The myth of pink hair, that’s what my friend Penny calls it. It is the common but mistaken thought that to be creative one must look unabashedly artistic. Of course it’s more than pink hair, it can be a lifestyle, you know, wild hair, crazy clothes, clove cigarettes, etc. Embellishments change over the years, but it’s all about looking like a creative person.
Myth Buster: Creativity is not about looking artistic. Yes, artists are creative, but everyone is creative! Artists are just directing their creativity towards art, while an accountant can direct their creativity towards accounting. Creativity can be directed towards any challenge in life and therefore we all could use a little more creativity, right? Every job and every life needs creativity!
I have nothing against Pink Hair, in fact sometimes seeing a very self-expressed person can be funny, even inspiring. But looking like an artist or expressing yourself extravagantly with your clothes doesn’t necessarily mean you’re more creative than the other person. Many Pink Hair are trying to be creative by conforming to the stereotype of a creative person. Some Pink Hair people are thinking that if they look good, the rest will follow. Not necessarily! The thing is, Pink Hair doesn’t make you think more creatively, which is where creativity really begins. Where creativity ends, the point of it, is to think that it gives you ideas. Ideas that lead to solutions for your challenges: your life, your relationships, or your career. Creativity is, after all, novelty that is useful, not just novelty.
I fell prey to the Pink Hair myth in my brief, traumatic, and very peak-and-valley television career. In 1980 I managed to get a classic “creative” job in TV production after years of knocking on doors. I immediately stopped wearing standard business clothes and switched to jeans and a worn corduroy jacket. Black was cool, so black t-shirts filled my closets. This became my uniform, which didn’t change much, and how creative is that? How did it go as a creative person? Well, sometimes I would come up with great creative ideas and that would get me really excited. Other times I just couldn’t and had no thinking tools or techniques to get me out of my creative blocks, and that put me in the pit of depression. At the time I thought the blocks were because I wasn’t committed enough to the creative lifestyle, so I did my best to look and act more creative: I stopped shaving, drank more, and generally lived rock and roll lifestyle. I enjoyed the music! I often woke up hungover and still creatively blocked!
What I wish I knew then is that creativity is about how you think, not what you wear or how you look. Creativity can be taught, nurtured, encouraged and enhanced, and the way to do that is by changing the way you think.
For example, if I had known that self-criticism was by far the biggest inhibitor to my creativity, I might have let the ideas flow while I brainstormed. Instead of being in constant critique and analysis mode, I would just put them on the list. Editing “as you go” is guaranteed to stop you in your tracks and have you crying in frustration. Having Pink Hair just meant to me that I had higher expectations of myself, so I was even tougher on my self-publishing than I otherwise would have been! For those looking to be more creative, just defer judgment and get into a flow of idea lists!
If I had known how important it is to simply write down ideas, I would have invested in a $1.49 notebook and gone for it. Writing down the ideas alone can make a big difference, just by collecting the ideas you have all the time. Most of us assume that we will remember everything we think about. How can we when we have 65,000 thoughts a day? That is the average. Ideas, or at least seeds of ideas that can be very useful to us, are hidden among those 65,000 thoughts. Start writing them, revise them, and flesh them out, and you’ll kick the pants off that pink-haired creative biting her nails down the aisle.
Had I known that alcohol and other mind-altering drugs simply slow down your thinking instead of opening it up, I would have curtailed that madness. Instead, she could have walked more, breathed more deeply, eaten healthier foods, and gotten enough rest; those things would have helped me think more creatively. If you want to stimulate your mind, and that’s a good idea, listen to classical instrumental music, or yes, jazz.
Had I known that my creative thinking would have been more productive if I had found ways to surprise myself, I would have sought out more new experiences. Experiences where you learn something are the stimulation your mind needs to help it make more new connections and feed you good ideas.
So if you really have to use Pink Hair, more power to you. But while you’re dying in the salon, make a decision to think more creatively, too: be open, write your ideas down, and look for new experiences. Then you will not only look more creative, you will be more creative.
