10 minutes of your time – “Give yourself the permission to be creative”

If you follow the CN&CO blog on a regular basis you will know that we enjoy the ideas and concepts that are shared on the TED stage. They encourage us to open our minds to think bigger and to connect with people from around the world, this opportunity to connect is one of the elements that I find most valuable about the internet.

I came across this talk from Ethan Hawke while reading an email from on of the hundred day challenges that I had subscribed to, #The100DayProject. The title caught my eye and so too did the extract from the talk that they had selected.

“You have to express yourself. And to express yourself, you have to know yourself. It’s actually super easy. You just have to follow your love. There is no path. There’s no path till you walk it, and you have to be willing to play the fool. So don’t read the book that you should read, read the book you want to read. Don’t listen to the music that you used to like. Take some time to listen to some new music. Take some time to talk to somebody that you don’t normally talk to. I guarantee, if you do that, you will feel foolish. That’s the point. Play the fool.” Ethan Hawke

Too often when we think about creativity, I think that we make the mistake of tying the term to art or a form of creative performance. These showcases are often phenomenal, and this is perhaps one of the reasons that we are drawn to thinking of creativity in this way.

Chatting to Nina Pearse a few years back when she started and co-founded Creativity Wake-Up, I used the line “I am definitely not creative, I can’t draw”. Nina challenged me on this point and asked me to rethink what I perceive to be “creative”. This moment still stands out

So, let’s be more creative, let’s allow ourselves to explore, to create, to change, and to learn from experiences.