Getting creative again isn’t self-indulgent, it’s self-remembering

Last year, I opened an old notebook while decluttering and found a list of ideas I'd written on a lunch break. Scribbled between meeting notes and to-do lists were phrases for a talk I never gave, the start of a workshop that would eventually become Own Your Brilliance, and a few lines that might have been the beginnings of a (pretty dreadful) poem.

I remember feeling weirdly proud as I closed the book. Not because of the quality of what I’d written (honestly, the attempt at poetry was trash), but because it was good to reconnect with a past me that had the space and courage to put pen to paper just because something inside me asked to be expressed.

That’s the thing with creativity. It doesn’t vanish. It just gets buried under everything we’ve been told matters more. Somewhere along the way, many of us decided we weren’t the creative type. Maybe a teacher said our story lacked structure. Maybe a manager side-eyed a bold idea in a meeting. Or maybe we just started to believe that unless creativity produced something polished, professional, or profitable, it wasn’t worth our time.

But creativity isn’t about the thing you make. It’s about the part of you that gets to come alive while making it.

The cost of calling yourself “not creative”

When we write off creativity as unnecessary, frivolous, or “for other people”, we don’t just lose a skill, we lose a connection to something deeply personal. Creativity isn’t a job title or a personality trait - it’s how we solve problems, process ideas and express who we are.

It’s not just the artist’s canvas or the writer’s journal, it can be the new way you structure a team meeting. The colours you choose when redoing your deck. The metaphor that helps you explain something complicated. It’s there, even when you think it’s not.

When it’s been ignored too long, creativity becomes harder to access. Not because we’re out of ideas, but because we stop trusting our instincts. We second-guess ourselves and shrink things down to what's sensible and safe. And in doing so, we leave some of our best thinking, and some of our best selves, on the table.

Creativity is how we build self-trust, not just self-expression

What I’ve come to realise is that creativity isn’t just about being brilliant at something. It’s about being willing to try and experiment. It’s a practice of listening to yourself and then acting on what you hear. That’s self-trust. And like any muscle, it grows with use.

If you’ve been disconnected from your creativity for a while, you might also be carrying something harder to name: grief. The grief of years spent silencing your own voice. The embarrassment of old ideas you didn’t follow through on. The regret of saying “I’m not creative” so often that you started to believe it.

If that’s you, let me say this plainly: you’re not broken. You’re not behind. And you’re not out of touch with creativity, you’re just out of practice with listening to yourself.

It’s not too late to begin again

You don’t need a five-year plan, a niche or a portfolio to start creating again. You don’t even need to be especially good. You just need a little space and a corner of your life that’s yours to explore.

That might look like trying something new. Or revisiting something you used to love. Or doing something for no reason other than the fact that it makes you feel more like yourself. Because you haven’t lost your creativity, it’s just been waiting for permission, and space, from you.

We touch on this more in the podcast this week, but the core truth is simple: getting creative again isn’t about becoming someone new. It’s about remembering a part of you that’s always been there. And that part? It’s still brilliant. It always was and it always will be.

Listen to the UN/DO podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and YouTube.

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Knowing when to leave is a skill and a strength

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You’re not lost, you’re just out of touch with yourself