What’s your creative superpower?

What's your creativity superpower?

You can have more than one.

Superpowers are ordinary

Mine is organization. When I easily know what to do next, and what I need is easily available, I can usually slip into a creative work session with little resistance or lost time.

As for creative insight and inspiration, that just doesn't come to me when I'm stressed. Not knowing where or how to start, or where to find that file, tool, or note-to-self that I suddenly need takes me right out of the possibility of creative flow or relaxed insight.

I’m not alone. Kyle’s creative superpower is also organization. Leadership is one of his creativity spaces. He needs a certain amount of control, or even illusion of control, in his environment, the flow of his day, and the expectations about his work. He loves to plan and strategize, and make sense of blooming chaos by creating targeted, efficient, and often clever responses, and devising ways to make the situation even better, more chaos proof.

When his world is orderly enough, his mind has enough space to be innovative, playful, and creative about the challenges confronting him as a leader.

Raylinn has a very different superpower. That is a sensitive awareness of herself and others. She uses that awareness to make and strengthen connections, build bridges, and amp up the trust levels from and among others in her widely and loosely ranging organization. Raylinn’s love of spontaneity, and her ability to be forthright and kind at the same time, also seem to come from that sensitive awareness.

Her positive interventions and problem-solving facilitation are particularly effective and creative. Where others see catastrophe, she finds an opportunity bring people together, with a wake up call, a laugh, or a well-placed challenge.

Laura’s creative superpower is self-fascination and a drive for effectiveness and respect. Those may not sound like creativity superpowers. For Laura, they promote endless energy and new ideas for her public relations clients.

 Superpowers are extraordinary 

Two of Einstein's creative superpowers were a vivid visual imagination and a love of travel. It's easy to understand how his visual prowess helped him find his way to two theories of relativity.

But how does travel apply? Several of Einstein’s crucial creative insights that built up to his relativity breakthroughs came when he was away from his usual environment. Don't we all think a little differently or see old things with fresh eyes when we get an extended break from the everyday?

Superpowers are fun and games  

One of Ray Bradbury’s superpowers was toys, or keeping play triggers nearby (not surprisingly, that's also an Einstein superpower). His large writing space was filled, some would say cluttered,  with items that triggered his imagination and connected him to his childhood and childlike delights.

What about yours? 

By now you have ideas, or glimmers, about  a possible superpower of your own.

What is it?

How does it lift up your imagination or your creative productivity, or create a space for you to have insights? Do you lean on it, even unconsciously, to make art of your work or success of your art?

Until we acknowledge our superpowers, we may not make great friends of them. That friendship between you and your superpower is part of what makes, and will make, the work you do and the art you make remarkable.

Your voice. Your standards. Be remarkable.

Names and identifying circumstances of my coaching clients or other acquaintances are changed to protect privacy.