For nearly 20 years I have been trying to help people become more creative and to tap more of their natural creativeness. One way has been explaining what I call the "Creative G.A.P."

The GAP consists of three myths many people hold about creativity and creativeness.

The first myth is that creativity is a GIFT that only some people have, the highly creatives. The talent, the drive, the persistence, the obsession, the commitment may be the "gift" but my experience has demonstrated that it is not the potential to be creative.

All people possess the potential. Most use it occasionally but not as a major part of their bag of tricks. They may use it at home while working on a hobby or by themselves but not as a major part of their work or their lives.

The norming nature of society seems to convince people that being creative should be saved only for those with "major" talents. If you can't draw naturally without training why try. If you can't sing without training why try. If you can't dance without training why try. If you can't invent without training why try.

The interesting fact is that so often true "breakthroughs" are made by people who initially didn't have talent or skills without training but they acquired it or trained themselves.

The second myth is that attitude or atmosphere does not affect creativity or creativeness. The easiest way to dispel this is to think about when you have been creative most recently. How did you feel? How did you feel about yourself? Chances are positive is your answer.

Consider if your boss, supervisor or manager deliberately became negatively autocratic, forcing rules on everyone, picking at every minor mistake or error, and stood over your shoulder continually. How creative might you be? How easily could you tap your creative potential? How easily would your creativity "flow"?

Therefore a support environment can make a difference.

Yet is it only a supportive external environment that enables us to be creative? Viet Nam prisoners, as well as, prisoners of many other wars have reported the use of their creativeness even in conditions of extreme inhumane treatment. Painters, writers, sculptors, poets, engineers, inventors and business people have all reported how they capitalized on their creative potential even in extremely depressed periods of their lives.

What then is the factor?

Internal control. Internal drive. Commitment to create to solve a problem to make a breakthrough with or without an externally supportive environment.

The third myth is that creativity happens. It is the gift of the Muse or a muse. A gift of the gods. It just happens if you wait long enough.

For 35 years I have needed to tap my creativeness on call and rarely have had the benefit or luxury of time and resources so that I could simply wait for the Muse to tap me on the shoulder and guide my hand(s). Then again perhaps my Muse is helping me write this article. It is now midnight on a Monday after four days of fighting off a cold. I had just worked 8 days in a row after preparing for several weeks for the programs.

I became drained over the weekend. No program again until next week. All four are prepared for already and are mostly repeats of several before them.

Yet I had minimal strength to market or work on a mew project today.

Then I turn on my computer and dial into the internet to read the last of the day's email messages and see a couple messages about "flow". So I decide to put it to test and just begin to write.

I begin where I have begun many times before and have allowed the words, thoughts and sentences to take me where they will. Is it my muse? Interesting question.

Perhaps it is.

I am open to the possibility.

Yet I prefer to accept the fact that it is because I am relaxed, downright tired out from a very depressing day and chose to use a creative thinking process I often use to get my creative thinking going.

The particular process is to pick something I know very well and just begin to write, draw, design, design, move and let what happens happen.

Other times I might use a more controlled process such as attribute listing, forced relationships, or morphological listing or one of many forms of checklisting. Each of these can help me break "mindset" or in this case "moodset".

What I have attempted to demonstrate is that creativity may just happen sometimes, while usually it is the result of the use of some process or combination of processes ranging from highly rational to extremely bizarre.

When you need to restart your creativeness remember that

1. creativeness is a gift you already possess that can be expanded and enriched, perhaps infinitely
    
   
2. your attitude is what counts, whether internally induced or selected or externally sparked by someone or something such as a beautiful sunset, fun or exciting music or dance.
    
   
3. there are hundreds of processes that are available that you can use to "kick-start" your creativeness and break any mindset or moodset.

Choose some aspect or part of your life and deliberately be creativeor help someone else develop their creativeness today.