Creativity’s Twin Super Powers
from the prolific roots of your teenage years
If you are a first-time reader or listener, these posts make the most sense when you start here.
Listen to this audio version of Creativity’s Twin Super Powers or read below.
One of the more intriguing discoveries in the last post landed on this question:
How were the teenagers in my dissertation research—who had never formally studied creativity, who had never been asked to think about creativity, who had never before reflected on the nature of own creative pursuits—were, nonetheless, able to talk at length about their relationship to creativity—what it was, how it affected their lives, and the profound meaning it held for them?
I suspect, this teenage inclination to philosophize begins once the brain is wired for abstract reasoning.
Where do we come from?
Who are we?
Is there life after death?
What will my future look like?
And then, this new ability to philosophize organically extends to the nature of creativity once someone introduces the idea of creativity into a teen’s mind.
I wonder what, as a teenager, you would have told me about creativity and your relationship to it?
Just imagine…flowing alongside your new ability to wonder about Life’s Big Questions your teen self is simultaneously immersed in this primordial stew of self-creation—an oozing mixture of trial and error, of adopting and discarding aspects of who you are (alone and with others), evaluating and testing out what is important to you, and imagining a possible future.
Then, along comes this researcher asking you questions about how you view and experience creativity.
Bingo!
Your support inspires me to reach higher,
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so I can offer you more!Because you have already been primed by your budding brain abilities—by your task of creating an intentional identity, by the curiosity that leads you to question everything about where and how you fit into life—talking about the nature of creativity and naming your relationship to it is the result of an organic process already embedded at the core of your teenage aliveness.
Remember how each of my high school juniors were able to “define” creative behavior and name specific characteristics (change, newness, a state of flow) as if they had studied it even when they had not?
Could the budding creation of yourself as a teenager, coupled with the magnificent range of emerging abilities in your teen brain, could these be the original cornerstone supporting your adult capacity for creativity right now?
I’m convinced that your ever-growing, adult creativity, which thrums at the heart of your CreativeSelf, sources its nourishment and wisdom from the deep historic roots extending into the midnight truth-seeking teenager you once were, now tempered by time into your own light-bearing guide: Your Inner Teen.
As I’ll keep reminding you, Your Inner Teen is the distilled, matured essence of everything you developed during your teen years, so they may not reflect—physically, emotionally, or characteristically—who you think you remember as the historical teen you once were.
Nevertheless, once the adult you is reunited with your Inner Teen, a powerful sense of a deep, abiding relationship will surprise you with its undeniable *familiarity and the sense of a long-lost, and deeply missed, ally.
* familiarity: from the root word family
Your Creativity Super Powers: Self-Awareness & Self-Reflection
From the very beginning, your master task as a teenager was to create an updated sense of self, your identity.
Supporting this master task were two, new capacities: conscious self-awareness and intentional self-reflection. They were the head of the construction crew on a Create-Yourself site where the architect's plans changed daily, the foundation shifted for no apparent reason, and the building materials ranged from titanium to tissue paper.
And, yet, against all possible odds, a one-of-a-kind structure began to emerge: You.
In this process of building your new, emerging self, your teenage brain gave you two, indispensable partners joined together by a singular vision of self-creation: self-awareness and self-reflection.
In the course of self-creation, these twin abilities work together on their continuous spiral where self-awareness gives you the raw materials for self-reflection, while self-reflection deepens your self-awareness, so self-awareness can give you even more raw materials for self-reflection.
Before we go through some detailed specifics of where your adult self might use either conscious self-awareness or intentional self-reflection to refine and expand a creative project, let’s look at some defining characteristics of these twin super powers.
Self-Awareness deals in real-time monitoring of a present moment of consciousness where I immediately recognizes my thoughts, feelings, or behaviors.
Self-Awareness occurs alongside a specific experience I’m having, like an internal witness who remains unconscious until I activate it:
Realizing, in the moment, that a creative choice is going sideways
Noticing when I’m overworking a creative project
Recognizing the flares of anger when I start doubting my creative process
Sensing my shoulders tightening in response to feedback someone is giving me
Self-reflection, on the other hand, takes a look backward or forward to analyze a past experience or contemplate a future possibility.
Self-reflection is a deliberate examination that does not happen automatically, like self-awareness, but needs intentional space and time for a purposeful, internal audit:
I journal about a new creative direction.
I contemplate a different creative choice or motivation.
I compare the patterns in my current creative project to patterns I’ve used in the past.
I examine my creative work to be sure I’m aligning with my deepest values.
What Rises Up From Your Teenage Creativity-Roots?
And how does this relate to your ability to manifest self-awareness and use self-reflection to enhance your creative projects?
Since returning to a creativity dialogue you never had as a teenager might be tricky, let’s use the IRL teens who voluntarily took part in my dissertation research.
1. The following teen comments highlight the root of your adult sense that you have a continuous, creative identity:
JS: "There's not really a moment when you're not being creative...when you think you're not being creative, you're doing something like school work, but it's not that you're not being creative, it sits in the back of your mind, it just waits, hibernates..."
N: "It's my life, It's me. Myself. Creativity is just the kind of person I am. Creativity is like what shapes me."
As an adult, these comments relate to your possible self-awareness in…
Recognizing your creative impulse even during non-creative work
Understanding when you are in or out of creative flow
And these comments relate to your possible self-reflection in…
Questioning how to maintain your creative identity alongside your professional demands
Understanding how different roles in your life either support or undermine your creative expression
2. The following teen comment highlights the root of your adult sense that you have what I call an OriginalSelf, here named the Essential Self.
O: “... once you've been to that place of pure creation and come back, you can never be the same again in your life because now you know that exists... That side of you, that essential self; you know, that imagination..."
As an adult, this comment relates to your possible self-awareness in…
Recognizing when you’re accessing your authentic, creative fingerprint
Identifying when external pressures are blocking your essential CreativeSelf
And to your possible self-reflection in…
Contemplating how life experience has shaped your creative fingerprint
Understanding the relationship between creative work and personal growth
Negotiating between commercial demands and your artistic integrity
3. The next teen comment highlights the root of your intentionality and creative choices as an adult.
S: "I don't think it's my innate ability, but just maybe a choice about how I'm living my life or trying to live it as being different from other people or being an individual."
As an adult, from this comment, you might experience self-awareness as…
Recognizing moments of creative choice vs habitual responses
Understanding when you are following some convention or breaking new ground
As this comment relates to self-reflection, you could…
Examine why you are making certain creative choices
Consider how your choices (in life) align with your artistic goals
This set of three responses, to questions about their relationship to creativity, came from seven total sets I was able to identify from the teens in my research group.
The remaining four sets were in these categories:
4) The Purpose and Necessity Of Creativity
5) Creative Development
6) The Practical Integration of Creativity Into Daily Life
7) Our Creative Mortality
I don’t know about you, but I find this level of sophisticated awareness related to creativity from these teens impressive.
What’s more astonishing, is that every one of you reading or listening to this has access to the same level of sophisticated, creative self-awareness and self-reflection through the self-activating resource and life-long ally of Your Inner Teen.
What’s Next?
I’ll tell you what, as soon as I know, I’ll send out a Substack “Note” as a preview. Tonight, it’s lights out and Happy Thanksgiving!
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Meanwhile, please …
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3. Discover why Inspiration changed from a what to a Who.
Come Meet The Goddess of Inspiration and expand your creativity: an original, guided meditation for any time you hit a roadblock or doubts are taking over.
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