Creativity—You’re Full of It!
The American Bar Association asked me to write the introductory article for the November Issue of The Young Lawyer (one of their many magazines for attorneys). The issue is dedicated to the theme of Creativity. It’s on the streets now, so I can finally share the essay. Enjoy.
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Creativity—You’re Full of It!
By Kevin E. Houchin
You’re full of it! You really are. There’s no way that I’m the first person to tell you. You can’t deny it. You’re full of it up to your eyebrows.
Full of creativity. You were born with it. You are made of wonderful, delicious, colorful, smelly, heaping globs of creativity!
As a child, your humanity burned with the divine spirit of creativity. You imagined games. You imagined friends. And, you even created vivid experiences that existed only in your mind but existed nonetheless.
Then, you went to school.
You learned to live by other peoples’ rules and their ideas of how and what you “should” be. Walls grew that blocked your view of those wonderful places in your imagination. Those walls grew until finally the creativity of your heart, spirit, and right brain were all but abandoned in favor of subjects that could be objectively tested with multiple-choice exams and computer-graded bubble sheets.
Then, you went to law school.
Your walls were adorned with thorns and you were not even allowed to have ideas of your own. Any creativity you were allowed to display was carefully disguised as nuanced synthesis of precedent (other people’s ideas—the older and less original the better).
It felt like you had suddenly become unworthy of being the source of an idea or thought. You felt like a slave to a footnote or maybe like a footnote yourself.
But, you’re not in law school anymore. Now, you’re the only “source” that really matters. Your senior partner may determine your job status and salary, but you get to decide how much credibility to give those things.
If you’re feeling trapped in a job that doesn’t allow you to express your creativity, you have the power to change that. You don’t have to leave your job to feel more fulfilled. Rather, start chopping through the thorns and breaking down the walls that decades of education have placed around your creative spirit. Trust me, you can do this and still be an effective lawyer. It may even be the secret prerequisite to a happy and satisfied life in the law.
There’s no simple seven-step process to recovering your creative spirit. The journey is different for each of us. A simple start is to look for creative opportunities that already surround you. You happen to be holding one of them in your hand. This issue of The Young Lawyer is dedicated to helping lawyers recognize opportunities for expressing creativity in their lives and work. Use it to jumpstart ideas for creative outlets that you would enjoy. Paint, play music, sail, climb, write, spend time with family, do community service, sing—do something other than work.
It’s time to start living a more creative life. Read these articles. Fuel your spark of creativity, and then share your flame. You’re full of it!
Lawyers & Elevator Speeches
The fine folks at the Colorado Bar Association shared this short clip from my Fuel the Spark: 5 Guiding Values for Success CLE presentation in March with The Learned Lawyer Website.
This clip is really more of a marketing hint than a legal ethics or law practice hint and is worth thinking about no matter what business you happen to conduct.
Elevator Speech for Lawyers from The Learned Lawyer – CBA-CLE on Vimeo.
Fuel the Spark: 5 Guiding Values for Success in Law & Life to Publisher
I sent the files for the Practicing Attorney version of Fuel the Spark to Morgan James Publishing today. It should be available in early March.
I’m very excited about this book for several reasons. One is that Alexis Neely wrote the forward. The second is that I’ll be doing the first of what I hope is a regular Continuing Legal Education Ethics workshop based on the content of the book.
Oh, here’s the cover layout:
Personal purpose statement:
“My purpose is to help as many people as I can reach as much of THEIR potential as THEY can.”
How can we help?
How many people do you know that are not having any fun in their jobs? How many people have no passion in their life? How many people do you know who are chronically depressed, passing their days in a state of quiet desperation? We all know people who are affluent, but not happy. Racing around all day chasing one’s job is not fulfilling. People want a way to live while they’re alive, yet many feel trapped. They don’t know how to create the happiness they believe they deserve. What a waste. What a shame. What a tragedy.
We can’t let this continue. We have such potential. YOU have huge potential. Are you reaching it? Why are we here in this lifetime except to reach our full potential? Yet we know so many people how haven’t engaged in their lives yet. There is no way they can reach their potential if they can’t even recognize that they HAVE potential. It’s painful. But how can we help?
How can we help?
There is one POWEFUL way to help, and that is through helping people recognize and fueling the spark of divinity within each of us. We fuel that spark, build that passion, in one way, through creativity. Creativity is the process of making the world a better place because we were here. Small improvements count. Creativity at any level, making the world just a little better is still a divine act. And, huge success comes from helping a lot of people be a little bit happier.
Creativity is the most powerful force on earth. If you believe Dan Pink’s hypothesis in the best-selling A Whole New Mind, then you subscribe to the theory that creative, intuitive, right brain thinking will be the primary competitive advantage for American business in the coming decades. I believe that reality is already upon us.
I’m blessed to be a counselor and attorney to creative people. My clients include among others a woman who channels an archangel, fine artists, musicians, advertising agencies, internet gurus, authors, publishers, design studios, architects, consulting groups, apparel companies, software companies, and biotechnology companies. The common thread through all these clients–the filter through which they have to pass before we match up as attorney and client is one thing: creativity. My clients know they are creating something good. They’re bringing something valuable into this world and they are graciously asking my help with the business and intellectual property aspects of their projects. The fact that I earned a fine art undergraduate degree in graphic design and spent over a dozen years working in and with branding campaigns attending law school adds to my credibility and approachability in the eyes of my clients.
I tell each of them that my purpose and commitment is to help as many people as I can to recognize the spark of divinity within them, which is ONLY fueled by creating something good and positive. People interested more in profit than in progress need not apply, and people who say they are trying to do good, but in the end are really only in it for the money usually select out of my client pool.
When we embrace the creative spark within each of us, we embrace our purpose in life and figure out why we’re alive and on this planet. I’m compelled to write these posts to help the people with great ideas understand the business and intellectual property aspects of making a living by fueling that divine creative spark. I’m compelled to write these posts to help people who are in danger of having that spark suffocated by their cubicles break out of the dead spot and fuel their spark by bringing more creativity to their current work, or empowering them to embrace their creativity and bring it to the world in some other manner.
I hope people who these posts will find hope that they can escape the feeling of being trapped. I hope they will find the tools to escape, the knowledge to engage, and the confidence to take action.
This series of posts combines my background as a spiritual seeker and teacher, artist, designer, marketing executive, entrepreneur, and yes – lawyer. It has elements of entrepreneurial business, spiritual inspiration, motivation, and self-help. Please feel free to engage in dialog about these posts by posting comments.
In related news: Business Week
The current BusinessWeek cites new research talking about how it’s not all right-brain skill that lead to success. The article doesn’t talk specifically about lawyers, but it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to understand how this research applies to law school. Here’s a quote:
“A new study concludes that social skills can be a better predictor of future earnings than test scores are. Christy Lleras, a University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign sociologist, analyzed data from the National Educational Longitudinal Study of 1988, tracking 11,000 students from 10th grade until 10 years after their high school graduation. Her work, published in September’s Social Science Research, found that pupils described by teachers as conscientious, motivated, and able to relate well to peers and adults earned an average $3200 more yearly than those with equally good test scores but poorer social skills. Lleras says many socially adept students were helped by joining in team sports or other activities. It makes sense, she says, that in a service economy, ‘people with social skills will be much better equipped to navigate.’”
Unless you’re planning to work in a sealed cube, being a lawyer is definitely a “service” business.
Betsy Gutting on Fuel the Spark
[caption id="attachment_69" align="alignleft" width="180" caption="Bettsy Gutting"]
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To know yourself is to create a pathway to happiness in both your work and
your life. Fuel the Spark: Five Guiding Values is a powerful tool for putting heart and soul into your law practice. I recommend it to any law student who
strives to live authentically and on purpose.
Betsy Gutting, J.D.
J Kim Wright on Fuel the Spark
“The prescription law students need.”
J. Kim Wright J.D.
Publisher and Managing Editor
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About Kevin
Kevin E. Houchin is an attorney, artist, teacher, author, and principal of
Houchin & Associates, P.C. , a copyright, trademark, arts & entertainment,
business development, and branding firm located in Fort Collins, Colorado.
To schedule Kevin for keynote speeches, workshops, or seminars, call 970-493-1070
or email
kevin.houchin@houchinlaw.com.
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