Creative people don’t have thoughts fundamentally different from ours?
They just don’t seem to neglect their thoughts as readily as we do.
There is very little that is entirely new under the sun.
To be creative is to learn to see how unlikely elements might fit together in a fruitful new arrangement.
For instance, you might borrow a way of telling a flashback story from the world of animation and use it in your motion picture.
You might take an idea from Greek philosophy and make it work inside a volatile & unpredictable startup ecosystem.
Essentially, creativity means spotting an opportunity to improve things by combining things from different domains.
The German philosopher Hegel put the idea in its grandest terms: we are creative, he wrote, when we ‘strip the world of its stubborn foreignness and adapt it to our needs.’
Usually, we just put up with matters that are frustrating or disappointing.
But when we get creative, we adapt.
It is a refusal to accept the status quo.
The creative person is particularly committed to the idea that there must be a better way of going about things.
So what’s stopping you from becoming creative in your life?
