‘Creativity’ is one of those buzzwords that gets thrown around again and again to the point where the word has somewhat lost its meaning along the way.

What truly is creativity?

Erwin McManus describes creativity in The Artisan Soul as “taking something from the imagination and turning it into a reality.”

It’s such a simple concept, yet I personally have never looked at it that way before.

I always felt like it had to be some overcomplicated, emotionally driven task that only certain “creative” people felt compelled to do.  Even though I place high importance on creativity in my life, I have too many times undermined my ability to create and degraded the importance being creative in this world in general.

But this book made me realize the high value and importance of creativity and utilizing our imaginations. Too often it is assumed that imaginations are only for kids.  Something that disappears a little bit more with each and every day that we live.

However, I don’t believe that as our age increases our imaginations decrease, but rather it is like an origami paper folded smaller and smaller and shoved further and further into the bottom of the filing cabinet in the archives of our brains.

I just keep thinking about that SpongeBob episode where he is searching through filing cabinets in his brain.

Hopefully we don’t forget our own names as easily as SpongeBob does; but as years go by and responsibilities and workloads get increasingly larger, I think too often our brains start misplacing our imaginations.

Reading The Artisan Soul really gave me a new perspective on what it means to be an artist (no, this is not a promotion for this book, I just really liked it). Every single person born into this world is given a brush and a canvas, and it’s our decision what color, stroke, and combination of these elements we are going to use to paint our lives into beautiful masterpieces.

Some of you may think that you aren’t creative because you weren’t born with the gift of artistic talent, but that is a lie.

Remember the definition of creativity:  turning imagination into reality.  That doesn’t mean spending hours upon hours in an art studio wearing a beret and painting a nude person holding a squash and a bouquet of flowers in a peculiar position.

I now see that everything in this world is art, and we are all artists.  Even the things we generally associate as the furthest thing from artistic, are works of art.

A nurse transforms her figurative knowledge from years of studying and practical trainings into the artwork of maintaining and restoring the human body from sickness into health.

An IT guy is a craftsman of wires and cables; twisting and combining them into networks to create the beautiful canvas of internet connection.

A lawyer skillfully weaves logic, law and evidence into formidable arguments to defend the character and change the direction of another person’s life.

These are just the first “non-artist” examples that came to my mind, however these are examples of artisans who have already chosen their crafts and know how to use their tools to turn their imaginations into reality.

But many people simply don’t know what masterpiece they want to create with the canvas and tool they were given.  And that tool, is imagination; it’s impossible to create a masterpiece without your imagination.

When you aren’t utilizing your imagination, or can’t seem to find it, you begin to peek over onto other people’s easels.  When you start to see what others are painting, you consciously or unconsciously begin to paint the same thing that you see on their canvases. It seems like everyone else knows what to paint, except for you.

The irony is that often times your neighbor’s canvas that you are covertly imitating, is also simultaneously emulating their neighbor’s easel.

This creates a masterpiece or monotony.  When you’re looking at your life as an isolated, individual life, it doesn’t seem to matter or make a difference. However, when you look at it from a global, birds-eye (or satellite) view, a masterpiece of monotony among the masses is not a masterpiece at all; it becomes a catastrophe.

If you want your life to be a masterpiece, then you need to create.  And in order to create, you need to turn your imagination into reality.  And in order to turn your imagination into reality, you first need to find your imagination.

So, how do we resurrect the death of our imaginations from our childhood?

What I can tell you is that we need to learn to start dreaming again.  And I don’t mean taking higher doses of melatonin so we can sleep better and forget about our daily stresses and workloads.

What I mean, is that we have to tap into our passions and desires in our heart, that have long been locked and tucked away in the crevasses of our essences.

We all have them.  They may need some excavating, but they are there somewhere inside you.

Don’t believe the lie that they are meaningless.  That they are stupid, childish, ordinary, or impossible.  They are actually the foundation to finding purpose and fulfilment in life.

In order to dig out our dreams and desires from the depths of our souls, we need to first realize that we are the only ones who can be held accountable for doing so.  No one else is going to or can do that for you. You owe it not only to yourself, but to the rest of us to discover your passions, follow them, and craft your life into a masterpiece of art in pursuit of them.

The first step is by realizing what has been holding us back from allowing our imaginations to surface in our minds.

Is it fear? Fear of the failure of pursuing a dream?  Fear of what other people will think?

Is it unbelief? Believing that dreams are only meant to stay within our minds and not become a reality? Not believing that they are possible?

Maybe we’re just too busy to dream and seek out our imaginations.  Maybe we don’t even realize we haven’t been dreaming because it’s not allowed in our society’s view of practical reality.

Whatever the reason, I encourage you to start exercising your imagination.  Start dreaming.  There’s no reason to fear the dreams and desires in your heart.  Let your imagination take over! You don’t need to limit yourself. Dare yourself to imagine a world that doesn’t exist yet.  You have absolutely nothing to lose by writing down any and all the crazy thoughts and ideas you have floating around and hiding in your brain.

If you’re already a dreamer, but you’re stuck within the escapism and fantasy of those dreams, I challenge you to devise a plan to take a step towards one of them.  It can be the tiniest of baby steps.  But in order to take imagination and turn it into reality, you have to execute an element of risk by taking action.

If you’re already taking tangible steps towards achieving your dreams, share it! Keeping it to yourself isn’t going to help the world.  Share what you’ve learned and share your best self with everyone so you can inspire hope and motivate more people to dream.

Most importantly, ask God to be a part of your dream. That’s the best way to figure out how to turn a dream into reality. We humans, are limited. We cannot be Harry Potter and Wingardium Leviosa our way through life.  But we have access to an unlimited God who designed us in His image as a creator.  Who designed us to co-create with Him.

All those “impossible”, “unimaginable” things in your head that you don’t even allow yourself to think because you don’t believe they’ll never come true…what if God wanted to help you make them come true? The God of the universe who has the power to create the sun and the stars and rivers and 10,000 species of birds and all of humanity…what if, just what if, He wanted to dream with you and help you make those dreams a reality?

Together with God, we are in charge of creating the future.  We are designed with the ability and potential to help Him recreate the world that He originally intended us to live in.

God gives us the brush. He give us the canvas. He gives us the paints. But we have to choose to pick up the brush that He places before us.  We have the freedom to choose and combine the colors we want to use. We have the liberty to leave whatever kind of brush strokes we want to leave. We pick the length, width, density, shape, stroke, direction.

The brush strokes we use to design our lives, are in congruency with God’s brush strokes on the entire canvas of humanity.  We need to leave our mark on the world, which is cliché, but cliché for a reason, amiright???

 

I personally realized that I’ve been afraid of stating any of my dreams out loud or write them down because of a subconscious fear of them never coming true.  But the other day I decided I literally had nothing to lose by writing them down, and asking God to help me achieve them. So I wrote a letter to God stating all the dreams and desires of my heart.  I figured, why not just make it official and simply ask?

Two days later in class our speaker, Kenny Peavy, who was extremely prophetic, had words for me from God. I have never had any experience with that sort of thing before, so I wasn’t sure what to believe.  But when we first started talking, he brought up a memory that I had from 6^th grade that I completely forgot about…. there was no way of him knowing that himself.  Kenny’s interpretation of his vision of my memory was validating a thought that I had kept to myself and never told anyone about.  I was like wow…there is absolutely no way anyone could ever make this up. This has to be God.

Kenny had the class practice communicating with God in order to see others how God sees them.  So he asked everyone to ask God how He sees me. It was a crazy experience.  I am in class with 47 other people and it’s only been a month with them, so people really don’t know me that well.  And the things that they said were all crazy real.  Some things I can’t even believe they said because there was no way of them knowing those things about me.  Some of the things spoken answered prayers that I had asked God prior.

All of this just validated God’s presence and ability to hear me, know me and communicate with me.  Among all the things that were stated, the coolest thing and the strongest word that Kenny told me he heard was that God is going to give me the desires of my heart.  I know it’s something that is commonly stated in the Christian bubble world, but he could’ve said that to any of the other 47 people in the room.  But he said it to me.  And I wrote a letter to God asking for the desires of my heart  only 2 days before that.  So…..God literally responded to my letter. Mind. Blown.

I believe God is going to give these things I asked for, because He planted them in me.  They are there for a reason.  My desire to bridge cultures, empower women in poor countries by helping them start businesses, and have a family that travels the world stems from Him.  He wants me to help Him create a world where those things exist. They are important to me, because they are important to Him.

Even the smaller, short-term desires I’ve had, such as the “random” desire to live in Mexico for a short period to learn more Spanish, was there because I was meant to do what I am doing now in Mexico. It was there for a reason!  It’s crazy, and blows my mind when I think about all the things in my life that were crafted and woven by God.

The key is that we have to seek God and learn to become in tune with Him, in order to figure out why the desires and dreams of our hearts are there.  Otherwise they seem meaningless and stupid and pointless to pursue.  Understanding that these things come from God, allows us to ask Him to be a part of them, which in turn allows us to have hope that they will come true.

That is when true purpose and fulfilment occurs. We are created to turn our imaginations into a reality: we are created to create with our Creator.

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