When “I'm Not That Kind of Person” Starts Making Your Decisions

Someone tells you you're creative, and you immediately say, “Oh, I'm not creative.”

Really?

We've all had those moments when a perfectly good plan falls apart and we're left figuring out how to make something work.

Imagine you're the mom who planned an outdoor birthday party for your kid. You've bought the decorations, planned the games, and figured out how to fit a dozen kids in the backyard.

Then you wake up the morning of the party to pouring rain.

The forecast said there was a chance of showers.

Now your phone is buzzing with parents asking whether the party is still happening, the backyard looks like a swimming pool, and your kid is standing at the window watching his birthday plans fall apart.

You have two hours before everyone arrives.

So you start moving furniture.

The couch gets pushed against the wall. Blankets become a giant living-room fort, Christmas lights turn it into a campsite, and the outdoor scavenger hunt becomes a treasure hunt with clues hidden under pillows and behind furniture.

By the time the kids arrive, they're crawling through the fort, racing from room to room looking for clues, and begging to sleep in the living room that night.

Your kid is having the time of his life.

And later, when another parent tells you how creative you were to pull everything together, you laugh and say, “Oh, I'm not creative. I can't even draw a stick figure.”

Wait. What?

You just turned a rainy afternoon and a disappointed kid into a birthday party they'll probably never forget.

But I guess that doesn't count for anything because, remember… you can't draw.

Somewhere along the way, you developed a picture of what a creative person looks like.

Maybe she's an artist. She can paint something beautiful, decorate a cake that looks like it belongs in a bakery window, or walk into a craft store and know exactly what to do with everything.

Meanwhile, you remember the time you tried to recreate a Pinterest centerpiece, and by the time you finished, it looked like a raccoon that needed medical attention.

So you decided creativity wasn't really your thing.

And whenever someone suggests otherwise, you have plenty of evidence ready to prove them wrong.

You can't draw. You don't sew. You aren't particularly good at decorating.

But think about what happened at that birthday party.

You looked at a problem, imagined something that didn't exist yet, and figured out how to make it happen with what you had.

That's creativity, too.

It's remarkable how much we can overlook about ourselves simply because it doesn't match the definition we've been using.

I did this with the word leader for most of my career.

We can spend years demonstrating a quality in one form while insisting we don't possess it because we've decided it has to look a certain way.

The longer we carry that definition, the more it starts to feel like a fact.

And eventually, we stop questioning it.

But here's where that definition starts to matter.

Imagine you've always wanted to try photography.

You notice the way sunlight comes through the kitchen window in the morning. You love catching those little moments when your kids are laughing together without realizing anyone is watching. You've even thought about taking a photography class.

Then you see the class advertised.

You click on it, look through a few pictures, and start imagining what it might be like.

But almost immediately, you think, I'm not really an artistic person.

You picture everyone else walking in with expensive cameras, talking about lighting and composition, while you're standing there wondering whether you're supposed to know what all those buttons do.

So you close the page.

You tell yourself it was probably a silly idea anyway.

And the next time you see a beautiful photograph, you think about how much you'd love to be able to do that.

You never actually found out whether you'd enjoy photography. You made the decision based on a description of yourself that you accepted a long time ago.

“I'm not that kind of person” stops being a description and starts becoming a boundary.

And what's especially tricky is that it doesn't feel like you're limiting yourself.

It feels like you're being realistic.

You know what you're good at. You know what you're not. Why waste your time trying to be something you're not?

Except sometimes we confuse what we haven't done with what we're incapable of doing.

And sometimes we've been doing a version of it all along without recognizing it.

Think about what happens if you stop saying you're not creative.

Suddenly, you might have to consider trying something you've been curious about.

And trying means you might be terrible at it.

You might show up to that photography class and spend the first twenty minutes trying to figure out how to get the lens cap off, while the person next to you seems to know exactly what they're doing.

You might take fifty pictures and discover that forty-eight of them are blurry.

You might feel awkward, inexperienced, and completely out of your element.

It's a lot easier to say, “I'm just not a creative person,” and never put yourself in that position.

Sometimes those labels protect us from having to find out.

They give us a familiar explanation for why we don't pursue something, and we can move on without risking disappointment or embarrassment.

Of course, every label isn't secretly a fear. Sometimes you simply have no interest in doing something, and that's perfectly fine.

But what about the things you do want?

The ideas that keep coming back. The experiences you find yourself curious about. The opportunities that catch your attention before you remind yourself they're probably meant for somebody else.

That's where I think we have to ask a different question.

What might I have to risk if I stopped automatically ruling myself out?

Maybe you'd have to be a beginner.

Maybe you'd have to let someone see you trying something you're not good at yet.

Maybe you'd have to admit that you want something without knowing whether you'll succeed.

And maybe you'd discover that you love doing something you're only average at.

Imagine that.

Enjoying something without needing to be exceptional at it.

Our minds have a way of noticing the things that support what we already believe about ourselves.

If you've spent years saying you're not creative, you'll remember every crooked craft project and every time you struggled to come up with an idea.

Meanwhile, the birthday party you pulled together at the last minute barely registers.

You were just doing what needed to be done.

And I wonder how often we do that with other parts of ourselves.

We say we're not brave because difficult conversations still make our stomachs turn, even though we've had some of those conversations anyway.

We say we're not capable of starting something new because we've never done anything like it, overlooking all the unfamiliar situations we've already learned to navigate.

We build these pictures of ourselves, and then we make decisions based on them.

Over time, those decisions shape which experiences we have, which abilities we develop, and which possibilities we ever give ourselves a chance to explore.

That's why this matters beyond learning to give yourself a little more credit.

You can acknowledge what you still need to learn. You can recognize that some things will take practice, training, or experience.

You can even try something and discover it really isn't for you.

But wouldn't you rather discover that through experience than spend years assuming you already know?

You may have been carrying a definition of yourself that was formed years ago, before you had the experiences, perspective, or understanding you have today.

And you've been using it to make decisions about the woman you get to be now.

I wonder what might change if you looked at your life with fresh eyes and started counting the things you've been overlooking.

What have you already ruled out for yourself because you decided a long time ago that you're not that kind of woman?

🎧 Listen to Ep. 75: Why Do I Still See Myself That Way? →