Reviving The Fun Much Of Our Creative Energy Is Stifled - It Is Time To Bring It To The Forefront

You aren’t a famous novelist. You don’t have paintings for sale in hip galleries. And no one - except close family members wants to look at your etchings.

Can you still call yourself creative?

Probably.

Being creative doesn’t mean that you’re on The New York Times best-seller list or that your artwork is in great demand. The problem with Americans, say creativity experts, is that our definition of creative is very narrow.

“My definition of creativity is this: If anything is in existence today that only came into existence because of you - that’s a creative act,” said Pat James, a former college English instructor who teaches classes in creativity at the Jung Center in Altamonte Springs, Fla. “If you invent a new filing system, that’s creativity.”

When James explains that to people, they inevitably say the same thing: “Oh, well, if you’re going to define it that way, then I guess I’m creative.”

In a nation that prides itself on creativity, most Americans seem hopelessly unaware of their own creativity. And what’s worse is that our society collaborates to make us less creative, not more creative.

But it’s possible to resuscitate your creative side - at least to some extent. “Most people think creativity is inborn and you either got a dose of it or you didn’t,” says J. Daniel Couger, a business professor at the University of Colorado who has been studying creativity.

Not true.

When you test 5-year-olds, Couger said, you find that they’re all quite creative. But as adults, most of us demonstrate only 10 percent of the creativity we displayed at age 5.

“That creativity hasn’t been lost,” said Couger. “It has been pushed below the surface.”

So what happened? Over the years, most of us have the creativity squashed out of us - by schools, our parents and our employers.

What does that leave us? A world full of people who know how to follow the rules, cover their behinds and play it safe. But it doesn’t leave many people who feel free to speak their minds, approach problems with unconventional solutions or offer a different perspective.

So can you revive that lost creativity?

Some people believe it’s possible.

“Research shows that you can recover the natural creativity you possessed in your youth,” Couger said. “And you can build on it and enhance it.”

Indeed, it makes sense that you can recapture your creativity, says Bryan Mattimore, president of a Connecticut innovation consulting company.

“The reason kids are so creative is that they are naive about the way things work,” Mattimore said. “A lot of the work we do with companies is to bring back that childlike state.”

Mattimore uses more than 50 techniques to recapture that innocence - and many of them are versions of children’s games. Does it work? He says it does.

But not everyone is convinced that we all have a dormant creative side waiting to be awakened.

Michael Wallach, a psychology professor at Duke University, has studied creativity for decades. And he thinks it’s foolish to try to make everyone more creative.

Why? Because if you look at people whom society considers “creative,” you’ll discover that they are people who have worked very hard to specialize in a particular area.

Novelists, for instance, do not become best-selling novelists overnight. They may demonstrate an aptitude for writing, but they read a lot and write a lot.

Likewise, musicians - even prodigies - spend years studying music very hard. The same applies to any discipline, Wallach said.

But in the workaday world, most of us have lost our focus and, unlike the well-disciplined types, we need help finding it. We’re too busy doing the job, paying the bills and taking care of the kids to let our imaginations run wild.

At Microsoft, a company well-known for hiring creative types, the company bigwigs recognize that employees’ creative batteries can get run down. That’s why they bring in Couger to give refresher courses in creativity to people who have worked there for a while.

But creativity has greater rewards than just helping the company get ahead. Being more creative, say creativity teachers, can make life - and work - more fun.

“People always sign up for creativity classes because they think they’re going to sell things,” said James, who teaches a 13-week course. “They think they’ll sell more paintings or more short stories or whatever. But what really happens when you exercise your creativity is that it makes you happy.”

MEMO: These 2 sidebars appeared with the story: 1. NEXT WEEK How to be creative in your workplace.

2. 5 WAYS TO REVIVE YOUR CREATIVITY 1. Remind yourself of your goal or dream every day. “If you want most to visit New York, you may not be able to do that, but you can go to the library and check out a book on paintings of New York City,” said Pat James, an Orlando, Fla., instructor who teaches a course in reviving creativity, based on the book “The Artist’s Way” by Julia Cameron (Putnam, $13.95). “You should constantly look for ways to bring your dream into your life.” 2. Write in a journal every day. Many of the great thinkers in history - from Da Vinci to Thomas Edison - kept journals. Writing, say creativity experts, keeps your ideas flowing. Don’t think of it as creative writing; think of it as “brain dumping.” The idea is to get your thoughts on paper. 3. Set aside time to be alone. For two hours each week, do something by yourself. “That’s when most of our creativity occurs - when we’re alone,” James said. If you’re into woodcarving, you shouldn’t do more woodcarving in your two-hour block of idle time. Visit an art museum, wander around the local zoo or go for a walk. “The idea is to exercise your senses,” James said. “When you do something that’s not part of your regular routine, you notice a lot more around you. It’s a workout for your senses.” 4. Hang out with creative people. If you meet someone who is creative in another field, work on that friendship. The cross-fertilization may inspire you. Also, recognize that your gang in the office may be the best creative team you’ve got. 5. For a week, turn off the TV, stop reading the mail and don’t listen to the radio. The idea is to halt the cacophony of voices that streams into our heads. A week without all the extra noise is the equivalent of meditation. Orlando Sentinel