How to Flick Your Creativity Switch

Source: Nate Kadlac

“Oh, I can’t [X] — I’m not very creative”.

I’ve said a variation of that sentence probably 100 times throughout my life, and I’ve heard it 10 times as much from other people around me.

Since I started writing and sharing online, I’ve realised how wrong I was.

I can now proudly say:

I’m friggin’ creative!

If you’ve ever uttered those same miserable “I’m not…” words, this might help you reconsider.

1. Nothing is original

Alright, this should immediately take the pressure off.

All creativity is inspired by other people. All ideas are new combinations of old ideas.

The faster you embrace that, the sooner you can start creating your own stuff.

Maria Popova, author of the famous blog The Marginalian and creative combinator extraordinaire, once said:

“Something we all understand on a deep intuitive level, but our creative egos sort of don’t really want to accept: creativity is combinatorial, nothing is entirely original, everything builds on what came before, and we create by taking existing pieces of inspiration, knowledge, skill, and insight that we gather over the course of our lives and recombining them into incredible…