Creative? Me? Are you serious?

I recently did a course which directed me towards a personality profiling tool and was surprised to find that I had a 'Creator' personality.

When someone at work once called me creative, I dismissed the idea thinking that they must have been a little crazy, or perhaps wanted to manipulate me to get involved in something.

Creativity to me meant somebody who could paint, draw, write poetry, design clothes, play beautiful music and invent amazing products. Clearly none of those applied to me.

However, the personality profiling showed me that creativity also describes someone with a brain that comes up with a million and one ideas.

Someone who gets super excited about an idea but then moves on to something else before finishing (often exhausting the people around them who know it will be another hair brained scheme that never happens).

Now that sounds more like me!

When I think back to all the countries I've been convinced I want to visit on my holidays (and promptly forgotten about), the different activity holidays which I've wanted to do (and forgotten), the various ideas I've had (and forgotten), the places I've wanted to live....I could go on, but I'm sure you're getting the picture.

I'd always seen this trait as one of my greatest weaknesses. It makes decisions a nightmare because there is always (always) something more exciting about to pop into my mind. I mean, how can I possibly trust one idea from the next and commit time, money and effort to making something happen?

However, I've been learning that the things we consider to be our biggest weaknesses are actually our greatest natural talents, just in the wrong environment.

When we embrace our natural tendencies and allow them to blossom, we feel most at flow in our lives.

So why do we allow ourselves to bury these talents throughout the course of our lives?

You may be great at organising things, or talking to people, or having an awareness of how much things cost, or helping others and yet hide these traits. The organised person may be embarrassed that they aren't as spontaneous as other people. The chatty person may feel that they are seen as flighty. The constant creator may feel like they are an underachiever.

Interestingly though, the best way to reach our full potential is to have an awareness of our strengths and weaknesses - and then surround ourselves with other personality types which complement our own.

For a 'Creator' personality, this means linking up with a person who can help you to find focus and structure among the myriad of ideas in your mind. If you can find another person to tell the world how brilliant you are, well you're onto a winner! Let me know if there are any takers ;)

Walt Disney and Sir Richard Branson are fellow 'Creators' and they seem to have done ok :)