Chances are you are more creative than you give yourself credit for. In fact, most creative people I know don’t think they are creative. Could that be you?
I think we all have a little bit of creativity in us because we are made in the image of God, and God is creative! Just looking at the world around us shows us his love of diversity and beauty. We each live out that creativity differently. Some of us express it through song, art, cooking, writing, landscaping, sewing, fashion, business deals, problem solving, photography, decorating, designing…lots of ways.
For all of the good creativity produces, this gift of creativity has a dark side. It’s a side that will paralyze you and keep you for becoming and doing all God has for you. What is it?
Worry.
When we apply whatever measure of creativity we’ve been given to situations that have potential to be stressful we can imagine up all kinds of devastating scenarios. We get creative with our worries. We discover new things to worry about that we’ve never thought of. We think of new ways to worry that have never crossed our mind. We see thousands of potential problem scenarios that make us crazy with worry. We fret, brood, and torment ourselves on how everything could go terribly wrong.
We’ve marshalled our creativity and put it to work on something that will never produce positive fruit.
It’s interesting to me that some of the most brilliantly creative minds also struggled with dark depression. Just Google “creativity and mental illness” for lots of interesting reading. (Some of you just started to worry you might have a mental illness.)
The dark side of creativity is real. Stop right now and just think about what you have been worrying about for the last couple of days. How logical really is the scenario you’ve been fretting about? Be honest with yourself. Sometimes we can be so immersed in a situation that we lose perspective and can only see the worst possibilities. In those moments we need other people who aren’t close to the situation to look at it with clear eyes and let us know if we are being silly or wise.
Have you ever noticed that when it comes to the unknown our minds tend to imagine the worst case more often than the best case?
The other day my elderly neighbor’s John Deere was parked peculiarly and pretty close to my bee hives. The fact that he hadn’t finished mowing and the angle of the tractor in relation to the mowing pattern clued me that something was wrong. My mind instantly thought about all the worst case scenarios…he had been stung…was deathly allergic…now dying next to his garage…I will be sued for everything…front page news…lose my home…my kids grow up on the streets…
As my mind is creatively racing I round the back of the garage and find to my relief no one gasping for air and dying. Instead he was casually scrolling through Facebook on his phone taking a break because “the grass was too wet to mow.” Funny how my mind jumped to the worst case scenarios and in less than a minute I was homeless all because of the way my neighbor parked his mower.
I’m betting I’m not alone in this. I’m guessing you’ve laid in bed more nights than you’d like to admit worrying about all of the different possible scenarios you have creatively imagined. You clearly could see your current life evaporating right in front of you. By the time you were finished you weren’t worried about just one situation but 10 different variations of the same worry.
Or maybe you employed your creativity toward negativity when…
-Your boss said, “I need to meet with you.”
-A friend asks you out for lunch to “catch up”.
-The doctor left a message for you to “call back on Monday.”
-The principal requested a “conference.”
-The company announced it will be “eliminating some positions.”
-You see your friends on Facebook at a party you weren’t invited to.
Instantly your creativity started working against you. Your creativity went to work imagining the worst case scenarios. Your imagination was your own worst enemy.
What if you redirected that creative energy into thinking about all the ways this could be the best thing that ever happened to you?
What if you thought about positive scenarios instead of negative ones? The longer you’ve trained your creativity toward negativity the harder it will be, but it can be done.
Your mind is something that will go to work finding proof for whatever you want it to find. If you want it to find the worst case scenarios…it will and it will find all of the reasons this “will” happen to you. But your creative mind can also be employed to imagine the best and find all of the proof that verifies you have what it takes.
You have a choice on what to think about. Train your creativity toward the positive. When you find your creativity wandering down toward the worst case scenario…STOP. Flip it and start imagining all of the new possibilities, opportunities, and options you have.
