going to do with your life?" however there is one interview that continues to play over and over in my head. This interview comes from a 13 year old girl who when asked what she wanted to be when she grew up immediately answered-"a gym teacher" There was no thought, there was no hesitation, it was without a doubt gym teacher. Great!

That would be the case if I was a typical adult going about my typical ways. I would have said "Great, good for you, I know how much you love sports you will make an excellent gym teacher." This is not what I said though, because I was interviewing her and I had to dig a little deeper I asked, "do you think that will ever change?" Again a lightning response was shot back to me, "NO, of course not I love sports."

Then something really unusual happened instead of blabbering on, which I wanted to do believe me, I just sat there and stared at this young girl who was so sure of herself. In fact this girl had it all figured out. Or had she? During my pause this young girl had begun a whole new conversation by herself, she was beginning to convince me (or was it her?) that this would be an awesome fit for her. She told me (herself) that she did love sports, that she loved the energy and the enthusiasm but then she also said that maybe she wouldn't want to teach younger grades because they weren't competitive enough for her. Then she moved on to maybe not wanting to teach high school students because sometimes they can be rotten. But maybe she would like teaching middle school students especially if she got to teach outside. A few seconds passed with this young lady completely chatting on her own.

A few shorts moment later and all of a sudden it was like I wasn't even in the room, the girl had forgot all about me and that I was even there. Then at the end of this prolific monologue the girl stopped talking, dropped her head, spoke one last time "I really don't know", and then began to sob softly with her head pointed at the floor.

Immediately I jumped up and asked her why she was being so emotional and her response to me is what I have been thinking about for weeks and weeks-"I'm the only loser in my grade who doesn't know what I want to be." "Of course you are not" I said.

Is this where our systems have taken us now, to a point where we are becoming so stressed out about our futures before we even to the best playing years of our life. In a time when we should be venturing out into self-discovery we are worried about the hell we are going to do so much that we break down and stress out over the next 50 years of our lives.

There are so many things going on in this world but when a 13 year old can cry because she doesn't have life figured out I think that is truly sad.

It took only a few moments to rationalize this with the girl asking her if she really thought her friends truly knew before she realized that the answer was likely no.

Society is putting more and more pressure on us to "figure it out". Whatever the hell "it" is.

This is the true reason I am writing this book-because I think there are so many people who think they are all alone and are worried that they are the only "stupid" ones who can't get their life together, when in fact I know now for sure that there are literally thousands of people both young and old that are still exploring. But they are scared, they are scared because heaven forbid we show a moment of "weakness" in our life and we don't have a plan.

Yes I know it is strange for a life coach to be bad mouthing plans but hey that is why I'm the creative coach-because I love chaos and I love thinking about how life can take us on so many paths.

My solution to all this, start challenging people of all ages to explore, to be creative, to get comfortable with chaos. This is the only way that down the road any employed person when "let go" or quiting can be ok with that and not feel pressure.

So the next time you ask someone what they are going to be when they grow up take a pause and let them really think about it, let them think, let their minds wonder, even go so far as to challenge their path.

13 year old crying because she is a failure because she doesn't know what she wants to do for the rest of her life-who the hell does?

What do you think? What do you want to be when you grow up? What is a good answer? Or better yet whats a better question that we need to ask ourselves?

Conversations for Change interview

This last year in 2010 I learned of a book called High on Life edited by Nejeed Kassam and then later on I learned there was going to documentary called Conversations for Change. All of it seemed so wonderful, the basic concept-write a book and film a documentary around all kinds of different people that are out there making change. The age range for these changemakers? all ages-young and old.

I had the pleasure of meeting with some of the people from this project and I am continuing to be amazed as they continue to travel and edit and film and write.

A couple of days ago I was interviewed by the group and here was what I had to say: Interview with Conversations for Change



1) What inspired you to become involved in Social Change?

When I first started out I never even thought of my actions being referred to as social change. I only ever thought of the projects I was involved in as being fun and involving as many “cool” people as I could in and around the projects I was involved in. It was only after I had started, completed, and then started some new projects that I realized two things:

1. That I was actually having a ton of fun for myself and it seemed like the people around me were having fun

2. That we are actually making a difference in so many people’s lives.

This was perhaps one of the most powerful realizations that I had ever made in my life, along with the fact that I could actually make this sustainable by creating a really fun job out of it all. Once I started living and breathing in this sector it has been about the people all along, be it the people I work with, the people I work for, or the people I serve, all who inspire me. Every ounce of inspiration comes down to people. I would never have driven for 2 hours to give a 1.5 hour practice twice a week for over 5 years if I didn’t love the people I was doing it for. I wouldn’t have spent thousands of dollars and hours working on projects if I didn’t get to spend it working along side so many other hardworking and caring individuals.

So long story short, what inspires me, your everyday average Joe who cares, that is what/who inspires me.

2) What projects are you currently involved with?

Running Creativision keeps me pretty busy most of the days with everything from working with executives on creativity training, to helping university students figure out what the hell they want to do with their life, to helping companies creatively design their next brand, and everything in between.

However, there are two main things that are on the forefront of my radar these days. The first is a book I’m co-authoring with a good friend of mine, Collin Vine, called Career Chaos: What the hell are you going to do with your life? This book is interviewing literally hundreds of people all across Canada between the ages 4 and 98 asking how we figure life out? What we should do? Where we should go? If we could do it all over again what would we do? Would we change what we learned? How we learned? How would we deal with chaos? So far there have been so many amazing stories with so many surprise endings to many people’s stories.
The second major project that I’m working on is a combination of 2 things the first is a day for students to come together, get creative, and put out some useful products or services to the community. This day will be called “A Day of Play, Seriously!” This day will lead into a 5 week program in the summer where youth, ages 10-16 will be able to join for the first 4 weeks, again being challenged to solve some of our communities challenges in fun and creative ways. Then in the final week, perhaps the most fun week for me, the youth will be joined by a few adults to work on one final community challenge. The only catch, in this final week the youth will be the creative experts and will lead the adults as project managers through solving a community challenge.

To learn more, to follow along, and to find out how you can help with any of these projects come visit www.creativision.ca

3) What is, if you have one, the message that you would like others to hear? What can other inspiring young change-makers do in their communities to help enact social change?

My message is always about one thing, to have fun in life. Do the things in life that YOU want to do (believe me, many people will want to pull you in a million different ways, reflect and think about what you really want), make sure you can do it for a long time, do it with people who make you smile, and really give it (whatever “it” is) all you have. Come at the work you want to do from a million different angles (practice creativity, be creative). Finally always be willing to change the course, to learn something new, and be prepared to teach others, because believe me no one will think quite the same as you, so having all of those skills just mentioned will take you a long way in being a change-maker.

Change is really hard, but when it happens, man does it ever feel good!

Ottawa is AWESOME

Two nights ago I had the pleasure of sitting around a table with some wonderful or should I say AWESOME people at the CodeFactory. These people have come together to do one thing: make and encourage Ottawa to be AWESOME.

The board of AWESOME Ottawa will be looking for people who have done and would like to do more things that are AWESOME. This means that each and every month they will be scouring the city to find people and asking others to do the same and submit the names of those who are really doing and thinking differently.

This board of 10 will each be putting in $100 of their own money each and every month to donate $1000 to someone in the city doing something AWESOME.

There will be more details to share as this program grows and I will definitely be sharing some of the project nominations on here and interviewing some of the winners and some of the runners up as this project progresses.

I am looking forward to some AWESOME experiences and meeting some AWESOME people along the way.

More AWESOMEness to come soon