The Value of Creativity

From the Conversations series (Introduction, Chapters 1 & 2)

Necessity may be the mother of invention, but it takes creativity to make it happen.

Creativity is essential to life as we know it. It’s human nature to crave new things whether we need them or not, and we wouldn’t be able to satisfy those cravings without creativity.

Creativity drives a substantial portion of commerce. Without creative people coming up with new ideas for new products and services, we would have no choice but to continue to purchase the same old familiar things. The marketplace would be stagnant. The economy would be flat. And life would be — well, let’s not even think about life in a world without creativity.

Creativity is a vital component of innovation — in fact, it’s where innovation begins. What has become known as the “creative class” (a demographic segment made up of knowledge workers, intellectuals and various types of artists) is an important driver of modern economies.

An important point to make about creativity is that it’s something we all have. We are all creative creatures, even those of us who are not members of the creative class. Human behavior specialist Dr. John Demartini wrote, “[Creativity] thrives in the areas of our lives that truly inspire us. … During times of creativity, we feel electrified, our minds are sharpest, we have certainty and presence, we feel gratitude, our self-worth increases and our physiology is optimized and we exude vitality.”

The connection between creativity and happiness, health, business success and our satisfaction with life in general is so clear that I thought it was worth a conversation. And when one of the most creative people I know wrote a book about how to be happy, I knew I had the best person to talk with.

When she was in her mid-20s, Caitlin Roberson started and eventually sold a content marketing agency that served technology companies like Google and LinkedIn. Today, she is a storyteller and entrepreneur who advises early-stage startups. She’s also the author of the delightful 30 Ways to Happy: When trying to be perfect stops being fun.

Caitlin generously shared her valuable insights on developing and managing creativity for this book. To find out in minutes what took her years to learn, read on.

What is Creativity?

Jacquelyn Lynn: Let’s define creativity for the purposes of this conversation. What do you mean by creativity and personal creativity?

Caitlin Roberson: It’s simple: Creativity is our ability to create and then to execute on that ability.

Creativity is first a function of how we think and perceive the world, which is what I mean by personal creativity. Personal creativity then influences how you interact with and give back to the world. Science has shown that our relationship with ourselves — how we speak to ourselves — and our relationships with others have a big influence on what actually comes out of us. It’s an input and an output.

JL: How does our creativity develop?

CR: A lot of research has been done on the series of brain reactions that occur when we hear and tell stories. Think about how you learned about the world — it was through stories.

You learn about the world through fairy tales at bedtime, which is something I talk about in my book. When I was young and listening to stories that my mom used to read at night, I learned to not cry wolf, to be honest. I learned that everybody needs a bedtime from Goodnight Moon. Things like that.

Neuroscience has shown us that the power of a narrative really is our main self-creation mechanism, both in how we feel and think and perceive the world and then in the kind of people we pursue hanging out with and collaborating with. Their feedback in our lives influences the kind of output that we have.

That starts at a very early age, both in the stories we share at bedtime, for instance, or from your peers and at school, in addition to the kind of mantras that you might say that existed in your family growing up. Everybody has both good and bad when it comes to these sayings that we’ve heard all of our lives. For me, one was “Robersons never quit,” which sometimes is a wonderful mentality to have and sometimes you just need to admit that this isn’t a great place to put your energy and move on.

Then, as you grow up, and you take responsibility for becoming an adult and a professional who is responsible for creating things in line with your commitments in life, be they professional or personal, if you’re married, if you’re a parent, if you’re a friend, a co-worker, a boss, an employee, that kind of thing — the things that you say to yourself should evolve.

JL: So the stories we hear from others and tell ourselves — whether they are as long as a book or as short as one sentence — contribute to how our creativity develops throughout our lives.

CR: Yes. What others say to us and what we say to ourselves impacts everything. I write about this in my book when I told the store of meeting a guy named Abdul years ago.

He was one of Serena Williams’ personal trainers. I wanted to lose 10 pounds before I got married and I asked him if he would work with me. He agreed, and over the next few months I lost the weight and gained a partner. What he saw in me was that I needed to be challenged in certain areas of my thought processes in order to become the person I wanted to be. With him, I’ve learned how to talk to myself. Instead of a vicious loop, it becomes virtuous loop.

The Relationship Between Good Habits and Creativity

JL: But you need to do more than just talk positively to yourself.

CR: Of course. But that’s a good place to start.

There’s a thing called automaticity, which is what happens when your brain starts to put something on automatic. When you repeat a process or statement to yourself, or you repeat a behavior over and over and over, the more you repeat it, the more it gets ingrained as basically a groove in your brain with neural synapses, and once you get to a certain point of repetition it’s what is called automaticity. Something goes on automatic, you don’t have to consciously think about doing it anymore.

For me, for instance, I used to hate the morning. Now I get up at 5 a.m. and I work out before work every day. I actually used to hate working out, and now working out is my biggest release. It took a long time, we’re talking years, where I just kept doing it even though I didn’t feel like doing it, and eventually it became something that I wanted to do.

JL: Are you saying that developing good habits has an impact on creativity?

CR: Yes. There are certain kinds of creativity that come more naturally than others. I think there’s a huge misconception that creativity is inborn rather than cultivated as a skill. If you want to be creative and have personal creativity, you can cultivate it.

Some of the things that I’ve learned to say to myself are that, “I’ll keep going, no matter what” or “The best decisions I’ve ever made, I’ve made slowly.” That one — I got married really quick and hurt a lot of people in the process, myself included. So one of the things I’ve done in terms of switching my mentality is taking the time to think about goals and objectives and pros and cons, and acquire information slowly and assess, take a step back before I act, instead of being so impulsive.

JL: Listening to this, I’m thinking that a lot might people have the idea that being creative means not being structured. But what you’re saying is, your creativity is maximized by the structure that you put around it.

CR: That’s a great way of putting it. When we have habits, when something is “on automatic” in our brains, we don’t have to think about doing them. So if we set up structures and processes in our lives, if we basically make room for an ah-ha moment or make space for creativity, then it happens.

The Value of Creativity: How Developing Your Personal Creativity Can Have an Amazingly Positive Impact on Your Happiness, Health, Business Success and Life in General is a Conversations book by Jacquelyn Lynn featuring Caitlin Roberson.

For a complete list of all the books in the Conversations series:

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