Maybe this is the year that you let your ideas loose.

If your closest friend had a broken washing machine and you knew exactly how to fix it, you would probably offer your help without a second thought. You’ve always been good with your hands and mechanically minded.

If your junior colleague had to prepare a complicated report for the first time ever, you would probably offer some tips and strategies and volunteer to review it before submission. You’ve always been able to analyze data, see trends, and make forecasts.

If your nephew had to navigate a multi-faceted application process for a coveted position at a dynamic institution, you would probably offer to help him develop a solid game plan. You’ve always been skilled at breaking down an overwhelming project into small and manageable tasks.

It’s probably not difficult for you to list your concrete skills, the ones that come into play in your daily life, but it’s easy to overlook the fact that they are skills precisely because you use them daily. The mastery has arisen over time through repeated use, practice, and refinement. You are good at them because you do them over and over. Are there other skills hidden within you⏤creative skills, for example, that are dormant and underdeveloped, just waiting to be nurtured? Do you possess a creative spirit that you keep behind closed doors like beautiful lights obscured behind a screen? If yes, let this be the year you let your light shine!

Creativity is as innate as the love of music. Consider how a two-year-old sings and dances without any prompting, even if no one is watching, once music is turned on. In a similar way, there is story, and imagery, and humor within everyone, just waiting to be visited and cultivated. If you set down the guitar, pen, paintbrush, lathe, blowtorch, clay, sewing machine, script, piano, or dance shoe one year ago or 20 years ago, maybe it’s time to pick it up.

If you want to ignite (or reignite) your creative side, consider the following ways to engage with the world:

  • Consume creativity: Engage with the work of other creators every single day. Beauty in, beauty out. You are what you eat.
  • Listen always and everywhere: Ideas are limitless. Finding them is no different than collecting stones and shells at the beach. Tune your ear to the ‘creativity frequency’ of listening rather than speaking, and you will never, ever run out of ideas.

Copyright 2023 Kesel Wilson (entirely, 100% human-created)

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