Creative Confidence is the name of a new book, written by the two , David and Tom Kelly, founders of Ideo, a design and consulting firm that uses a human -centered approach based on empathy (finding out what’s meaningful to people) to create things like the first computer mouse for Apple to TV remote controls. They throw people of different backgrounds into a room to solve a problem. The key is having a diverse group of people and having them be good at building on each other’s ideas.
This story hit home because my Boston daughter, a graphic designer for the global auction house, Artfact, works in a similar environment. Just a few weeks ago she sent me a picture of the room she and her team are sequestered in, without cell phones and email, to brainstorm and design a whole new web image for their company.
The new book, Creative Confidence, is built on unleashing the creativity in all of us. This is a concept near and dear to my heart as a teacher and in my own personal life. I have always been passionate about the belief that we are all creative. We all have an artist living inside us. When Charlie Rose asked the Kelly’s what happens to our creativity, they cite kindergarten. (My life as a K teacher for 23 years). They said all kids in kindergarten are being creative and uninhibited, but by the time they reach fourth grade, some teacher told them their picture wasn’t really good or good enough and then and there the building blocks for deciding they weren’t a creative person were laid. They grow up into a person who has creative ideas, but holds them in for fear of being judged. How sad.
I have always felt there’s a whole segment of our population out there holding solutions to many of the things that plague us as a society, but we’ll never get to benefit from their creativity because somewhere in their life they were told they weren’t good enough, creating that fear of judgement.
When I was nine I wanted to be an art teacher or fashion designer. I was always drawing and designing, but I quickly learned that there was only one art teacher to a school and getting a job teaching art in the seventies was almost impossible. It was an era when there was an over abundance of teachers and jobs were scarce, even for a classroom teacher, so I changed my focus to becoming an elementary teacher. Any art talent I thought I had, fell by the wayside and life took over.
I rediscovered my artwork when asked to illustrate The Trouble With Ralph . Since January you have walked my journey with me as I discovered “Wow. I really can draw – and paint – and create.” That came as such a surprise to me, until this interview and book appeared on CBS This Morning and reminded me of days gone by when I believed art was in my future.
The next guest on the show was Yo-yo Ma introducing his new CD – A Playlist Without Borders, which is about finding the edge of your comfort zone and that is the place to begin exploring your creativity.
In his own words, he said:
“We determine our borders. Some of them are political some of them are demographic, economic but then there’s the border of imagination. And that we have the most control over. Ok, we don’t have a government shut down today, but we can’t really control that, but we can control where our own edges are and that’s where the growth happens.”
Couple those wise words with the interview given by the first guest, Marilyn Hewson, CEO of Lockheed Martin, and you’ve got a winning combination. She learned her management skills at the knee of a mom who always wanted her children to be self-reliant. Her mom never backed away from a challenge. Here Hewson learned to never turn down a promotion, no matter how uncomfortable it was nor what her life circumstances were at the time it was offered. You take it, stand at the edge of your comfort zone, and jump in with both feet. Then, as Yo-yo Ma said, it is here the growth begins, and as the Kelly’s point out in their book, the creativity and ideas you had buried in you all along, emerge.
Do you ever stop to wonder what you really are capable of? Did a teacher or former boss ever shut you down so hard, you did an about face an moved into a direction that steered you away from your creativity and/or artistry? Are you crippled by fear of judgement? Maybe it’s time to revisit that. Maybe we should read the book with Yo-yo’s CD playing softly in the background.
And so, as another day goes by, it’s pointed out yet again that life begins at the edge of your comfort zone, and…I have written.
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