1006. Are You Creative? | Rick Rubin's "A Creative Act"

All right, three, two, one, let's get it. Let me ask you this. Do you consider yourself a creative person? When it comes to creativity, people think it's a have or have-not kind of situation. Meaning that either you are creative, like you were just kissed from the creativity angel or you're just not creative. And a lot of times, by and large, a lot of people think, and you may feel this way, that, that, that you're not creative. But understand this, creativity is not something that you are, as in a have or have-not situation, it's something that you do. Creativity is a practice, and the more that you practice creativity, the more creative that you'll become. And I wanna stress this because a lot of times when it comes to creativity, a lot of people think of creativity as like arts and crafts or some sort of painting or clay on a potter's wheel. That is one form of creativity, but creativity is nothing more than an expression of your imagination. That's all that it is. And so the more open your imagination is, the more creative that you'll become. And that is a beautiful thing. A lot of people lack imagination, and part of it is, is because obligations have dulled them out. Life hasn't dulled out. Your obligations have dimmed the beauty of life and the creativity of life. Life is always showing you sources of creativity, but many times we're not receptive to those signals because we're just dulled down with obligations, and I get it. It's not like we can just not wear deodorant and be in a big room with a canvas and paint cans and just paint barefoot. I'm not saying that at all. Again, creativity is an expression of your imagination. Number one, you are creative. You've just dulled down that creativity. You gotta look at creativity like a muscle. The more you practice it, the more creative you'll become. Just like any muscle, the more you exercise that muscle, the stronger it becomes and the more useful it becomes. I will even go so far as to say when you begin to harness the power of creativity, not only will you be able to fulfill your obligations better,'cause I get it, you got obligations, not only will you be able to fulfill your obligations better, but you'll actually exceed your expectations because through creativity, you're never stuck. You're never stalled out Because when you use creativity, you're actually accompanying that with curiosity, so you're never at a dead end. You're looking at it through curious lenses, and you're drawing on the signals that life is giving you. Life is always giving you these signals. Rick Rubin, in his book, A Creative Act. Notice the title, A Creative Act. It's an act. It's a practice. Rick Rubin says in the book that we're an antenna for thought. Some of the transmissions are stronger to people because they have tuned their reception to be able to pull those things in. Creative thoughts and imaginations are very subtle, you can't necessarily touch them, but you can sense them. It's an energy. And you've probably had situations before where just something came out of nowhere, some creative thought, and you, you ran with it. You're like, "I have no idea where that came from." That's, that's my point, creativity is an energy, and the better that you tune this antenna that you have, we all have it, the better that you tune it, the more receptive you are to those thoughts. Now, how do you get more creative? Rick Rubin says that you don't have to force creativity. You just simply have to leave space for it. That's all you have to do. Because I find, like, when you're trying to force creativity, nothing comes out. You may hear people say, like, writer's block, okay? And we have this in all kind of different situations because you're forcing the creativity versus leaving space for it. When you leave space for it, You're freeing up space from your normal overpacked conditions of your mind. You're kinda like pushing this at bay. I kinda imagine like pushing on a, you know, something like imagine pushing on a door. Life is trying to push its way through the door. And so you're like, you're pushing it, trying to keep it out. That's kinda what that segmented time aside is. So that way you, you, you, you leave a just a little bit of space for this. Now, when I say that, I'm not saying that you sit cross leg in the corner, you know, humming some sort of chant. That's not the kinda segmented space, but that may work for you. That's not the kinda segmented space I'm talking about. It's, it's just putting a little time aside, I would tell you, in the mornings when you're freshest and you're beginning your day, segment just a little bit of time aside. Now, let me show you how I segment that time aside, and maybe you can use this as the practice. This is my practice. It may work for you. You may wanna do something a little bit different. So the way that I'm receptive to creativity is I read, reflect, and run with it. All right? So I read for 15 minutes, sometimes from a random book, or it could be a, a book I'm just working through After that 15 minutes is over, I reflect. I write at least one or two pages on it. What's my thoughts? I may use a passage to trigger the thought as a spark, and then I go run with it, meaning I go live it that day. That's the game. With this practice, where everybody else has bedhead trying to wake up, I'm already in motion. My mind's receptive. I've learned something new. I'm curious. I was creative.. My antenna is up. And as I go throughout my day, I'm more receptive to drawing down on some of the ideas because my imagination is wide open, and then I capture those things. This is important. You may wanna capture those things by writing them out. I cannot read my own handwriting, and I don't know where I lay these tablets down, so I need them readily accessible. So what I do is I capture the moment in my voice memos because not only can I capture the idea and quickly sell it to myself, but also I can hear the background, so when I go back to listen to it, I remember exactly where I was and what was going on during that time. And also, in the voice memo app, it's transcribed anyway, so I could copy that transcription and later put it into some sort of written form. Some of those ideas I may unpack at a later time others are just archived in my soul, I may never officially use that idea at the time. But the strangest things happen. Like I have recordings from back in 2017 that I haven't done anything with, but then throughout my day, because my antenna is always up, because I've exercised my creativity, some of those ideas just come out of my soul, and I'm able to match those up with whatever the current situation is and have a solution So let me end by saying this. Number one, you are creative. Number two, you've gotta practice creativity. If you will segment some time in the mornings and see this as a practice, you'll be primed, you'll be receptive, and you'll open up your imagination and see a lot better day. Not only will you be able to fulfill your obligations, but you will also exceed your expectations because now you have a wild imagination. All right? I'll see you back here next time. Remember, keep it simple, keep it moving, never settle, stay tough. Peace.