And Away We Go

During every moment of every day, we toggle our creativity switches on or off.

Society mostly teaches us to live with our creativity turned off, off, off.

When your creativity toggle is locked in the off position, your brain is more pliable to suggestions from others. You are much more capable of being manipulated by the forces of conformity when you don’t produce original thoughts.

When people want you to do something, like buy a product or vote for someone or believe in something, they hope to find your mind locked in the creativity off position. Sometimes they’ll scare you to get you there, like telling you that your wife will despise you forever if you don’t spring for Viagra to pump you up. Like you can’t create your way into a love fest without a stiffy because good sex is just about that turgid phallus.

Creativity on is original thinking. It is thinking for yourself. It is the ability to approach life’s pleasures and challenges with creativity—the ability to use the imagination to develop new and original ideas or things.

Conformity is “behaving or thinking in a socially acceptable or expected way.” Thinking like the rest of the pack gets us the Wal-Mart mentality.

Sometimes conformity is a good thing. Conforming to various laws saves lives and keeps us out of jail. Some conforming behavior makes great common sense. If someone yells at you to get your ass out of the street and you ignore it to ponder your awesome creativity, you could well be squished by that speeding express bus.

Yet too much conformity is hazardous to your health. It gums up the fuel lines of your personal potency. It keeps you sputtering inside the box of convention. While that may make you feel secure in the peer pressure cooker, choosing conformity over creativity inhibits the change of attitude that could save you.

Here's to creativity on!