The Biggest Lie You've Ever Been Sold (Part 1)

Observations and opinions that people “sell” us have an effect, but the stories that are the most powerful, or the most limiting, are the ones we “sell” to ourselves.

There are two big lies I sold myself for many years - once since I was a child, another throughout my working life. The first lie I sold myself continually was “I’m not a creative person”. I believed this for about four decades because I discovered early on that I was not exceptional at drawing.

However, when I recently decided to change this belief, I made some amazing discoveries.

One, is that creativity comes in many different forms. Creativity isn’t just about being able to paint like Picasso or design like Galliano.

I thought then, that just because I couldn’t draw a person, I therefore wasn’t artistic. Yet once I chose to believe differently, a whole new world of artistic deposits from deep within began to surface.

Now, my creativity expresses itself in different ways.

By nature, I’m a problem solver - and anyone who similarly grapples with solutions knows difficult problems require vast creative reserves.

By nature, I’m also an organiser. And by definition, an organiser finds ways to do and leave things better than they find them.

Yet the most surprising thing was this: as I began to “sell” myself the story that I was indeed creative, suddenly new and different manifestations of creativity emerged. I started writing more spontaneously, expressed my personality in different ways, and was emboldened about my own abilities in other areas as well.

(Collage by Elise Gray, Lady Grey Collections)

It was always there. It was just covered up and suppressed by my own negative perceptions about who I am. Yet simply because of a few conscious decisions, I “allowed” my creativity to surface and take shape.

Every person has an expression of creativity in their being. You might be immersed in business, technology, finance or still studying something that feels like the opposite to traditional notions of what right brain creativity ‘looks’ like.

Yet don’t be fooled - in you is an expression of creativity finding a semblance of many expressive ways, innovating industries and approaches that may shape lives and industries for many years to come. Perhaps we need to expand our vocabulary around these forces… ingenuity, innovation, genius - it will be different to what we ‘know’ as creativity, but it’s creativity nonetheless.

So if you’ve sold yourself that same lie, stop believing it and start telling yourself, and thinking to yourself and saying “I know I am creative, what an exciting journey to find out how that creativity is going to be expressed today”.

As we approach 2017, I challenge you to break free from the biggest lies you’ve ever sold yourself.

Start by flipping a recurring message on its head so that you no longer feel is your biggest weakness – then begin telling yourself that you “are” that attribute. Give yourself time and space to do this.

Re-wire your brain and reaffirm your new statement over and over for a few days, weeks or even months before your mind catches up and begins to release the evidence of the wealth that’s laying dormant within you.

Is there something you truly believe about yourself that stops you from doing what you really would love to do?

I’ll share my second lie with you in the next post… It’s a doozie that has kept me in on the sidelines for too long and I think you will relate.

Read Part 2 here