CHAPTER 4
Believe

Life Is Less Alive without Creativity

“Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up.”

– Pablo Picasso

The one thing we all share, just like the moon, the stars, and the sun, is that we were all artists when we were young.

Creativity isn't just for geniuses, the elite, the weirdos, or the gifted. The pursuit or practice of creativity, even if your output is nothing like that of Leonardo da Vinci, benefits you and those around you.

Why?

Creativity engages the mind by challenging us. It encourages critical thinking and allows us to more easily absorb knowledge,1 solve problems,² see new opportunities, innovate, and invent.

Creativity stops time whereas distractions waste time and expedite its passing. If you've ever experienced deep work or creative flows, you'll attest that time has stopped. Not only does creativity enhance quality and productivity; you feel self-assured and more capable because of it.

Creativity opens us to empathy, allowing us to better connect with ourselves and others. It opens both our minds and our hearts, revealing untapped resources to see and do things differently.

Creativity stimulates reflection, enhancing our self-awareness and our connection to our authentic aspirations. It calls on us to switch out of mindless consumption of all the output of others—all those tweets and posts and streaming cat videos—and focus on what we can offer.

Creativity helps us build self-confidence by allowing us to create work that delights others and to discover hidden talents.

Creativity gives a voice to parts of ourselves we didn't know existed and helps us communicate through alternative, personal, and powerful forms of self-expression.³

We grow and learn because of creativity. We open our minds. And our acts of creation pull us toward meditative states, which sharpens intuition and creativity itself while also reducing stress and anxiety.

Without creativity, we would dwell in comfort zones, mediocrity, and complacency. Without creativity, there would be no innovation. Creativity pushes us to take risks,⁴ which can open new doors. And even though the popular narrative is that taking risks can lead to judgment by our peers and consequences of deviating from the norm and potential failures, it can also lead to extraordinary outcomes that would otherwise not have been possible.

Creativity pushes us to take risks, which can open new doors.

Creative thinkers understand and appreciate the success in failure. They accept that missteps are essential on the way to new frontiers. As Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert, once said about creativity and failure, “Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.”⁵

We all have a deep well of creativity, but for so many of us, we've lost the sense of its depths within us.

George Bernard Shaw once observed, “Youth is wasted on the young.” It could also be said that youth is taken from them.

To riff on the Pink Floyd song “Remember When You Were Young,” you once shone like the sun, radiating creative joy.⁶ But as the years go on, the artist within each of us dims a bit more each day if we don't entertain our inspirations or passions.

Once upon a time, we freely let rip with our creativity. Our loved ones used to tell us how wonderful our little creations were. Our masterpieces hung on our school walls, at home on our refrigerators, and were the source of many family albums. For those who have children, we still celebrate and cherish the work of these little geniuses.

We were dreamers. We used to build forts, conquer dragons, and have adventures in magical places. We used to be kings, queens, princes, and princesses. We were once heroes in our own worlds! I believe we still are.

What breaks my heart is that for most of us, at some point in life our creative spark is smothered. We tell children—not ask them—to tuck away their creativity and focus on the future. Okay kids, playtime is over. It's time to grow up, because at some point, we all have to. Society values production and there's no GDP for quality of life or artistry.

We tell children—not ask them—to tuck away their creativity and focus on the future.

So, we part ways with the magic of youthful creativity. No more crayons. No more watercolors. No more instruments to play. No more clay and castles. No more construction paper or shoe boxes. We're done entertaining that side of our brains. Your creative spirit is no longer appreciated; we need you to learn how to work. You have to make a living after all. And to do so, we need you to follow the rules—the rules by which society defines success. The rules defined for us by the generations who've worked so hard to give us the blessings we have today. Well, at least that's what we're taught.

A while ago, I read an unforgettable article that had a very special video attached to it. The headline read, “How Society Kills Your Creativity.”⁷ I stopped everything to read it and watch the video. Let me share with you the powerful paragraphs that struck me so deeply:

When it comes to our modern-day society, there is no doubt that we are being told how to live and what our lives are supposed to look like. When we are born we have our parents imposing their ideas and beliefs onto us about what is right and what is wrong and then from there we are usually enrolled into the public school system. Here is where a lot of our natural, inherent creative abilities unfortunately come to die.

In many cases, the school system doesn't celebrate gifts in the realm of art, music, poetry, etc. Rather, the more logical, analytical ways of knowledge are celebrated, such as math, science, and memorization. Sure, these are important gifts as well and they should be celebrated, but not all people fit into that mold. And then what happens to those gifts that are left untapped and never brought forward into our world for everyone to enjoy? Well, society wants us to believe that those gifts do not fit into our system and we can't make a living by utilizing them. What a conundrum.

The article's author, Kasim Khan, founder of Education Inspire Change (EIC), introduces the work of Madrid-based animators, Daniel Martinez Lara and Rafa Cano Mendez and their critically acclaimed short film Alike.⁸ This profoundly moving, seven-minute short teaches us a heartfelt lesson of what happens to us when we ignore imagination, silence our creativity, and mute our talents. The film also portrays the flourishing that comes from setting our children, and ourselves, free from the creativity-sapping pressures of society and allowing our creative spirits to thrive by unleashing our imaginations and chasing artistic pursuits—even if just for fun. Imagine society if we all absorbed the lessons of this film.

Alike tells the story of a father and his young son and the daily routines by which they begin and end their days. Each morning, they get ready for school, both bright in their colors; the father is blueish, the son orangish. As they walk to school with glee, each enjoying the company of the other, you immediately notice that all the other characters, hunched and slogging their way to school and work, are a drab gray in color. So are the buildings and streets. As our two protagonists make their way to school, they pass a small park, full of color, where a man is playing a violin. He, too, is in color. I suppose you see where this is going.

The young boy stops, drops his backpack, and runs back to watch the performance, beginning to play along as though he too holds a violin, with a look of joy and wonder on his face. But they must move on. The father retrieves the backpack and with the son wavering left to right from the weight of the backpack, crammed with all the books he's got to be studying, they make their way to his school.

In a clever split scene, we watch the boy and his father both settle into their daily routine. The child is in class learning how to write his ABCs. The father is buried under a skyscraper of paperwork, removing one sheet from the towering pile at a time. He slowly begins to turn gray. And it breaks our heart.

At the same time, his son proudly displays his first attempt at drawing his ABCs, but he hasn't been working on them. Instead, he's been drawing a picture, to the best of his ability, of the man and his violin in the park. His teacher, none too pleased, hands the child another worksheet and instructs him to try again. His smile turns into a frown. But then he thinks, smiles, and tries again. This time, his alphabet is rich in creative interpretations of each letter: A = a smiling person, B = a bee in the shape of the capital letter, C = a magnet, D is shaped like a sideways ladybug.

At the end of the day, the father, grayed out and exhausted, sees his son coming to meet him to walk home. The boy, seeing his father, immediately smiles, drops his backpack, and races toward him. They embrace in a hug that would make you believe they'd been apart for days. And as they hug, the father's color is quickly restored. But day in and day out, the father returns to his routines and his son is introduced to his own set of monotonous regimens.

As time goes on and the child is taught to conform, he slowly loses his orange color. He no longer restores his father's color with an embrace at the end of the day; instead he glumly hands over that day's assignment. But the son returns sometimes to the park to listen to the violinist, and some of his color is restored each time. He is managing to keep some spark alive.

Then one day, while in the office, the father, clearly disturbed at the growing distance in their relationship, stops his work to review his son's drawing of the violinist, which he keeps on his desk. The camera slowly zooms in on his face, the music slows, and we can almost see inside his mind that he suddenly realizes the dispiriting effects of imposing society's conventions, and his own conformity, upon his son without balancing it with opportunities for creative expression.

The next morning, as they are walking to school and work, the father holds up the son's drawing of the man and his violin in the park. Then, with a small head gesture and a gleam in his eyes, he suggests that they take a detour to the park. The little boy beams.

But as they approach, they see that the man and his violin are not there, and the child's smile fades. He drops his head, turns, and begins to trudge to school. But he realizes his father isn't walking with him, and looking back, he sees him standing in the park. The father gently sets down his briefcase, makes eye contact with his son, looks around as if wondering whether he should really do what he's contemplating, clenches and releases his fists a couple of times, breathes in, and then gracefully takes the stance of a violinist and begins to enthusiastically play air violin.

Several gray people stop to stare with beady black eyes, but the young boy is beaming again. Father and son regain their color. The boy leaps into his father's arms for a huge hug, as the background fades, and suddenly it's just father and son sharing a wondrous moment.

Just like the father in Alike, our inner big-eyed, anything-is-possible, artist and dreamer is still there inside of us Yours is there right now, just hoping to one day be free again.

For years, I've followed the work of David Kelley and Tom Kelley and have been fortunate enough to be part of an informal think tank where they, and many other brilliant minds, host quarterly dinners and talk about the state and future of innovation. David is the founder of the groundbreaking design firm IDEO, and Tom is a founder of the Hasso Platter Institute of Design at Stanford. They coauthored the bestselling Creative Confidence, Unleashing the Creative Potential Within Us All.

Too often, the Kelley brothers assert, companies and individuals assume that creativity and innovation are the domain of only the creative types.

It turns out that creativity isn't some rare gift to be enjoyed by the lucky few—it's a natural part of human thinking and behavior. In too many of us it gets blocked. But it can be unblocked. And unblocking that creative spark can have far-reaching implications for yourself, your organization, and your community.

David Kelley gave a great TED talk in which he focused on this theme.⁹ Every TED speaker is supposed to leave the audience with a request about “how to change the world.” Kelly's request was: “Don't divide the world into the creatives and the non-creatives, like it's some God-given thing. And, to have people realize that they're naturally creative . . . that those people should let their ideas fly . . . that you can do what you set out to do . . . and that you can reach a place of creative confidence.”

This is creativity with a lowercase c, and it’s the lifeblood of a happy and productive life.

Being creative isn't as much a talent or gift as it is a choice. Yes, there are people who can create mind-blowing art, who are natural geniuses. That's Creativity with a Big C. But for every example of capital C creativity, there are multitudes of human beings with the power and ability to solve everyday problems and uncover new possibilities, even in the smallest of things or instances, as well as those who simply seek to be better in certain aspects of their life. This is creativity with a lowercase c, and it's the lifeblood of a happy and productive life.

Your Creativity Is of Great Value

Sir Ken Robinson, a British author, speaker, and international advisor on education in the arts, defines creativity as, in its very essence, original ideas that have value. By failing to nurture imagination and creativity in our youth, young adults, and adults alike (see what I did there?), we are robbing the world of that value. Meanwhile, in this time of great disruption, creativity, which fuels innovation, is dearly needed.

Robinson cautions, “We don't grow into creativity, we grow out of it. Or rather, we get educated out of it.”¹⁰

Don't play an instrument; you'll never earn a living as a musician.

“We don’t grow into creativity, we grow out of it. Or rather, we get educated out of it.”

Don't paint, draw, or sculpt; you'll only sell your work enough to get by if you're lucky.

Don't learn to act or dance; you'll have to take on a menial job while you pursue work.

Do not believe in these soul-crushing rules; believe in the power of your creativity. You have distinctive creative gifts to offer. Everyone should believe they are special. I hope you believe you're special, because you are. Only you can make the unique contributions you have to offer. Do not underestimate how valuable they are.

As Ken Robinson says, “Many highly talented, brilliant, creative people think they're not because the thing that they were good at in school wasn't valued or was actually stigmatized. I think we can't afford to go on that way.” ¹¹

Many highly talented, brilliant, creative people think they’re not because the thing that they were good at in school wasn’t valued or was actually stigmatized.

In his 2007 TED Talk, Robinson tells the incredible story of Gillian Lynne to illustrate this perspective.¹² She was a renowned British ballerina and choreographer, celebrated for the elegant dances she crafted for Andrew Lloyd Webber's Phantom of the Opera and the sinuous movements in Cats, one of the longest-running musicals on Broadway.¹³ Robinson recounted:

I used to be on the board of the Royal Ballet in England. Gillian and I had lunch one day and I asked, “How did you become a dancer?” When she was in school, she was really hopeless. And the school, in the 1930s, wrote to her parents, “We think Gillian has a learning disorder.” She couldn't concentrate. She was always fidgeting. She went to see a specialist. She sat on her hands for 20 minutes while this man talked to her mother about all of the problems Gillian was having in school. And, at the end of it, because she was disturbing people, her homework was always late, and so on—little kid of eight. In the end, the doctor went and sat next to Gillian. “I listened to all of these things that your mother told me. I need to go speak to her privately. Wait here, we'll be back. We won't be very long.” And as they went out of the room, he turned on the radio, and when they got out of the room, he said, “Just stand there and watch her.” The minute they left the room, she said that she was on her feet, listening to the music. They watched for a few minutes and he turned to her mother and he said, “Mrs. Lynne, Gillian isn't sick, she's a dancer. Take her to a dance school.”

Sadly, Gillian passed away in 2018, at the age of 92. But her legend lives on.

Be different

I had just arrived in Minneapolis after speaking at a wonderful event in São Paolo, Brazil. I checked into my hotel and unpacked in preparation for the next day's presentation. My body was telling me to go to sleep, but my mind was racing. Sleep wouldn't come, not for a while at least.

I cracked open my laptop to write. The room was dark, without windows. I remember the light from my screen seemed brighter than all the lights in the room. It should have been a great space for creative focus, and my mind was on fire. But it was a wildfire—my thoughts were all over the place, except where I needed them to be. To clear my mind, I took a break to wander the streets of downtown Minneapolis.

As I walked along 7th Street toward 1st Avenue on that warm fall Friday evening, I came upon the infamous rock venue First Avenue. Prince, one of my favorite artists of all time, played the club (then called Sam's) on March 9, 1981!¹⁴ Wow. I had to geek out for a minute and see the famous “Prince Star” along with the others of iconic stars who once played this storied location. Feeling inspired, I walked across the street to take a picture. As I was framing the shot, I noticed two billboards above the First Avenue marquee.¹⁵

I found myself, surprisingly, inspired yet again.

The billboards were part of Apple's latest campaign, Behind the Mac. I don't normally take pause for ads. I think we can all agree that our conscious and subconscious are overwhelmed with marketing messages 24/7. But this was different. I was mesmerized.

I'm pretty sure I looked like a weirdo on a busy night standing on a corner, contemplating these billboards. Maybe some people thought I was tripping on something psychedelic. But these billboards were artistically stunning. The composition, the physical lighting of the billboards, the black and white contrast of someone passionately and lovingly gazing into their MacBook was magnetic. The individuals behind the Mac clearly see something different than most of us do when we stare at our screens; they see a more beautiful world. And, they're creating it.

The billboard was an artistic statement as much as an ad, meant to evoke an emotional, personal, and aspirational response. It was a call to tap our creativity. I still visit the stills I took often when I sit down to do creative work.

This new campaign harkened back to Apple's famous Think Different ads.¹⁶ They featured some of the greatest artists, adventurers, and geniuses of our time, such as Albert Einstein, Bob Dylan, Martin Luther King, Jr., Richard Branson, John Lennon and Yoko Ono, R. Buckminster Fuller, Thomas Edison, Muhammad Ali, Ted Turner, Maria Callas, Mahatma Gandhi, Amelia Earhart, Alfred Hitchcock, Martha Graham, Jim Henson (with Kermit the Frog), Frank Lloyd Wright, and Pablo Picasso.

Narrated by Richard Dreyfuss, the TV spot eases into an unforgettable tribute to counterculture norms and ideals. “Here's to the crazy ones,” Dreyfuss begins in a masterful but soothing voice. “The misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers—the round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently.”

These icons, each in their own way, represented more than their achievements. They were inspired and inspiring in their life experiences, their failures, and their larger-than-life personas. They were innovators and trailblazers and they paved the way for others like them to continue the path they started. In doing so, they changed the world for the rest of us. But what also made it so relatable and inspiring was how it intentionally excluded a notable segment of the audience and an enormous potential market for PCs. It didn't seek to gain the attention of businesses aiming to increase workplace productivity. It didn't cultivate acceptance from IT or technology groups making big enterprise-wide purchases for organizations. No, it sought to connect with the dreamers, the doers, the would-be revolutionaries. It reminded them, us, that we have something to offer life beyond conformity.

And yet, we have been educated—and are still educating our children—out of distinctive flare.

To those who would have us become automatons, consider this. In this time of rampant technological advancement and market disruption, many jobs will be lost to automation. For example, in late 2017, the CEO of Deutsche Bank predicted that half of its workforce (97,000 employees) could be replaced by robots.¹⁷ Separately, another survey shockingly asserted that “39% of jobs in the legal sector could be automated in the next 10 years.¹⁸ And yet another shocker found that accountants have a 95% chance of losing their jobs to automation in the future.”¹⁹ And, the list goes on and on.

On the positive side, historically, with every technological advancement, new jobs are created. Incredible opportunity opens up for individuals to learn new skills and create in new ways. It is your mindset, the new in-demand skills you learn, and your creativity that will assure you a bright future in the age of automation.

This is not just my opinion. A thoughtful article in Harvard Business Review by Joseph Pistrui was titled, “The Future of Human Work Is Imagination, Creativity, and Strategy.”²⁰ He cites research by McKinsey, which among many leading consultancies, is thoroughly studying the intersection of human and technological performance. In their research, they discovered that the more technical the work, the more replaceable it is by technology. However, work that requires imagination, creative thinking, analysis, and strategic thinking is not only more difficult to automate; it is those capabilities that are needed to guide and govern the machines.

The good news for you, even if you don't yet feel that you're particularly creative, is that creativity isn't just a gift to the fortunate. It can be learned.²¹ We can all improve, grow, and develop the mental, physical, and emotional skills necessary to think different.