Specifically, I think there are five questions creative people need to ask themselves on a regular basis. I believe these questions are crucial to understanding ourselves as creatives, doing our creative work, and making creative contributions to the world. These questions range from simple to profound, but when taken as a whole, they answer many other questions, as well.



Question 1: Am I Letting My Creativity Shine?

If you grew up in a southern evangelical church, you may have learned the Sunday school song, "This Little Light of Mine." The gist of the song was that "I'm gonna let it shine."

If you believe, as I do, that creativity is a gift, are you sharing your gift? Are you letting your light shine?

I believe this is really important because we've been given a very valuable gift.

Without wanting to sound preachy or pedantic, I do think our gift of creativity is to be used and shared.

To get as far away from preachy and pedantic as possible, I believe we, as creative people, have strong senses of humor, and that we need to share our humor and our laughter with the world.

Laughter is not always a frivolity; sometimes it's the glue that holds our psyche together.

And just as we share our laughter, so should we share, and teach other people to use, our creative perspective.

In essence, we can learn when, how and why to look at something from an angle rather than straight on. And that creative perspective is always valuable, to everyone.

When we ask ourselves whether we're shining a creative light, we're asking far more than whether others "see us" as creative; what we're really asking is whether we're offering a creative example to the world.

At this point in the questions I want to stop and discuss why we're asking ourselves these questions. It's not just because introspection is good for the soul, although of course it is. The reason we're asking ourselves deep questions about our creativity has to do with building our creativity, of course, but also with helping others to be more creative and to use their creativity.

There is a belief in many western societies that some people are creative and some are not. This is simply not true. Everyone is born with creativity. It is an innate part of our being.

Some people use their creativity more effectively than others, and thus seem to have "more" of it. But I don't think creativity is measured in quantity, that you have more or less than I do.

I think creativity is a quality-driven gift. I use mine more effectively than some people who think they're "not creative," but at the same time, they use their creativity in ways they don't even realize, such as finding the best solution to a problem at work or convincing their six-year-old to eat his broccoli.

[End of Part 1]