This might seem like a weird title for a video, but I think it's really important that you recognize this simple truth: You ARE creative!

And if you don't think you are, it's not that you aren't; it's just that you've forgotten how to express it. It doesn't matter if you're a writer, a musician, a desk jockey, an engineer, an accountant, a lawyer, etc. The occupation doesn't matter. There is room to be creative, and you already have that ability!

Creativity, like everything else in life, is a system. There's an input, a process and an output. So if you haven't been seeing much creative output, it doesn't mean you lack something in your DNA — it means that you need to change either your inputs or your processes so you can get better output.

And I know this because I've struggled with this myself.

I used to believe the lie that I just wasn't creative. It kind of started when I was playing guitar and writing songs in college, and then I would get mad at myself when I realized that I had unintentionally picked up a melody line or a chord progression from another song that I had heard on the radio.

I used to think to myself, "What is wrong with me? Why can't I create anything original?"

It seemed like other people had that ability, but I didn't. But then I read Steal Like an Artist by Austin Kleon, and I understood that nothing is completely original. W

hen someone creates something new, they're simply connecting dots in ways that haven't been done before. But the dots themselves are not original. And that's when I realized that if I wanted to get better at creating, the only thing I needed to do was to collect better dots.

Austin Kleon actually says that as a creator, your job is simply to collect good ideas. The more good ideas you collect, the more you can choose from to be influenced by.

So once I understood that, all of a sudden I was free!

I didn't have to judge my creation as inferior because it was simply the result of the dots I collected. Then when I started changing my inputs by being more selective about the podcasts I was listening to and the books I was reading, I found it became easier and easier to synthesize those ideas and create something new out of them.

That, in a nutshell, is why you should care about PKM or personal knowledge management. It's a system for helping you connect ideas and makes it easier for you to do your best creative work. It's also the basis of the Creativity Flywheel, which is what this whole course is about.

I love this quote by Hugh McLeod, where he says:

Everyone is born creative. Everyone is given a box of crayons in kindergarten, and then when you hit puberty, they take the crayons away and they replace them with dry, uninspiring books on algebra, history, etc, being suddenly hit years later with the creative bug. Is just a wee voice telling you I'd like my crayons back please. Hopefully that resonates with you like it did with me, and I want to give you permission in this video to ask for your crayons back.

The thing is, no one's going to show up and just give them to you. Creativity is an internal struggle. You have to ask for your crayons back, and you have to make the choice for yourself that creating is important.

Everything that's worthwhile tends to be hard, and creating is no different. But you do have it in you — if you're brave enough to embark on this journey.

Just remember the real value of embracing your creativity is not what other people say or think. It's figuring out and developing what you think about the information that you've consumed. So, don't rely on external validation. Don't create for others. Create for you.

Create because of what it does inside you and the clarity that it brings you.