Cheryl Wright

I be­lieve that a spark of cre­ativ­i­ty re­sides in each per­son. Some are ly­ing dor­mant, wait­ing to be stoked. Oth­ers are burn­ing and ready to ex­plode. Have you ever heard some­one say: "I can't write", "Me, dance? You're crazy" or even worse, "I don't have a cre­ative bone in my body"? Maybe you have voiced these sen­ti­ments your­self.Has some­one told you that you can't draw, write, paint, dance, etc? Do phras­es such as colour blind, tone deaf, il­lit­er­ate and two left feet still ring in your ears every time you hear mu­sic, look at a paint­ing or see a book?Life is dull with­out cre­ativ­i­ty. Bright­en your life by bring­ing your spark of cre­ativ­i­ty to the sur­face.

Ex­ca­vate your cre­ative gift. You may not have a clue where your cre­ativ­i­ty lies. How­ev­er, if you are will­ing to de­vote some time and ef­fort to the ad­ven­ture you can un­earth it. Ask a fam­i­ly mem­ber or friend to help you find your cre­ative gift and bring it to light.Ex­plore the pos­si­bil­i­ties. Ask your­self, why not and what you can gain from pur­su­ing a cre­ative en­deav­our. Then use the an­swers to mo­ti­vate your­self to try what you dared not try be­fore. Sign up for a class or use what­ev­er you have on hand to get that first taste of cre­ativ­i­ty.Ex­pel the neg­a­tive. Refuse to let old or new fears and oth­er peo­ple's com­ments sway you. A mix­ture of de­sire and de­ter­mi­na­tion will grad­u­al­ly si­lence the in­ter­nal and ex­ter­nal voic­es that say, "You can't".

Ex­per­i­ment. It's use­ful to know cor­rect terms and prop­er tech­niques, but it's al­so im­por­tant to ven­ture be­yond the tra­di­tion­al bound­aries. Tweak the old ways and in­vent your own sys­tems and process­es. Af­ter you be­come com­fort­able and con­fi­dent with your cre­ativ­i­ty, chal­lenge your­self to take it one step fur­ther. Dress it up or give it a new name.Ex­press it with pride and pas­sion. Peo­ple who are proud of and pas­sion­ate about their cre­ativ­i­ty, in­spire oth­ers to find, pur­sue and de­vel­op theirs. If you al­ways feel the need to make ex­cus­es or apol­o­gise for your choice of cre­ativ­i­ty, you may be dab­bling with some­thing that is not tru­ly yours or you may be still in the ear­ly stages of un­cer­tain­ty and not ful­ly con­fi­dent. Re-ex­am­ine what you are do­ing, ask ex­plorato­ry ques­tions and re-state what you hope to ac­com­plish un­til pride wells up and pas­sion flares.

Ex­cel. Even if you de­cide that your cre­ative en­deav­our is pure­ly for per­son­al ful­fil­ment, still ap­proach and de­vel­op it with a view to ex­cel­lence. If your in­ten­tion changes in the fu­ture, you will have lit­tle dif­fi­cul­ty shift­ing your fo­cus to us­ing your cre­ativ­i­ty to en­hance oth­er peo­ple's lives or a busi­ness ven­ture per­haps.Ex­ca­vat­ing and ex­plor­ing your cre­ativ­i­ty can be very un­com­fort­able at first. You will find it eas­i­er to get start­ed, if you shelve pre­con­ceived ideas and let go of dis­cour­ag­ing words from peo­ple who may have been too blind to see be­yond their own lim­i­ta­tions and fears.More­over, don't wor­ry about mak­ing mis­takes while you're in the cre­ative process - draw­ing, paint­ing, build­ing, writ­ing, sewing, plant­i­ng, sculpt­ing, danc­ing.... They are part of life and ex­plo­ration. You can al­ways go back to ad­just, fix, fine-tune, per­fect (if pos­si­ble). Re­mem­ber to be care­ful not to cam­ou­flage or erase the very essence of who you are. Even when you feel over­whelmed by anx­i­ety and fear­ful of tak­ing a risk, you have to muster the courage to ex­pel the neg­a­tiv­i­ty and ex­ca­vate your cre­ativ­i­ty. Ex­plore, ex­per­i­ment, ex­press it with pride and pas­sion and fol­low where it leads with ded­i­ca­tion and ex­cel­lence. Have your un­earthed your cre­ativ­i­ty?