Creativity, Play & Love seem to be facets of the same thing.

Creativity. Play. Love. All these words are verbs. Action words.

They're not feelings. They're not labels on separate boxes. They work best when they work together.

Creativity is the love of playing with different combinations.

Play is the love of creating opportunities for your imagination to escape.

Love is creating playful ways to share with others in a practical way.

Creative people love to create new experiences for others. Play works best when it is shared, and Love is the motivation to do many great things.

If you take one of them away, the other two quickly become ineffective.

The desire to love someone comes naturally, but we need to create ways to express that love in new ways and in different circumstances. We need to create the means to provide for who we love. We need to create the atmosphere and the environment for it.

We need to create an environment where we can play with the possibilities of our chosen form of expression.

So go and find work you can love. It will seen like play to you. And show your love through what you create.

For the 'being born creative' series (childhood creativity)

You can find Steve at www.ineedtocreate.com

Childhood was too short. -It wasn't enough time to perfect my art.

If you were to ask anyone what they loved to do when they were about 12 years old, you would get some interesting answers.

They might of loved drawing, making things or designing fantastic worlds, all just for the pleasure of it.

They might even became very good at what they did, compared to other kids their age.

But often, something happened that made them abandon what they love to do. Without listing all the possible internal & external events that made them divert their attention to other things, for one reason or another, they just stopped.

Fast forward twenty or thirty years, that same person finds that he isn't particularly proud for any of his resent accomplishments. He probably can't remember the last time he worked at something he really loved working on.

I've known a lot of people like this. They played music, but not they are a truck driver. Or they loved to paint but not they work in a government department somewhere. They don't even do what they love to do in their spare time. Many of them barely remember what it was that inspired them all those years ago.

Part of the problem is, they look around them to find satisfaction, pleasure, distraction or passing amusement, instead of retracing their steps to a time when they didn't feel so lost.

Yes, childhood is too short to perfect your art, but those early times of creative flow still serve as sign-posts for a meaningful & productive future.

For the 'being born creative' series (childhood creativity)

You can find Steve at www.ineedtocreate.com

Being an adult makes sense when we remember what we loved to create when we were kids.

I'm a designer!

No one ever told me I should be a designer. No one encouraged me to do that when I was young.

No one did a personality or career profile to say I should be one. No one looked at my hundreds of drawings as a kid and said, 'You know what, most of your drawings are designs for something". (I wish they had).

No one could see it, except me. It took me a long time to work that out, even though it's obvious to me now. People knew I was good at drawing. They knew I loved to make things, but that was as far as it went.

I remember designing & making the best cubby houses of anyone I knew. I designed whole towns from small boxes on my bedroom floor.

I did go to college to become a Commercial Artist. Later I even called myself a Graphic Designer. I had a career as a Graphic Designer. But some how, I was more than a Graphic Designer, but what? I didn't know what that 'what' was.

Then I thought I should be an Industrial or product designer, or an inventor, but I couldn't see how I would be able to make 5% of all the things I would love to make.

Now I know that I am a Designer of Everything! I'll even design people if they let me.

You too will understand yourself better if you remember the things you loved to make or do when you were a kid. Do you remember what they were?

For the 'being born creative' series (childhood creativity)

You can find Steve at www.ineedtocreate.com

CREATIVE BALANCE: A DEFINITION

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Ideas that regulate or maintains Creative Balance...

One area needs to be viewed in the context of related areas:

1. If one area is balanced at the expense of other areas, then creative balance isn't achieved. eg: A balance is found between rest - energy but not Start - finish.
2. Creative balance is subjective and objective. Though it may appear to be mainly subjective.
3. Nothing can be considered from a seriously objective perspective if it has not FIRST seen to have a serious subjective value. You need to subjectively enjoy studying something objectively.
4. Avoiding extremes but not just being neutral. Move as required, not according to passing mood. And not just a little of each, just for a change.
5. Content out of context is a pretext.
6. Creative balance is not static (fixed, un-moved, immobile, inactivity). Things that prevent movement are obsolete knowledge (some published information), pre-conceptions, Uniform or general attitudes, Social or personal habits.
7. Confining or restricting your exposure to only one or two sources of knowledge or facts, Over specialisation in a field or skill.
8. Those with creative balance can be predominately specialised. Meaning that 80% of his knowledge and expertise can be in one area, but not exclusively to that area. 100% specialisation will confine your ability to be innovative.
9. It's about your creative heart, not just your thinking abilities.
10. Your creative heart includes your day-dreams, identity, interests, emotions, personal goals, motivating rewards, hopes, perceived needs, important learned skills, your values, your view of the world, the things you want to communicate, the focus of your curiosity, your desired journey or direction and what you find satisfying.
11. Creative balance is designed to explore, discover and support these things.
12. It is a tour of the interconnections that exist or can be created to encourage personal creative development.
13. It identifies the core components that are important for personal creativity. Then it connects them together so they can work as one. Connections are anything that unifies or merges parts together so an exchange of communication can begin. So all the interests, needs and hopes etc can work together, rather than competing for attention.
14. It help you find compatibility in the world around you. So the exchange of information and meaning is mutually beneficial.
15. It makes allowance for the fact that everyone wants to be happy. But for a creative person happiness comes from many sources. Some sources at one time and some at other times. Happiness is a real emotional response to emotionally determined needs.
16. It is like Chemistry. Two different substances combined will become a third and completely new substance. As you combine two average ideas, you could come up with a third, very useful idea that has no obvious appearance to the first two. With a creative person, he can combine two aspects of his life and create a new dimension to create from. For example, a creative person can combine two interests and come up with an idea for an innovative project or activity that suits him better than they could before. Or he could combine his skills with the values that are important to him and come up with a new way to communicate new meaning.
17. It isn't intellectual and it isn't emotional. It's a mixture. It it was one or the other, then creativity would be governed and limited by it.
18. A balance of creativity and curiosity comes about by personal feelings, valued experiences and the joy one can have find, develop and communicate meaning or personal observations.
19. Understanding and enjoying the relationship between opposites is encouraged, not just trying to understanding them in isolation.

(This is part of my Creative Balance series)

You can find Steve at: www.ineedtocreate.com

An artist is a creation formed in the imagination of your childhood.

There are many things that shape us into the adult we become. Our family background, our cultural or national history, our education, our work history, our local environment, major events in our past.

They all play their part, but these are all external factors. There are the internal factors as well. Often unseen and often ignored for a while, but as powerful in shaping who you are as much as anything else.

When we are young, we spend much of our play time exploring what it would be like to be someone when we grow up. We imagine being famous, heroic or a professional person. We begin as Playfessionals.

We try on these roles like a big coat. We imagine what our ideal work will be.

Some kids take their imaginations more seriously than others. They know what they want to be when they grow up.

They imagine how it feels, what that life would looks like, and what they will do. It becomes the purpose of the adult to live up to that image formed in their younger self.

This ability to imagine your ideal future is very powerful. Many successful people became what they wanted to be because they could see it clearly, long before it actually happened.

For the 'being born creative' series (childhood creativity)

You can find Steve at www.ineedtocreate.com

An adult doesn't discover they are an artist. They only rediscover what is there.

It has been said that a being a Painter of Art is an over 50's occupation.

Of course, some people enjoy painting at any time in their lives, but many don't seem to get a chance until sometime after they turn 50 years old.

It always seems that those who are able to paint have a life style that merits it.

There are the lone professional artists who has his art in galleries, who we assume live lives very different from our own.

 Or they may not need to work outside the home. Either they are a stay home Mum & wife, supported by a bread winner. Some paint with their pre-school kids in a home studio. Or they're maybe single and so have few commitments outside a regular job. Or they still live with their parents, but for most of us, making art in a place and time free from excessive interruptions seems like an unrealistic dream. Or is it?

For everyone else, say between 25 & 50, life has a way of eating up most of our time. It becomes easy to forget the joy we experienced way back in our distant past when we just created for the pure joy of it.

There would be many adults who think they 'lost the knack'. They think, "I can't do that anymore'.

Then after many years of un-explained restlessness, the kids grow up and leave home. They now have all these evening free and whole afternoons on weekends to fill. So they try a painting class and 'discover' they can paint, but really they have only rediscovered what was there all along.

Don't wait till you're 50 to create again. If its important enough to you, you will find some regular time to create art. Even if you can't create the ambitious projects you think about, you can find 30 minutes a day to create.

For the 'being born creative' series (childhood creativity)

Steve Supple can be found at: www.ineedtocreate.com

Adults can suffer from play deprivation.

Children seem to have two main jobs: To learn and to play. Preferably at the same time.

They learn through play and ideally they also play through learning.

There's no doubt that if you deprive a child of the opportunity to learn, their chances of having a meaningful, productive and long life are greatly affected.

Many would also agree that time to play is just as important for their development.

If a child is deprived of enough opportunities to play, they quickly become bored, restless, difficult or even destructive. Often rebelling at some point.

There is different types of play: Role Play, Creative Play, Structured Play (group games with rules) and Object Play. There can also be Role Learning, Creative Learning, Structured Learning and Object Learning. And there can be combinations of play and combinations of learning. Finally there can be combinations of play and learning. The possibilities are endless.

Then the inevitable happens; We grow up.

Our opportunities to play and learn become less and less spontaneous or planned. It can start as early as collage or University. Study commitments can easily crowd out play time.

Particularly in a work setting that doesn't allow any opportunity to learn new and interesting things. 

Or no opportunity to play around with different ways of doing the work.

If you're not learning interesting things, you're stagnating, and if you're play deprived, you're disintegrating.

We all need to find our learn/play space. Learn to 'Play' music, 'Play' a role in a play, Play a sport, or play with colour. The world can be your university and your playground.

For the 'being born creative' series (childhood creativity)

You can find Steve at 

www.ineedtocreate.com