The joy of creative expression

Yesterday, I coached a group of veterans on the topic of Creative Expression. The reason this topic is worthy of attention is that it is one of the ten human drives that makes us feel alive. When you’ve been through years of trauma, anything that helps you feel alive is a welcome path to healing and growth.

From a theological standpoint, we create because we were created in the image of our Creator. It’s wired into us humans. Sure, we’ve seen animals create tools. They are creative to an extent. The vehicle you drive required a whole different level of creation, uniquely human in complexity.

For me, I love to sit down at the piano and let my fingers wander until a new piano piece emerges. Sometimes, I practice it and shape it over and over till I record it and distribute it for you. Each step in the process is creative expression. I love it! It helps me feel alive.

What about you? What forms of creativity help you feel energy and positivity when you put your mind and heart into it? Here are some ideas:

• Dancing

• Scrapbooking

• Writing

• Baking

• Storytelling

• Photography

• Sketching

• Puzzles

• Journaling

• Invention

• Experimenting

• Coding

• Prototyping

• Designing

• Problem-solving

• Planning

• Decorating

• Building

• Crafting

• So much more!

Each of these gives its creator a sense of focus, progress, flow, and accomplishment.

Each energizes its creator through willing and active participation.

The activity itself is its own reward. What energy we expel, we receive back in joyful satisfaction. Well, maybe not at first.

At first, we dabble. We try new things to figure out what energizes us, what we’re uniquely good at.

Over time, through practice, we get good enough to create our own style.

For instance, I learned at an early age that my piano technicality has limitations. It took me four years of daily practice to perform Mozart’s “Fantasia in D Minor” with minimal mistakes. Much of this had to do with my ADHD brain limiting the bandwidth between decision and execution (knowing which keys to play and actually cramming them through my hands in milliseconds). It’s like little train cars piling up between my brain and the keyboard. One mistake can easily turn into analysis paralysis, but I was trained to keep playing or start over if it’s that bad. Very frustrating and somewhat embarrassing.

So, I created my own style that is uniquely mine—thinly layered, lots of space between notes, flexible rhythms, highly melodic, simple motifs. I still make mistakes, but most people won’t notice because I also built the practice of improvisation.

Almost every time I sit at the piano I try to create something new. This allows me to reshape my music on the fly to make up for a traffic jam. During a concert, should a traffic jam happen, I’ll loop back around to something I do remember or vamp into a simple rhythmic sequence until I figure out how to get back on track. Most won’t know the difference. Inside, it feels like crisis management mixed with creativity. To the world, it still feels beautiful, relaxing, inspiring.

To this day, I can go into the recording studio to record a song after months of practice and still require the engineer to splice different takes together to make it what I want. It’s rare that I get a final recording in one take. After years of trying, I’ve learned to live with that.

Creativity is messy, takes practice to improve, and becomes uniquely yours over time. That’s when then greatest joy comes.

There’s nobody like you. There’s nobody who can do what you do like you do it.

Be creative. Try something new. Dabble. Practice what gives you energy. Make it yours!