Do you feel like the business world does not allow you to express your creative side? Worse yet, do you think that you don’t have a creative side?
Last month, we read a book on finding your inner artist by Ron Tite, Scott Kavanagh, and Christopher Novais called Everyone’s an Artist that approaches these issues. This book is a strong pushback against the idea that we are not all artists.
For some context, I would like to note that I already identify as a creative person, as a musician and songwriter. However, I work with many emerging creatives and in my experience, I see how hard it is to adopt an artist identity—even with people who have been creators for years. So, this is a book I would love to give to anyone embarking on a new creative path, in hopes that it brings emerging creators closer to embracing the identity that comes with the journey.
Here are a couple of my takeaways from this book. I hope you enjoyed reading Everyone’s an Artist as much as we did here at Talk Boutique.
1. Create More Ideas at Work
Ron Tite’s writing is influenced by his experience in the world of comedy, but also his experience in the business world. As many of you may know, the corporate world is fast-paced and critical; we aim to boil down ideas, simplify concepts, and reduce great schemes into actionable bullet points. It makes it hard to enter the state of mind that fosters creativity and nurture our inner-artist. Before we even put our ideas into motion, our business-minded practicality cuts them down before they get a chance to grow. As such, we miss out on a lot of great creative moments.
A question to ask yourself is this: Do you give yourself time to be creative without fear of self-criticism?
Allowing yourself to have safe creative time will strengthen your artist-brain. Next week at work, challenge yourself to be unrelenting in your ability to come up with new ideas, despite the criticism. Build strength and resilience in your ability to ideate without fear of criticism.
2. Accept the Artist Identity
Another major point in Everyone’s an Artist is that it’s important to see yourself as an artist. You might be surprised to learn how difficult this is for people. Reading this made me recall the people in my life who are brilliant musicians and visual artists, who still don’t consider themselves to be creative. This is despite insistence from other people that they are, in fact, artists. The reason they refuse the label is because they perceive it as a heavy term that comes with expectations (that they can’t live up to).
The book’s advice? Don’t resist the label of “artist” — wear it proudly.
Because when we adorn ourselves with titles, they influence our reality. Try it out, by writing a letter to yourself, saying, “I’m an artist now” or looking in the mirror and telling yourself the same. It might not be easy to accept on the onset — even in my case, it came with a lot of resistance.
The author mentions that “artist” carries archetypes and expectations that might not fit us. But if that definition of artist is too narrow for our purposes, why not make the box bigger?
3. Prioritize Your Creativity
In the book, the authors mention that we must make time for our creative pursuits. All artist do — it’s their job. But when you work a 9 to 5, being an artist is probably not your top priority. But what about all that time after work? It’s easy to fall into the same old routines of social media, Netflix, and wondering where the time has gone. Imagine what you could accomplish in only 6 weeks if you put in a simple 15 minutes a day.
You must make the active choice to be creative, and “not enough time” is not an excuse.
Other Resources
If you are interested in the points of this book, I highly recommend you check out this talk by Greg Murray, one of our speakers here at Talk Boutique. He shows us how few people consider themselves creative, and what we can do to fix that. He also wrote a recent guest post on the topic of creativity, which you can check out below:
3 Insights on Creativity (from an unsuspecting creative)
My final thoughts? Personally, I still believe the term “artist” still requires a certain level of achievement to earn. But I’m not here to debate the term “art” — I’m here to encourage creativity. If you feel like creativity is held back from you (and reserved for an exclusive few), read this book.
Join us next month for our #TalkBoutiqueReads book club by signing up for our mailing list!