The Best-Kept Creativity Secret: EVERYONE Is a Creator

I used to marvel when I met authors. I thought to myself, “That person had a story so interesting they could fill an entire book.”

I don’t marvel about writers anymore. It’s not that I’ve lost any respect for the craft. On the contrary, I respect authors more now than ever before. Anyone who has sat down at a desk and tried to write a poem, article, or book cannot help but have a profound appreciation for those who have made a living out of the painstaking process of stringing words together.

It’s just that I now know the secret: each of us has a book inside us.

Yes, that includes you. Probably 50 books if you really wanted. Every one of us has the potential, but the vast majority of us will never make it a priority. Why? Because writing is difficult. As with any creative endeavor, writing requires hours of tedious work — much of which will feel unproductive.

Our world does us a disservice by thinking of creative endeavors as something reserved for “geniuses.” The genius myth gives each of us a pre-baked excuse for not birthing anything interesting into the world.

In the words of Nietzsche, “Our vanity, our self-love, promotes the cult of the genius. For if we think of genius as something magical, we are not obliged to compare ourselves and find ourselves lacking…To call someone ‘divine’ means: ‘here there is no need to compete.’”

The thinking goes like this: “Geniuses” are the people who create things. I don’t see myself as a genius. Therefore, I will never write a book, compose a symphony, or paint a masterpiece. And that’s okay. Because I am not a genius. No one expects me to do those things.

Do you know what I think?

I think that’s bloody sad. If the world has bullied you into thinking that you have nothing to give, nothing to bring forth from the depths of yourself, then you’ve bought into a truly horrible lie.

“The guardians of high culture will try to convince you that the arts belong only to a chosen few, but they are wrong…” writes author Elizabeth Gilbert. “We are all the chosen few. We are all makers by design.”

I know because I bought into the lie myself. I grew up thinking I wasn’t a creative person. I thought my brother Trevor inherited the creative genes of the family. After all, he was the musician — the “right-brained” one — while I was the analytical “left-brained” child.

I believed that lie until age 26, when I discovered my creativity in an unusual place: Corporate America. When I became a product manager of a software company, I got the chance to build “mock-ups” of user interface design. I fell in love with the feeling of creating something, and I felt like a creative person for the first time in my life.

Shortly after coming to that realization, I realized I could create other things too, so I began writing stories online. But it took me 26 years to think of myself as someone who was remotely creative.

If you ask a kindergarten class of 30 students how many of them are creative, 30 hands will skyrocket into the air. But if you ask a conference room of 30 adults the same question, you’d be lucky to see two or three hands go up.

Why does that happen?

Do we suddenly get less creative as we grow up?

No, we just stop identifying as creative.
We get scared.
We stop taking creative risks.
We put on our suits and ties, and we resort to our cubicles.
We forget how much fun it is to create something from nothing.

The best-kept secret in the world is that EVERYONE is a creator. Whether it’s writing poetry, making balloon animals, or building beautiful birdhouses, every human was born to be creative.

You were born to create things. The best thing you can do is to accept your birthright as a creator. Embrace it.

What small step can you take today to shed your fear and claim your creative birthright?