October 25, 2007

Oh Yes You Are!
Lyn T. Christian, PMP, MCC, CFCC 

You are! I know you are. If you don’t start admitting that you are and if you don’t start using this ability, which you have, you will be left behind.

What I’m talking about is the artistic, creative attributes within you. Try on this intellectual exercise if you need proof. I borrowed the following from Richard Florida’s book titled The Creative Class.

Pluck a typical man or woman off an ordinary street from the year 1900 and fast-forward them onto that same street in 1950. Then take someone from 1950 and transplant them to that street in our present day. Who would experience the greater change? Do you believe that we are only limited by our own thoughts and our beliefs?


The person living in the 1900s would find the new environment of the 1950s filled with skyscrapers, flying machines that carry people cross-country, appliances that run on electricity, once-fatal ailments now prevented and massive super markets that cut down the time and amount of trips it takes to meet the basic human need of food. Yes, there would be obvious technological change, yet the social world of the 1950s is much more like the 1900s than you might first observe.

If you worked in a factory then, you’d work in an office now. Work life would still be geared to a 9 to 5 pattern. You would seldom see women at work beyond the role of secretary. You would see people travel faster and yet they would still marry, have children, and for the most part, stay together as a couple.

The second time traveler would not notice the more apparent shifts in technology; yet, the shifts in social and cultural dynamics and values would be quite unnerving for the average citizen. The person dropped from the “ 50s” into today would see office workers in casual clothing and women in places of power. The younger generation would show up with tattoos and piercing in places unbeknown to the common person of the “ 50’s.” Ethnic jokes would be banished. Mixed-race couples, same-sex couples, people seeming to always be working and yet never working, grown men speeding by in tight fitting clothing as they pedal home after work would all be part of their new daily images.

We cut our teeth on change. Our grandparents cut their teeth on a quieter, more stabilized rhythm of predictable norms. The former requires, among other things, that we stay nimble and capable of navigating life by using our creative juices.

Did you know that areas of economic growth, where smart companies have been moving their physical locations to, are regions where creative “ believers” gather. These are people who are more tolerant of the unique, more diverse backgrounds and orientations of today, and are more open to admitting that they are creative.

If you want to be successful today, you must strengthen your creative muscles. Creativity is an aptitude of anyone willing enough to see it.

If you’ve ever had to carve out a new route home or find a different way to get where you wanted to go instead of the usual path, you’ve used creative problem solving.

If you have helped calm or comfort yourself in a time of emotional upheaval or need, you have used your own human relation artistry.

If you have rearranged furniture to better fit a room, or reorganized a drawer so your use if its contents had a flow to it, if you’ve ever uncluttered your desk, files, or closet and had to determine what to discard, what to keep, and now to replace all the parts so they were easier to find, you were creatively redesigning a part of you life.

“ The ability and the need to be creative are hard-wired into all of us.”

Danny Gregory, The Creative License

If you have associated creativity with how well you use crayons, paint, or watercolors you have been mistaken. Art isn’t that narrow. Wake up.

SoulSalt is prepared to reconnect you to your own creative nature. Start now. Purchase a two-session Creativity Coaching Package for only $150.00. Coach Carolyn Macfarlane will schedule a time and date to get you back in touch with your creativity. Call 801-699-3513 or e-mail c_mac3@msn.com

801-463-5239       www.soulsalt.com

“Live your life and earn your living by doing what inspires you”

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