Meaning can follow action. We don’t always need to know why before we begin.

Making is a form of discovery. Creative action can reveal what matters to us.

Creativity reshapes identity. What we create can change how we understand ourselves.

Uncertainty can be productive. Sometimes clarity only becomes possible after we act.

The Trap of Finding Yourself

We spend years trying to discover who we are—everything from astrology to therapy. We collect labels that we identify with: extrovert, artistic, spiritual, and more. These labels may contain some truth about our temperament, history, and what we take to be our experience, but when our description becomes our destiny, we may find danger. Our identity becomes our constraint.

Over 30 years ago, I coined the term creativizing from observing people who added creativity to everyday activities. I felt we needed a more active term to describe the dynamic act of creating as applied to the most ordinary activity: washing the dishes, walking the dog, writing a note to an old friend. It’s more than just adaptation. It’s the active engagement with the circumstances at hand. A disappointment can become a new direction. An unexpected interest could become a new pursuit. An old, worn-out belief could be a new possibility.

Over the years, the idea evolved. I began to see how the process of creativizing not only brought new ideas and pathways into the world, but also changed the people who were creativizing— the things we create create us. The implication is a completely different understanding of our identity. We don’t discover it. We create it.

The Self Is Raw Material

“Finding yourself,” that Summer of Love chestnut,........

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