Regardless of where you went to school, and whether you liked it or not, there is a high probability that you share some experiences with most other adults – such as the memory of being told to stay within the lines when you draw, and the fact that there was a right and wrong way to form letters (if you were even taught cursive writing). A combination of pretty good intelligence and pretty good adherence to rules led to success in school. A few elective classes, such as advanced art and creative writing, paid some attention to creativity, but for the most part creativity was not emphasized or rewarded.
That’s really too bad because we all have a creative part of ourselves. Some people recognize this because their work situation may have been built around creative endeavors, while others may have taken on creative hobbies in fields like arts and crafts and writing. For many people, however, creativity has been pretty dormant.
I encourage people to not take their creativity for granted. It’s an attribute that can save you a lot of aggravation when you are looking for a solution and feel stuck, and it can save you some money too if you don’t have to always rely on experts to deal with solvable problems. Older adults can learn to think of ways of embracing the aging process actively rather than passively.
Next time when you have free time on your hands with nothing to do, rather than surfing the web or watching a mindless movie, try a creativity exercise. Draw a circle or square on a piece of paper and see how many objects you can create from it. Or select a long word, and see how many smaller words you can make from it. Or write a short story or a poem or draw a picture – just for the fun of it, recognizing that you’re not a writer or poet or artist. Better yet, make up your own creativity exercise.
As you do so, suspend critical judgment. Don’t worry about drawing within the lines or whether your letters look perfect. If you don’t take your creativity for granted, you may be surprised at how good it makes you feel, and you may also be surprised to find that creativity has practical value too.