Is Creativity Transformational?

My very last MBA exam was on Creative Problem-Solving. Yes, even the name of the course was problematic in my eyes. 

Tempting as it was to write a treatise on the capacity of creativity to be joyfully unleashed on everything we desire to change, rather than just using and abusing it for problem-solving, I didn't.

Instead I wrote the most ridiculous answers possible to the exam questions. Partly for my personal entertainment, partly because I was due on a boat cruise with my party friends an hour into the three-hour exam, and I wanted out of that exam room fast.

I figured that either I'd fail and I'd be repeating that subject the next year, or the lecturer would love the craziness of my responses and that would be the easiest exam I’d ever done!

I got a high distinction and finished my MBA. This experience made me realise that much of the ‘research’ around creativity is bollocks. Even though academia would love to make it so, creativity isn’t a cognitive process. 

And even though the world would like to relegate creativity to the realms of art and craft, it's so much more than that! 

For me creativity is an energetic process that is embodied in the ways we live, create and express our difference.

Transformational creativity is the process of embracing your creative energies (aka life-force energies) to create a totally different life, business and world. It's most effective when added to big choices and unexpected possibilities!

Sinking luxuriously and deeply into those non-linear, non-logical spaces allows the most outrageous ideas to emerge. It’s not about *trying* to create amazing ideas through systemised thought processes. It's about inviting the unknown into being in new ways.

Transformational creativity is a lived experience. It’s the alchemy of applying creative energies to your daily life and being able to live a generative, generous life, in ways that aren’t supposed to be possible from a cognitive perspective.

Transformational creativity allows you to live your big dreams, even without the resources that "everyone" says you must have in advance.

Transformational creativity allows you to find pleasure in the everyday, rather than moving blindly through 90% of your life.

Transformational creativity allows you to discover the truth of you, through your creative processes.

Transformational creativity allows you to change and create change in surprising ways, while you're enjoying your creations.

WHAT STOPS CREATIVE CHOICES?

When I was in the midst of burnout, I realised that I'd left my creative energies somewhere in the dim, distant past. I'd judged creativity as something I didn't have time for, not remembering that it was the space that opens up all possibilities. 

I had also decided it was a waste of time as it didn't deliver a tangible outcome. Clearly, I'd become far too entangled in the world of delivering on plans and KPIs, and far too absent from my own creative world.

Both of these perspectives turned out to be incorrect in the extreme. When I made time for creativity my magic broke free. When I allowed it to be an adventure in seeking the unknown, I received outcomes beyond my wildest dreams. Creativity is a trickster, in the best possible ways! It is also now a core element of my burnout re-energising strategies.

Transformational creativity is restorative rather than results-driven. It works on your inner joy and any external benefits are a bonus rather than the target.

What kinds of judgements and conclusions do you have about what creativity is? What if none of them are true? 

Will you allow creativity to transform your life? It's time to end the paths of suffering that transformation and change have been shovelled down, as if they are the only way. Welcome to the pleasure zone of transformational creativity!

P.S. Ready for some creative impetus? Join us for the next Creative Wonders virtual retreat. (There's a new creative theme every month!)