Creativity as a tool
The Making Lemonade toolkit
Hey friends,
I hope the sun is shining where you are. I hope the birds are singing and your heart is full. And if they aren't and it isn't, I'm sending you sunshine, birdsong, and love in droves.
As you may be aware from my last post, I’ve been on a bit of a rollercoaster ride on Substack these past few weeks.
If anything, though, it’s made me double down on this creative path. It feels good; like I'm chasing the carrot, not blindly stumbling forward in fear of the stick. I'm still not quite sure where it’s leading me, but I'm trying to surrender to the process and enjoy that, too.
That said, the eager beavers among may you have noticed this isn’t the post I promised. I’m still trying to embrace this experimental headspace - and decided it was worth laying some more groundwork before diving into the beginner's mindset next week.
Today, I thought we'd focus on expanding the definition of creativity and how it can be a tool to help us make lemonade in - and of - our lives.
Recently, one of my creative mentoring clients had a huge breakthrough during one of our calls - where she turned around and said “I’ve actually created a life I love”.
She may not be in active creating mode all the time and her creative business may not be where she wanted it to be - yet - but being able to expand her understanding of creativity to see her life as her greatest creation felt like one of those sunbeams-breaking-through-the-clouds-on-a-grey-day moments.
It was glorious.
And a lesson that I think applies to all of us. We all have the potential to create lemonade in our lives. Maybe some of us already have, but like her, we just haven't seen it like that before
After spending seven months here writing to you and building up my business as a creative mentor, I realised creativity is my secret sauce. My main tool for turning lemons into lemonade.
It’s like the one thing that holds all the strings and threads together - and something that I think can benefit us all in different ways, whether we consider ourselves “creative” or not.
While I've covered what creativity is and is not (to me) in my About Creating Lemonade post, I still don't think language can do it justice.
Our definition and understanding of creativity is skewed.
When you say the word creativity, people seem to associate it with an active creative practice. E.g. if you're not drawing, painting, photographing, making, stitching, sewing, writing, playing music, dancing, cooking, designing, etc, (fill in the blanks), you're not creative.
It isn't that simple.
Creativity is in our genes. It's in our DNA. In the stardust in our veins and the sparks that fly through our minds, 24/7, conjuring up dreams and bringing them to life.
We were born creative. We all think in a creative way every day. We're constantly creating our own lives - just like my mentoring client.
According to the Cambridge English Dictionary, the definition of creativity is:
“the ability to produce or use original and unusual ideas.”
If we apply this to human history, it means that for the last 2.6 million years - when our early ancestors first started making stone tools - we’ve been using our creativity to make a better life for ourselves.
We've been able to identify a problem and produce - and use - an innovative solution.
At its most basic core, that's what creativity boils down to.
If we expand more on definitions of creativity, I especially love this one from “The Psychology of Creativity: a Historical Perspective”, a 2001 study by Dean Keith Simonton (PhD), a Professor of Psychology at the University of California, Davis.
“Psychologists usually define creativity as the capacity to produce ideas that are both original and adaptive. In other words, the ideas must be both new and workable or functional. Thus, creativity enables a person to adjust to novel circumstances and to solve problems that unexpectedly arise.”
I don’t know about you, but, to me, life is full of novel circumstances and unexpected problems.
Personally, I have to think on my feet multiple times every day. I'm always using my creative mind and my imagination - and not just within my writing work or my creative business.
For example, I use it for thinking of things I can cook from what's in my fridge/cupboard, arranging furniture, deciding where to plant things in the garden, or where to go on a walk. Even to try and choose which book I want to read (yes, I'm one of those heathens that usually has about seven on the go at once).
It also goes the other way too. I used to constantly find myself imagining worst-case scenarios and getting caught in spiralling thoughts and scenarios about things that might never happen.
Fortunately, all these deep dives into neuroscience and psychology have helped me see how elastic and malleable the mind is, and that, with a little effort, we can train it out of bad habits.
After expanding my own understanding of creativity, I now see it as the ability to think proactively and expansively instead of reactively and inside the box.
One other step to unlocking our creativity also involves surrendering to the idea that there is something more than what we see in front of us. Trusting that life isn’t just this pre-planned path we find ourselves on - we also get to have a say in it.
Like me, going all in on my creative business after I got robbed in Cambodia, where I was living at the time. It had taken me years to summon the courage to quit my job and leave the UK; the last thing I wanted to do was to have to beg, borrow, and plead my way into a ticket “home” and another 9-5.
I trusted there was another way, and I took the leap. That was 11 years ago now. I haven't looked back since.
No matter what lemons life throws at us, I believe we have the choice to hide from them - or do something with them. We all have the choice to make lemonade. It's just that sometimes we don't know where to start.
That’s what Creating Lemonade is about.
And yes, there are probably elements of it that will appeal more to those who have creative practices or want to build them, but a lot of these topics are broader than that.
Just like the definition of creativity.
Contemplation questions
Would you call yourself creative? How does it feel to you to do so?
What does creativity mean to you?
How does creativity show up in your life?
Do you want to be more creative? What might that look like for you?
What is your biggest dream for your life? Do you have one?
If you apply these ideas of creativity to your dream life, can you imagine something even bigger and better?
As always, I'd love to hear your thoughts. Feel free to reply to this email or add them in the comments.
Catch you next week, where we'll (actually) be diving into the Beginner’s Mindset and the creative calling, and what this means for you.
All my love
Cx
PS: I'm still offering all my Substack subscribers $50AUD off my one-on-one hour-long creative mentoring sessions.
If you think diving deeper into these questions might help you shake things and get closer to living a lemonade life than a lemon one, feel free to drop me a DM or check out my mentoring page for more information.
PPS: I'm running a special promo with 50% off my paid subscription until the end of the month.
While for now, I don't intend to put any of these posts behind the paywall, I do want to offer subscriber-only spaces where we can talk through different elements of the creative journey and run Q+As, Ask Me Anythings, and more.
cassie, it’s like you’re reading my thoughts. i’ve recently had similar breakthroughs about the way that life is its own creative project that requires so much labor and investment: no wonder our silly little lovely art projects get neglected! living is tiring lol. but i got back from a stint abroad and am equal parts exhausted and energized by the experience of being immersed in new surroundings, like it was definitely overstimulation city™️ for a lot of the time, but now all i want to do is create things and process those emotions, experiences, sights, sounds, etc. what is the saying? life imitates art? so true in many ways, big and small. excited for this series!! ♥️