5 Creativity Myths and How to Recover from Them: Myth No. 1

Hey everyone! I’m launching a miniseries here this month called 5 Creativity Myths and How to Recover from Them.

Because why not start 2026 off by debunking some bogus stuff? Always fun. Well…always helpful.

With that, let’s dive in.

Myth No. 1: Creativity is magic, not a muscle.

Creativity often gets treated like some sort of ethereal gift. You got it. Or you don’t got it.

If you got it, you’ve got to work it.

And if you don’t got it, don’t bother trying to get better.

But this sort of mindset leads to wonky responses on all sides. Ironically, I can speak to both sides (the Haves and the Have-Nots, as I am affectionately naming us), because while I may look effortlessly creative now, I was not a shoo-in automatically as a kid. I didn’t completely suck. But I wasn’t a prodigy on sight either.

From my pre-creative days, I’d sit in art classes and watch the kids with the perfect drawings get praised around me. And thus, the room split into the Haves and the Have-Nots. I’d hear my fellow mediocre compatriots get irritated immediately.

"Show off."

"Look at theirs."

"I suck."

"Dang it."

"I'm not even going to try."

The splitting would set in immediately and be almost impossible to break for the rest of the class. And I hated it.

Magic Comes with Limits

I already hit on one of the side effects of treating creativity as magic: we put ourselves into one of two camp––those that got it, and those that don’t.

But there's another problem:

When creativity gets treated as magic, we also intuitively box it in as something very specific.

AKA "art."

True creativity expands well beyond the academic labels of the arts. And while the classic mediums of painting, acting, cooking, sewing, and drawing obviously involve creativity, we’ve got to expand our understanding of what creativity is. And that’s a little hard when we’ve designated it as magic.

Magic Happens to You. You Don't Have to Do Anything to Grow It.

Harry Potter fans might disagree with that statement. But hang with me, Hogwarts fans.

Most of us, if something is intuitive, don’t work as hard at it as we could at it to get better. Not throwing shade. Just speaking from personal experience.

When I was a swimmer, we got a team shirt that read:

And there’s a lot of truth in that. Creativity-as-magic means the ones who got it don’t have to work hard to keep it. And the ones that don’t have it don’t have hope of developing it.

But there is a different way of thinking about creativity—not as magic, but as a muscle.

When Creativity Gets Treated Like a Muscle

You’ve got muscles, right? I mean, I hope something’s keeping your eyelids open. And that that something is not tape.

Anyway.

Creativity as a muscle forces us to ask different types of questions. Muscles can be strengthened. Muscles can also atrophy. Muscles require challenge to grow. Muscles also need time to recover.

With magic, creativity becomes this vague ability we can’t really grasp, and we can’t specifically train beyond discipline-specific skills.

And while growing in a discipline is valuable and necessary (I’ve learned many different mediums myself), the core of what creativity is can often be dismissed.

Creativity is deeper than making beautiful shapes.

It’s definitely more than your right brain.

And it is not magic.

It's a muscle.

And the good news about it being a muscle is that means it can be trained.

And yes, I said trained. Hang with me.

A Challenge to the Haves

Whether you’ve gotten awards, made your living being “creative,” or have been called a prodigy all your life, chances are high that beyond the skills needed to get your creative work done, you haven’t had anyone help you with the deeper creative muscles beneath your productivity.

See, as modern-day folks, we often care about what we make way more than how we make it.

Or how the way we create shapes us, right?

My challenge to you would be to dig deeper. Dig into your relationship with creativity. Have you treated it like magic? What would it look like to pivot from a magic mindset to viewing it as a muscle? What needs to grow? What needs to heal?

A Challenge to the Have-Nots

Turns out, with this whole creativity-as-a-muscle thing, you’re not off the hook either.

Creativity didn’t magically pass you over. Creativity is in you. It simply needs to be developed.

And chances are high that you’re creative in a capacity outside of the arts. Maybe you’re innovative in a STEM field. Maybe you can reimagine busted systems and make them flow more smoothly—or actually make them work for the first time ever.

And if you’re like me, maybe you’ll grow into both.

I flex my creative muscles as a graphic designer.

And I flex them as a business owner.

It’s all creativity. And it all flows from my creative muscles. No magic involved.

Catch y'all next time with another myth.

Sincerely,

Sarah

If you want support strengthening your creative muscles (and unlearning some of these myths along the way), creative coaching is one of the ways I work with people one-on-one.