A lot of people believe that creativity is a ‘gift’ that has been given to a select few. This is not true. Everyone has creativity within them, but not everyone taps this source of life-enrichment.

This is often because they believe they don’t have any creativity, or because they’ve been discouraged since childhood, or because they think it’s a self-indulgence.

There are any number of reasons why people don’t use some of their abilities, including the idea that even if they do think they have creativity within them, it’s only to be used at particular times or for specific activities.

Creativity is a resource that we all have and is something we can use all the time if we wish to enrich everyday life. It may be that whatever you’re doing at the time is something that simply needs slogging through to get it done and you breathe a sigh of relief that it’s finished and you move on to the next chore. And that might be the best way to view it, depending on what it is.

But, it may be that whatever you’re doing at the time is something that could enliven your life if you added a bit of creativity to it, or make the job itself a creation more than a chore. In adding creativity to your everyday life you add a certain sparkle to everyone else’s, too.

Adding creativity to your day-to-day chores can make them things that are pleasurable to do, rather than a slog, and the repercussions of that are endless. Introduce a little pleasure or a smile to a job and you’ll get back that pleasure many times over, both for yourself and for those around you who respond, even if unconsciously, to your lighter mood.

Even if you don’t think of yourself as the ‘creative type’ just try to think of the job you’re doing at the moment in a different way to the way you always have – and you’re being creative!

You could think: what different ways are there to approach this task? What twiddly bits or bows can you add to it to create a different result? How can it be speeded up to get it out of the way? How can it be slowed down in order to create an enjoyment of it? What about asking someone else how they would approach the task? How about doing your tasks in a different order? How about changing all the furniture about?

These are all inventive – and creative - ways of thinking in your everyday life that can then spread over into other parts of your life, too. Just seeing yourself as creative is a big step in the right direction and applying that idea to everyday chores can often make them that much less chore-like.

Yours creatively

Susan