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Successful Sunday, January 26th, 2025

A smiling Black woman talking to the camera.  Behind her someone is preparing ground meat.  In black text with white borders, "EVERYBODY'S SO CREATIVE!"

Hi, Subscribers. This blog uses the power of Play to guide our daily lives. Play can help you grow personally and professionally and helps to power up your creativity, problem-solving skills, and overall well-being. Let’s set ourselves up for success and inspiration and remember to find joy in every step of our development.

It’s time for an accountability check-in—hard truths. I value laundry more than taking a nap. I did not value my time and am now exhausted. 🥱 I hosted another LinkedIn Live event, debunking the idea that creative work is limited to artists, writers, and designers. Most powerfully, I realized that my clients are transformed after my process. I am the prize.

Instead of pulling cards this week, I will share the highlights from my LinkedIn Live: I’m Not Creative and Other Lies You Tell Yourself. As a Creative Coach, I host many play challenges to help people tap into their intuition and confidence. I want to dispel the myth that people think they're not creative. I want to start by going into the root word. #TeamDictionary According to Merriam-Webster, all being creative is the ability or power to create, having the quality of something created rather than imitated. To paraphrase a video I saw on social media, I want you to take a moment and imagine a fork. It's usually a metal instrument. It has tines. Can you see it in your mind? Before it was a fork, it was an idea. Somebody found a gap and thought, there needs to be a better way to eat food or to convey food to my mouth, and they created a fork, which is so commonplace now, but somebody had the inspiration to be creative beforehand. And what does it mean to create? To bring into existence. Usually, it is to bring something new into existence, but that's the gist of it. So, everybody has the ability to bring something into existence.

According to Know Your Meme, “The catchphrase "Everybody's so creative!" was coined on July 2022 by the TikToker @tanaradoublechocolate (also known as Tanara) after she duetted a recipe video on the app and, in order to humorously criticize the chef, she decided to go with a softer tone.” Some truly vile ideas are out there, but they're new and novel, and somebody came up with them. And one of the hallmarks of being creative is, “There is no innovation and creativity without failure." – Brené Brown. We have to be confident in our ability to fail because if we're not willing to fail, we're not willing to try and will not do anything new. So when you say you're not creative, maybe you think that creative people are artists or fashion designers. They wear bold clothes and have kookie ideas. But being creative means, “I have two things in my pantry. What am I going to make for dinner?” Being creative is making a five-dollar bill stretch to put on a show. Being creative is being a problem solver.

Producing content is being creative. People who post on LinkedIn or other social media are creative because they create something. I think there is this mindset that creativity has a niche. It's only the arts, or it's only fashion. It's only writing something, but being creative, as we learned before, is to create things. I came across a video by DesignSpo, and they talked about a book they read, The Daily Rituals by Mason Curry. This book studied the creatives of the time: the Van Goghs, the Picassos, and many other people, and a lot of them didn't think that they were creative. They just put in the work. “Don’t wait for inspiration. It comes while working." – Henri Matisse.

An audience member once asked if Tech people can be creative. The answer is a resounding yes! Deciding what to make for dinner? Creative! Creativity is a mindset. It's the things that bring you joy. Joy is a big, important part of it. I had the pleasure of listening to a panel with Eli Rigatoso. He is from the Menominee Nation and shared something that stuck with me. His people don't create art unless they're happy. We have this whole idea of the tortured artist, but his people create when they're happy. So, I think part of that creative process is to be happy and to accept yourself. I am an analyst by trade. I’m learning new tools to create reports. Somebody told me about Snowflake, and they showed me some of what it could do. I had a problem, and people told me what I was asking for couldn't be done. So, with this little bit of knowledge and the idea that I didn't know, this couldn't be done because I'm Stacy, and I will try anyway. I love to tilt at windmills. I tried, I learned, I asked for help, I iterated. And guess what? The thing that couldn't be done was done. We have a working prototype of a report to address the problem. You can be creative doing your job.

What everyday things can be creative? Decide your self-talk. We talked about what to make for breakfast. Maybe you have the same thing every day. Students that have to wear uniforms always find a way, even though they must wear the same thing. Perhaps they add a bow. Maybe they tie their tie in a fancy way. Possibly, they wear funny socks. Creativity is creating something. It's expressing yourself. It's solving problems. It's looking at things in a new way and shifting your perspective. Happy accidents like discovering moldy bread held the treatment for bacterial infections. “Creativity is inventing, experimenting, growing, taking risks, breaking rules, making mistakes, and having fun.” – Mary Lou Cook. I want to come back to that belief in yourself. Thomas Kelly noted, "belief in your creative capacity lies at the heart of innovation.” You're not creative because you don't think you're creative. If you are bringing something new into the world, you are creating.

It doesn’t have to be new. Writing a parody is taking something known and changing the words, making it new. Many people want to go green. They upcycle material because they don't want it to go into landfills. Learning a new skill is learning how to create something new. I can't sew. I learned how to upcycle t-shirts into tote bags by tying knots. Many people journal, and that can be creative. Some people like to draw pictures in their journals or use colorful pens. Creativity is what you think about it. You are creative if you solve a problem or put something out into the world. One of the audience members shares my name but spells it creativity with an “i.” There are many different ways to spell Stacy, a part of creation. So, you shift your mindset and recognize that you're already doing this in your everyday life. The more you try, the more creative you become. It's believing in yourself and having the mindset, “I am creative. I have the capacity to be creative.” I love this quote from Ursula Le Guin. She said, “The creative adult is the child who survived.” I was listening to this fascinating TED Talk by Paula Scher, a designer. She designed the Citibank logo, album covers, and bold typography. She defines being creative as her serious work. She said children are serious, which is why adults find this amusing, but the everyday things people do all the time are solemn. She notes, “Serious design is also – often – quite unsuccessful from the solemn point of view. That’s because the art of serious play is about invention, change, rebellion - - not perfection. Perfection happens during solemn play.”

Ekua Cant asked, “How can you have a more playful or creative mindset? What can you do every day? Is it just belief or just actions, too? Belief is the core part of it, and action is vital. Part of taking action is doing what you like and what sparks joy. If you are doing something you're curious about or passionate about, you're more likely to be creative. Some of the artists that they studied blocked aside time for deep work. Deep work is when you access that more creative part of your brain. You have a more playful, creative mindset. It helps to think about things in a new way. There's a lot of gamification of things. For example, when I have a project I don't want to do because it's tedious but has to be done, I can't escape doing it, there's no there's no way to get out of it, then I shift. I'm not doing a project. I'm vanquishing the angry hordes. Or, I like to use many video game terms that I'm leveling up, and how you think about something is being creative. Because if you're looking at something thinking, “Oh, this is a drag. This is so boring.” It will be boring if you look at it with a growth mindset, “I'm getting better at something.” Can you also envision the end result? Then, that is being creative.

You can practice being creative. In school, we did an exercise imagining all the uses for a known object. Take a break and imagine a box of matches. What can you do with those matches beyond lighting a fire? What can those matches be? Every day, take an object and give yourself five or 10 minutes to brainstorm other uses for that object. What also helps me be creative is pretending that I’m a child. Be your own prompt engineer; you don't need Gen AI. You can do GenAYou. I'm going to look at this if I was a seven-year-old or if I’m going to put myself in my customers' shoes. This is a creative way to gain insight into customer usage. “How would my customer feel about this?” is role play. You are being creative when you put yourself in someone else's shoes.

Hopefully, I have convinced you that you are, in fact, creative. It is a mindset that there are other tools. Jack White says deadlines make you creative. In my artistic work, I like constraints because sometimes, when we have too many choices, it's overwhelming. What do I make for dinner when the pantry is packed? How does that compare to planning a meal around these two items? Challenge yourself. Can I make dinner with a can of beans and a tomato? You don't wait for inspiration. When working, Sylvia Plath reminds us, “The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.” If you don't think you can, you can't do it. Mindset is critical. “If you want creative workers, give them enough time to play.” - John Cleese Will you make time to play this week and discover your creativity? Namaste

Ready to tap into your creativity? The next Clarity Playshop will be Tuesday, January 28th, at 6:00 PM EST. Register here: https://forms.gle/W4oh7t7xNvJVR5pz7

It’s a great opportunity if you want to:

· Access your intuition and gain crystal-clear vision.

· Break free from analysis paralysis and make decisions with ease.

· Combat burnout and reclaim your creative spark

If you want to incorporate more play to help you deal with the heavy things, my current offerings are listed on my Link Tree: https://linktr.ee/thingstothinkabout. I also encourage you to share your experiences and strategies with the community. Your voice matters, and your journey can inspire others.