11 'Weaknesses' Creative People Have That Are Actually Their Strengths
If you live long enough, you'll realize that life boils down to a distinct number of choices. Life isn't about fate, destiny or divine intervention; it's a stream of conscious decisions.
For creative individuals, life is making the choice to be cold and uncomfortable while your contemporaries are warm and well-fed. It’s the choice to deny the desk job in the pursuit of the dream job. It's the choice to go with the unpopular option.
Creatives don't deny it. Everything they've done has been a choice, whether willing or not.
They’ve chosen to be destitute, ignored and knocked down. They’ve chosen to go against the grain, to be acquaintances of rejection and disapproval -- from their parents, peers and the society in which they’ve been forced into squalor and solitude.
Most importantly, they’ve chosen to be what some people would call "eccentric."
Usually, they’ve chosen this life after they couldn’t bear a life on the other side -- a life of a silenced inner voice and a soulless job market.
Much like their peers and contemporaries, creatives’ lives are defined by their choices. Unlike their contemporaries, though, their choices have given them freedom -- in their tiny houses, their second-hand clothes, the ridicule they endure.
Of course, freedom comes with a certain amount of contention. People look at creatives and see their choices as wrong.
They think that what makes them creative is also what makes them outcast from society. Society believes that these habits are downfalls, that they keep them from succeeding in a modern day world. They think that creatives don’t choose their lives; they're failing at them.
What they don't know is that these "downfalls" are actually strengths.
1. Getting bored easily
It’s not that creatives can’t hold down a job. They just refuse to hold on to anything that weighs them down.
Monotony is a death sentence, and creatives would rather be broke than bored. They’d rather experience the fear and anticipation of 100 new jobs than the ache of one unchallenging career.
2. Having busy minds
When you’re all over the place, you’re less likely to get stuck in one. What others see as an inability to focus, creatives see as an ability to entertain multiple interests and passions.
They say that an intelligent person is an interested one. Creatives are the people willing to take the time to explore new cultures, places and ideas.
3. Taking too many risks
So many people are averse to any risk that they'll remain stuck in a tired routine for years.
While these people refuse to take risks and go out on a limb, creatives are putting eggs in multiple baskets, treading that fine line and reaping the fruits of the far-out branches.
4. Letting their intuition make their decisions
What others see as sporadic and uneducated guesses, creatives see as the guiding force to every decision in their life. They have the strength to trust their gut and follow what feels right, not what looks right.
5. Making mistakes
It’s no secret that the life of the creative one is riddled with failure and mistakes. They might make hundreds of tiny mistakes in a day.
But a million tiny failures also mean a million tiny triumphs. When one thing fails, something else is born. Creatives have learned to turn their mistakes into opportunities.
6. Questioning the rules
Why take things at face value when you know everything has more than one face? Creatives dare to look beyond the rules. They don’t accept society the way it’s presented, and they refuse to do things "the right way."
7. Being independent thinkers
When you think for yourself, you're thought of as difficult and insubordinate. A free mind is a threatening one, and the easiest way to lock it down is to label it as wild and unreliable.
What others don’t realize, however, is that "crazy" is just a harsh word for "genius."
8. Being viewed as eccentric
We have a weird interpretation of the word "eccentric." People use it to be derogatory or slandering; it's gained a a negative connotation.
But what does it really mean to be eccentric? Unconventional? Strange? Why are these words bad? What’s so wrong about being one in a million?
9. Frequently changing their minds
Creatives have an active mind, so they tend to make decisions actively. Unlike most people, they don't remain stuck with indecision, refusing to remove forward (or backward).
They aren't scared to make a decision for fear of it being the wrong one. They'd rather take 20 steps to the right, left, back and front just to know they're moving at all.
10. Dreaming too much
Dreaming isn't the antonym of success. It's the root of it.
Dreamers are scorned for being too far away from reality to achieve anything within it. But only those who dare to leave the planet come up with real solutions for it.
Creatives just need time and support. Their dreams are worth something, which you'll realize when you stop seeing them as nonsense.
11. Having fun all the time
No creative will ever take a job that has no passion. Because they think of their jobs as their lives, they want their jobs to be fun.
Creatives will take work to support themselves. But in the end, they want the job that's going to sustain and fulfill them -- a job that's fun.
Until then, they'll just keep letting you take all the sh*tty ones.
