Fighting Back Against Creativity Killers

Children are naturally curious, inspired and creative, but most adults…aren’t. What changed? Likely a well-meaning (or sometimes, unfortunately, a purposefully cruel) parent, teacher or loved one. Whatever the source of your murdered creativity, it’s time to take it back.

Here’s a story I’ll never forget as long as I live. When I was about four years old, my mom enrolled me in Thursday School. As the name suggests, every Thursday, I would go to school and presumably learn things and play with other kids. What I remember most is that we did a lot of coloring. Each student had their own coloring book to complete, and we worked on a few pictures each class.

Now, as a kid, I loved school. I loved to learn, and I had a wonderful time at my preschool—a place called The Caring Tree. Thursday School, however, was decidedly not my jam. My mom began to suspect something was up when I started having meltdowns every time I was supposed to go. There were a lot of tears involved in getting me through the door. My mom was puzzled. This was not the kid who barely looked back on her first day at The Caring Tree.

Even though the incident that prompted my fear of Thursday School happened three decades ago, I remember it perfectly. The class was working on coloring pictures of the sun. I decided to color my sun orange. You know, the way it sometimes looks when it’s setting and you can hardly look away it’s so captivating.

After we finished the pictures, we would show the teacher and she would give us a checkmark or a star or something to indicate that we had completed the task to her satisfaction. When I got to the front of the line to show my sun, the teacher was not pleased. “Suns are yellow,” she said right before drawing a huge black X across my orange sun. I remember being devastated. As a child, I was quite the perfectionist, and this X meant that my entire book was ruined.

The worst part about this incident for me was that I distinctly remember how it made me question myself. Later in the day, we were told to color the grapes in our books. I wanted to color the grapes green because those were my favorite kind, but I was scared that the teacher would be angry. “Grapes are purple,” I could imagine her saying. I wasn’t about to get another X in my book, so I colored the grapes purple like everyone else.

While the Thursday School debacle is not at the forefront of my mind every day, I still think about it from time to time, and I grieve a bit for the girl who wanted to make her own coloring rules. What would she be like if she weren’t worried about breaking some unwritten rule about what color belongs on what object? What if she was celebrated for her inclination not to conform?

Unfortunately, I don’t think my story is uncommon. Many people who think they’re not any good at drawing or writing or acting or singing had someone tell them so when they were young. “Don’t quit your day job, kid. You’re never gonna make it in the art world.”

Many times, this advice from a parent, teacher or loved one is well-meaning. They don’t want you to struggle or feel disappointed when there are other safer ways to live in the world. Some times, this sentiment is purposefully cruel, the result of a person who doesn’t love or believe in themself trying to knock down the person who does.

Either way, the negative impact ends up being the same. We grow into adults who believe that we’re no good at things we enjoy. “I’m not a good writer,” someone will tell me. “I wish I could do that.” I bet if I were to explore where that sentiment came from, the person would lead me directly to an English teacher who gave them a D on their writing assignment or a critique session during writing club that went horribly awry or a parent who said writing was hard to make a living from so they should become a financial planner instead.

It seems a little silly to be an adult who is still impacted by the uncareful or unkind words of someone they encountered in childhood or young adulthood. But those things live with us until we make the conscious choice to disregard them, to take back our power and do the scary thing anyway. We can opt for childlike wonder. We can remember what it was like to be curious, inspired and creative with absolute abandon.

We can call ourselves writers, artists, creators or whatever else we want. No one gets to decide if we’re “really a writer.” We make that decision for ourselves. In Thursday School, suns are yellow and kids who break from the norm are naughty. In the real world, I am a wildly creative person who never wants to be the adult telling someone else how to color inside the lines. I’ve taken back my creative power. Are you ready to do the same?

Calling all aspiring writers! What if you could write confidently about any topic any time? What if you stopped listening to that parent/teacher/mentor who (wrongly) told you that you weren’t a good writer and began to believe in your innate abilities? What if you could find the words to tell your authentic story in your own voice? Now, you can! Join me for Intuitive Writing 101 to learn how to unlock and unleash your inner writer.