For working artists and modern women, creativity is a matter of life and death. Your career may be over if you don’t have a groundbreaking idea that shatters everything everyone thought they knew. But what few people realize is that your creativity is actually making you less creative over time. Here are eight reasons that may shock you:
1. Creativity affects your creative brain.
When your imagination activates the creative centers in your brain, those very creative centers begin to deteriorate. This is because your neuron receptors become desensitized to the neurotransmitters for creativity. So, the next time inspiration strikes, just remember that your brain is eventually going to cancel everything out.
2. Creativity creates less creation.
According to a study recently performed by research scientists at a prestigious national university, subjects displayed a significantly decreased level of creativity when exposed to creativity over a period of five years. So the next time your working with a team of talented creatives, think about stopping.
3. Creativity dismantles your ability to actually be creative.
Ever notice how sometimes you “get into the zone” and your novel seems to write itself? Unfortunately, you’re not writing that novel. Your creativity is! So, while creativity is doing all the work, you’re just sitting there like an empty vessel, mindlessly moving your hands over a keyboard. This will decrease your capacity for creativity over time.
4. Creativity self-sabotages, creatively killing itself.
Creativity senses when it has reached its limits and always attempts to outdo past performances. This sounds good, right? Wrong. Before you know it your creativity spirals out of control and your ideas have devolved into uncreative mush. It’s like backwards evolution but without cute animals.
5. Creativity decreases your creative capacity.
Just like eggs, every woman (and man) is born with a limited supply of creatinoids (the technical term for creative juices). When you are being creative, you use up your creative reserves. Get too creative, and all your ideas are depleted in the first few years of your career.
6. When you create, you’re not being creative.
The words ‘create’ and ‘creative’ are two different words. Though they have the same Latin root, crear, the words are literally two different words. So, technically speaking, when you create you are not necessarily being creative.
Look at it this way: cleverness leads you away from innovation. Put simply, ingenuity prevents a visionary state of being. While resourcefulness does not bring about prolificacy, in reality it is genius that truly makes you less originative. And that is why creativity will make you less creative.
