I wanted to talk about and just download some thoughts about the creative mind, how the creative mind works, how you deal with having a creative mind, some of the issues we face with creativity, but also how creative people navigate and do relationships with people that are not creative.

How do we collaborate with people that are not creatively minded like we are? I remember being in a room full of people and we are all planning an event and we are sitting there and for some reason I am on a completely different wavelength to everybody else in the room. The ideas that I am producing or just anything that I have to say is completely bizarre in comparison to what everybody else is saying. And then after I have got through this forest of randomness, I land on something that is good, something that is helpful and something that is used in the event itself.

But I had to get through this forest of randomness that was going on in my mind. It is not easy being creative. It is not easy having a creative mind. First, your head moves 100 miles an hour, not literally… It does not move 100 miles an hour but your thought life, your thought process moves at 100 miles an hour, and so you are constantly thinking, some things are repeatedly played over and over. Other times you are bombarded by thoughts about all different things.

For example, if you have been working on a project you can have a thousand different thoughts about that one project. Then out of nowhere you are now thinking about ten other projects because you are thinking that idea would be good for another idea, and then it spirals and you have this brainstorm going on, this mind fog going on just because you have got so many ideas happening on all at the same time.

I have had to learn how to work with that and how to function in that, but also it has been important for me to learn how to communicate with people that do not know the condition of my mind, or they do not know the thought process that I have. It is important that we learn how to do that because as creative people, we can unintentionally isolate ourselves.

The art community can be incredibly creative and incredibly inspiring, and they are able to produce wonderful, beautiful pieces of work. They can really make a name for themselves as an art community, however you do not see the art community very integrated into other things. You just see them as this sub bracket of people on the side, where it is just creative people and others do not really mix with them, they are just off on their own, doing their own thing.

If that works for them and they get to create and get to do their own thing, if they have the ability within their lifestyle where they can cut themselves away and be in a creative community and just focus on that, great, that is cool, that is good for them.

However I find this has been my experience, I do not know if anyone can relate to this, but I have had jobs where creativity was not my role. It was not my job. That was not what I was paid to do..

because of that, my creativity really dwindled, it got to a place where it was just this thing eating away at me that I could not practice or do. Or like me, you were raised in a generation where creativity did not equal being employed and having a “good job.” Because of this we are forced to bury our creativity and ignore it. Only later in life to see that this is who we are meant to be.

There is a lot of people that are creative that are not in jobs that suit them and do not have the ability to be highly creative in their work.

I have three kids, I cannot afford to spend loads of money on painting, and I do not have all the time in the world to paint. I would love to, and I do paint, but it has been about a year now since I last painted because we had a baby. When you are doing that kind of stuff and you are painting and you have fumes in the house, that is not something you want to bring a baby into.

It is not the easiest thing to do. We live in England. The weather is miserable most of the year. It is not like you can do stuff outside unless you have a tent or a canopy. There is a lot of stuff going against you if you are a creative person in a non-creative job.

It is quite challenging, it is quite difficult, but somehow you have still got to navigate through this creative way of thinking when you are around a whole bunch of people that are just not creative. You have got to understand yourself well enough to be able to communicate through the randomness of your mind to just do life well with other people around you.

Like I said, I was in that event planning meeting, and my head was just in a place of randomness. However in that randomness, I had a clever idea that was then later used. It was one of those situations where if I had just communicated the randomness well, I would have been received easier, but because I was not communicating the randomness well, it just became a frustration to everybody else. Some things were funny, other things were not. It became one of those situations which got a bit awkward. These days I am the king of awkward. When you are creating or when you are thinking at 100 miles an hour, you almost have to do this dance around in your head before you land on something that is good.

Again, more recently, we are planning for another event. We are setting up the room and I have verbal diarrhoea. I am just talking; I am just thinking aloud. Even I know these ideas are not promising ideas. I know they are not helpful. I know they are not going to be used, but I am just downloading and as I am downloading, I then get to an idea which is good and again, which is used.

I had to get to a point where I began to ask myself, “can I communicate this randomness better?” For me, what I have decided to do is include people in my process. I know I can do better with this.

Not everybody will want to be a part of your process. Some of them will not care, but others may just appreciate you communicating your process, because if we can communicate better, it makes us more adjustable to the world around us and as creative people, we see solutions in everything.

We see different ways of doing things all the time, this is just another thing, another way we are going to do that. I have decided to include people on my process, this can be carried out by simply saying…

“Okay guys, I am going to have a whole bunch of random ideas, and this is what is happening right now. My head is just moving 100 miles an hour, please bear with me as I communicate through this because I am just thinking aloud, you are going to be a bit of a sounding board, but we are going to land on something that is actually helpful, but please be patient with me while I go through this stage.”

I think if we just begun to communicate something so simple like that and bring people into an understanding of our process, the creativity we are bringing to the table would be more digestible than it is repelling.

I have been around all kinds of different people, I love creative people because I am a creative person, however the impression they can often be known for is they can be unreliable, unhelpful, disorganised or they can be distracting. These are all characteristics that have been a part of my own life.

This is not me just pointing at people and judging everyone, this is just generally the stereotype that people can notice with a creative person. They can be scatty, or they just cannot focus on anything.

It is difficult to be focused on something when your head is full of 100,000 things. And so, we have got to learn how to communicate that with the world around us, not by downloading, not by just pouring out every thought we have on somebody else. You can quickly see them switch off after the first few things, they cannot take it because they are not wired that way. We have got to be able to process and we have got to be able to communicate that to the world around us.

I have been listening to a psychology lecture on creativity recently and even within that lecture they agree it is not easy communicating something that people do not get. What we can do is be aware enough that this is how we are functioning to be able to communicate that well. One of my passions is communication.

One of my passions is being able to talk to anybody, from anywhere in the world. I have been blessed to be able to travel since I was 18. It is a second nature to me now to communicate and want to communicate with people that are from diverse cultures, diverse backgrounds.

I love it. I absolutely love it, but one thing that I find hard is learning how to communicate myself. I am becoming more self-aware and more understanding of myself, it is getting easier for me to communicate that.

So when we look at how we interact with the rest of the world, the question is…

• Are we self-aware enough to know when we are verbally downloading every thought that we’ve got in our head?
• Are we self-aware enough to know when to stop that and internalize that?

Doing this we can actually then begin to communicate effectively where we say to people that we’re working with.

“I do have a bunch of ideas. They are coming out thick and fast, but I do want to be able to help in this situation. Can you direct me in this? Can you show me where you want me to help rather than me just spilling out every idea that I have got”?

It is a valuable skill; I do not believe it quenches the creativity at all. What I believe it does do though is it allows us to be accepted more by the world around us.

You are an unbelievably valuable person. If you are a creative person, you have such value to you.

You have value in the way that you are wired. You have value in the way that you think, in the way you work, the way you see the world around you. There is such value in who you are and who you were created to be. Just like any valuable thing It needs to be taken care of; it needs to be used properly.

It must have that place of worth. There are a lot of jobs that are not going to make you feel like you are worth anything because of the way you are wired. However, I want to tell you today that you have worth, you have value and there is a wonderful reason you are the way you are.

I am excited to go on a journey with everyone if we can help at all with your creative process or just as a person that understands what it is like to be creative, we here just chat to us, talk to us in the comments.

Let us begin to have this conversation about how we can communicate more effectively with the world around us. Creative people can be so annoying. I believe we must own that.

We have the real ability to communicate better with the world around us as well. I think that we have yet discovered just how much we can be influencers in this world by just switching up how we communicate the creativity that is pouring out of us.

I hope this has provided you with valuable insights and inspiration.

Until next time, keep exploring, stay curious, and be amazing!

Best regards,