Creativity gives you the power to create amazing things. But if someone asked the question of where did it come from, I can’t answer that. I don’t think anyone currently can. I was listening to TED Talk Radio Hour when they discussed this very topic.

They had speakers like Sting, and Elizabeth Gilbert talk about their craft and views. They spoke on the power that creativity gave them and how they had to embrace either fear or their past to create something amazing. Their expression of creativity was something they practiced and were drawn to in order to express themselves. It was amazing to see these people who are famous for their creativity, be just like us in our battles to grapple with creativity. But the next two speakers added a little more academic perspective to the conversation.

The speakers was a neurologist and a ‘creative’ expert that has been knighted. The neurologist was trying to understand how creativity activates in the brain. He noted in studies that the frontal lobe was suppressed the self-doubt in our head and aloud creative expression to happen. He purposed then that once we understand creativity function in the brain maybe we could create a pill in the future that could activate creativity when we need it right away. However, I couldn’t help but think a magic pill would make the creative process lose it’s majesty. At least, the ‘creative’ expert somewhat agreed. He explained that our views of creative date back to the industrial era.  The ideas around it are outdated and quite honestly outdated. We need to figure out how to better embrace creative in a way that makes sense in the modern era.

For something that we use often as humans and that we are all capable of, we have a very limited understanding of the source of creativity. We don’t know if it is purely chemical or emotional. That is just amazing to me! Where do you think creativity comes from?