Whenever we hear the word creative, most associate it with artistic expressions like visual artworks such as drawings, paintings, sculptures, murals, writings and the like. But Ms. Rosanne Araneta, the guest speaker in our class, a life coach and NLP art teacher, provided us with another perspective on the meaning of creativity. For her, creativity is a pattern that you can replicate. Once you do it repeatedly, you become an expert, comfortable doing it and imagine other ways. This time you become innovative.
She also stressed to us that practice builds patterns. It also builds our muscle memory and improves our skills over time. So, creativity can be learned despite the myth that creativity is innate to a person. Creativity is inborn to a person. You had it when you were born.
Hearing Ms. Rosanne encourages us to think outside the box. The bubbly delivery of her spiels made learning more about creativity easy and fun. I remember Albert Einstein’s quote about creativity during that time: “Creativity is intelligence having fun.” We had fun listening to her while imbibing creativity in our minds.
To be creative, you also need to be innovative. We need to go out of our comfort zone and explore things about ourselves. We were discovering the things that we could do. It will take courage to do it, but it is achievable. My key takeaway from this talk is that “the fear of failure is the enemy of creativity.”
As I reflect on myself, I realize that I am also creative. Sometimes, I am the one who puts limitations on myself to be creative. Creativity goes with being innovative. The employee programs I do in my work are products of my imagination. I’ve also infused innovation into how we do things in our department. Introducing new ideas to improve our processes and translating them to improve services to our employees are the driving force that we continuously innovate in our department, aside from the fact that we also need to support the company’s business objectives.
I also cascade these values to my subordinates so that we can work hand in hand with our goals and objectives. We can also create a learning environment where creativity and innovation will flourish.
Finding creativity in oneself needs a deep commitment. As I’ve learned, creativity can be learned. We can develop the skill. We also need to put in our best effort and practice. Remember, practice makes perfect. Then, it makes us experts.
We should not be afraid of failure. When we are building our creativity, we need to take risks. This can help boost our creative skills and gain confidence over time. Negative thoughts can also hinder building our creative talents, so we should learn how to eliminate them. We need to find ways to overcome it. If we harbor negative thoughts like fear or failure, we can remind ourselves that it is part of the process.
If you are working with a group, it is advisable to brainstorm new ideas. It can promote creativity by practicing our minds to generate new ways to do things. The advantage of working with a group is that it can refine ideas and arrive at the best possible solutions. This can be done using management tools like flow charts, mind maps and other frameworks. In this way, we can see all ideas visually and connect them easily. If we have built our skills, then we can constantly challenge ourselves to put our creativity to the next level. So being creative is limitless.
The author is an MBA student at the Ramon V. del Rosario College of Business, DLSU. She can be reached at grace_tiong@dlsu.edu.ph.
The views expressed above are the author’s and do not necessarily reflect the official position of DLSU, its faculty and its administrators.