Unused creativity is not benign.

Not unlike stress or cholesterol, creativity that we don’t use could make us sick.

Listening to Liz Gilbert chat with Brené Brown on Liz’s “Magic Lessons” podcast and Brené had a few zingers that left me backing it up 15 seconds to hear it again. 

They both agreed that there weren’t creative people and not creative people, but just that people who were creative just knew how to use their creativity or access it. But that most or all of us had creativity in us and if we didn’t use it, it wasn’t harmless.

In other words, could creativity be collecting within us and if we don’t set it free, it could harm us? How did they mean “not benign”? How could it harm us? Sickness? Illness? Disease? Or just that we’re, ahem, constipated creatively?

The only unique contribution that we will make in this world will be born of creativity. — Brené Brown on Liz Gilbert’s “Magic Lessons” podcast.

Of course, these are two very creative types talking. So are they only talking about creative types? Or those who are wanna-be creatives? But they said we’re all creative, so they might be talking about all of us?

I always enjoy hearing something said in a way that helps me understand something that I previously understood and even felt myself, but wasn’t sure quite how to word it or even “experience” it. Something that I believe is true, but I like how they say it better than I might have said it. I like that she said “not benign” and not directly, I don’t know, “damaging” or something more active.

But knowing that you have creativity within you, within all of us, and that we need to let it out, that we need to set it free and in the process set ourselves free is important.

Sure, I’m sure a banker or a mathematician might hear the conversation and think it’s a bunch of artsy-artsy, but she addresses this, too, in the podcast. Furthermore, I think this is part of her point. We don’t need to all finger paint, but we use creativity in the way that we want or need to use it. But we have it, it’s this energy inside of us and if we don’t use it, it might harm us.

P.S. I’m filing this under Health. 😉