Right now, I’d like you to think for a second about a word: creativity.

What does it really mean?

Everyone’s always saying, “be creative”, or, “turn on your creative side”, and it’s a term that’s probably been shoved in your face by your parents and your school ever since you were a little kid.

Do you really feel creative?

Or do you think, no, that’s for the expressive kids with different hairstyles who make art… and that “creativity” is another world that’s very distant from me.

Creativity is not simply art, painting, music. It is not merely creating brilliant technology. At least, it’s not just those things. These are the stereotypes of creativity in society. This is what you see in the picture books and on those inspirational posters tacked up in your classrooms.

Creativity is, simply, thinking outside the box.

And leading this thinking towards making something, whether it is a few sentences or a grand idea. You have special ideas in your head. And you have grown used to letting these ideas slip away in the white space of your mind, as you look around and see others more confident, more “intelligent” and more “experienced” dominate. You think, well, I’ll just keep this to myself. And if you do that for long enough, all the magic dust of your ideas will slip away, because you have never taught your brain to use them.

All I say to you is this. Those ideas, those moments when you disagree, and think something should be done differently - say it! And that vision you have when you’re rolling around in bed, of something you could make, a machine, a drawing, a plan, a life, do it!

Give it a go!

You may just surprise yourself.

And then you will wake up to the fact that the ability to create is inside you, now.