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Creativity comes in many shapes and sizes. It also dresses in a variety of outfits -- from t-shirts and paint-splatted jeans to suits and ties to cocktail dresses to, yes,
all-black look.
Don't worry about how your creativity relates to how you look or act. There's no correlation between two.
3) In school…
Again, there are no studies linking creativity to getting bad grades or being a social misfit. Creativity is just as likely to have been class president as it was to have been caught smoking in bathroom. Or kicked out of school altogether. (Now, whether those schoolyard memories are fodder for creative pursuits is a topic for another day.)
Basically it comes down to this -- creativity doesn't fit into any neat box. Whether that box may be unconventional or conservative. Whether it's covered with clay and furiously spinning pots or impeccably dressed and churning out million-dollar deals. Whether it's dressed in black and discussing Satre in a coffee shop or pushing a stroller in small-town America.
Creativity is just that. Creative. It doesn't care what package it comes in.
It only cares that you use it.
Creativity Exercise -- Take Away The Power of Stereotypes
Go back to quiz. Look at answers you chose for yourself. (If one of my answers didn't fit -- which is entirely possible -- turn your answer into fill-in-the-blank.) Look at answer you instinctively felt a creative person would have selected. I'm going after instinct here -- don't worry about what you read in article. Or go back and see how you answered before you read article.
Do you have two different answers? Describe what makes answers different and why.
Do you describe yourself in completely opposite terms as you would someone creative? Why is that? Do some journaling on answer.
Now try describing yourself again and this time add statement "and that makes me creative" or "yet I still am creative" at end. For instance: "I hate sunrises and that makes me creative. I was a model student yet still I am creative." Write these out ten times each day until you begin to believe it.
(Source: Freeing Your Creativity: A Writer's Guide by Marshall Cook)
Michele Pariza Wacek is the author of "Got Ideas? Unleash Your Creativity and Make More Money." She offers two free e-zines that help subscribers combine their creativity with hard-hitting marketing and copywriting principles to become more successful at attracting new clients, selling products and services and boosting business. She can be reached at http://www.TheArtistSoul.com.
