It’s not just the right brain that’s creative

It’s common for clients and friends to lament that they just aren’t creative. My sense is they often even feel shame and inadequacy around it. They look at friends or colleagues with such cool artistic vision or outside-the-box, disruptive thinking, and other right-brained activities and find themselves lacking.

They just aren’t creative like that, they tell themselves. All they have to offer is something much more boring or practical: putting reliable systems in place, collecting and analyzing data, showing up consistently, or other “left-brained” tasks. They will never contribute something as beautiful and valuable as their right-brained counterparts.

Honestly, I can empathize with the feeling. But this is bullsh*t.

It’s true: Not everyone is particularly artistic (though I would argue most people have more artistic potential than they think).

But everyone is innately creative. Creativity and ingenuity are what make us human. They are what separate us from all other life on Earth. Each and every one of us has the capacity to create something new.

This kind of “I’m just not creative” thinking is based on two deeply flawed notions.

First, it assumes that right-brained activities are somehow more important than left-brained activities. But the truth is: we need it all. How quickly this world would fall apart if we didn’t have the full spectrum of roles needed in the ecosystem of change – left-brained, right-brained, and otherwise. We need “whole brain” organizations and solutions.

Second, it equates “right-brained” with “creative.” But perhaps from now on, we can simply define “creative” as anyone who creates things. That could be radical art or paradigm-shifting, big-picture concepts. And it could also mean administrative systems, spreadsheets, project management plans, or community building. Maybe we can start thinking of “left-brained” and “right-brained” simply as two different styles of creativity: left-brained creativity and right-brained creativity.

It may not be as big and shiny as your friends and colleagues. It may not garner the acclaim as others. It may not be sexy. But you have something important to create and contribute. You are creative, in your own unique and much-needed way.