With the holiday season upon us, you may be wondering about your own creativity, or perceived lack of it. The neighbor who makes the gorgeous decorative wreaths that put our store-bought gift to shame, or the chef who creates the festive meal for twenty people while we struggle simply to reheat and serve—surely these people have more creativity than we do.

Think again.

From decades of working with clients using nighttime dreams to develop their creativity, I can reassure you: You are far more creative than you think. In remembering even snippets of a nighttime dream, one can find many imaginative ideas for everything from art and music to solutions to daytime challenges. If you start a dream practice, taking time daily to write down these nighttime dreams and review them later, you’ll begin to appreciate a whole level of creativity within yourself that can be used in waking life.

When we talk about creativity, names like Picasso, Mozart, or even Taylor Swift come up for my clients in our discussions. After all, it is geniuses like these who populate our schoolbooks and concert halls, becoming synonymous with creativity for most of us. Indeed, their talents are categorized as what researchers Ruth Richards and Marc Runco call “Big C Creativity.”

However, everyday creativity—what these researchers refer to as “little c“—is something all of us demonstrate in small moments, often completely unaware that we are dipping into our creative processes. This everyday creativity shows up in decision making, problem solving, social interactions, and while doing business.

In other words, while John Legend........

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