Express yourself

 One thing I hear quite often from people is that they aren't creative.  This is especially true for people who equate creativity with art and who feel like they aren't artistic (many have been raised to think of art in very traditional ways, with photo-realism always being the end goal).  But here's the thing...creativity is just about taking an idea and doing something with it.

There are infinite ways of being creative!  Everyone can do it, and it might take a little un-training, learning to allow your creativity to flow instead of blocking it off, but the great thing is the more you try, the more creativity you unlock!

I truly think creativity is rooted in self-expression.  And there are many ways to define self-expression!  The easiest and most obvious is that self-expression is about putting 'you' into the stuff you do.  That's it.  Just do things the way you want, in the way you feel represents you, and you are expressing yourself!

The hard part here comes in ignoring all the 'shoulds'.  We are taught rules from pretty much birth, there are proper ways of doing everything, and sometimes the thing that feels right to us isn't the 'right' way.  And sometimes it is important to pay attention to the way we are taught to do a thing (especially if there is any kind of safety issue)....but if it's just about fitting in, then stop following the rules!

If this is something you struggle with, there are lots of great ways to challenge yourself.  Let's go back to childhood and look at coloring.  Coloring is something we did as a child, and it is very common for children to not color things the 'right' color.  Blue suns and purple grass...kids pick colors based on what they like and how they feel.  They don't always worry about coloring inside the lines, and they don't limit themselves to just filling in the colors, they add details or change things they don't like.  They make their pictures their own.

Coloring is very in right now, and yet I bet lots of people don't color because they feel judgy about their own creations.  Maybe your hands shake (mine do!) or maybe you feel like it is a 'waste of time'.  Here's the thing...creativity is a wonderful self-care activity, and it is best if you give yourself the freedom to make mistakes.

Go get a coloring book from a dollar store...get something silly or beautiful, detailed or simple.  Grab some crayons (you can use colored pencils if you like, but I highly recommend starting with crayons).  And don't just pick the basic crayons....go and look for something that makes you smile.  There are glitter crayons, pastels, neons or marbled versions.  There are also ones that are more pencil shaped, if the short length bothers your hands.  The great thing about some of these other variations is they do force you outside the 'realistic' box....if you don't have a flesh tone then you have to make skin blue or some other color.

Maybe you prefer digital art.  There are some absolutely fantastic art modification programs out there that are super fun to play with.  You can find really cool ones for either your phone or computer, that let you take an existing picture and change it in different ways.  If you enjoy taking pictures, you can combine the two, taking your own pictures and then modifying them to create whole new works of art.  Or you can use stock art as the base to modify.

Perhaps art isn't your thing at all, and you love music.  Of course you could learn a musical instrument, but you can also just jam along to your favorite songs, singing along (it doesn't matter if you know all the words), or playing out the rhythms with your hands.  You can dance or find some other kind of movement to express how the music makes you feel.  

And you can combine different things as well!  You might listen to a song and draw what it makes you think of.  Or look at a picture and create a melody that embodies it (or even find an existing song that feels like it expresses the art).

There are also tons of crafts that you can play with, from carving to weaving to sculpting.  For pure creativity, I always recommend finding the version that children would do and spending some time doing that.  Get some play dough, weave a potholder out of yarn, carve soap or potatoes.

Give yourself permission to muck it all up!  But don't get mad when you do.  Practice laughing up your mistakes.  Did you squish the face of your creation....see if the 'mistake' makes you see something new in your piece and see how you can embrace the new direction.  Did you spill your paint all over your picture....try tilting the page and making it spread in different ways, then let it dry and draw over it.  

Finding ways to express yourself can make a lot of other places in your life where you have to do things a certain way just a bit more tolerable.  We are constrained in many ways, but finding places to be creative allows us to put ourselves out there.  Creative expression also often helps us say things that we struggle to put into words.  It can be an outlet for the parts of yourself that you can't show the world (or that you feel like you need to keep private from parts of your life).  You owe it to yourself to find ways to give voice to what lives inside.