I've hear this way too often:

"I"m not creative."

Well let me renounce this type of proclamation with a quick story:

About ten years ago I'm working at a dot-com start up in a creative director positon. I need an idea and I'm talking to one of the smart IT guys and he gives me a pearl of an idea: simple, elegant, perfect -- creative to the T.

And then he says, "But what do I know, you're the creative one."

This moment has stayed with me as a whisper, a temptation to wonder: What would people do with their working days, their daily lives, their yearly goals if they saw themselves as innately creative?

Imagine if everyone woke up in the morning and went through the day believing they had access to a creative state that they could harness whenever they wanted to -- what would your life look like?

My credo is: If you breathe, you're creative.

Being creative isn't about being an artiste. It's about how you express yourself that is uniquely you, and rising to your full potential to move through this chaotic, messy, wonderful, heartbreaking and exhilerating experience of life.

So, as you consider your bad-ass creative self, I'd like to give you a list of all the things you do that are creative. Why? Because you are always creating something: an act, a product, an expression, a thought. And it's all you. Some acts are more creative than others. And leveraging that creativity is when life comes more easily, we have breakthroughs, we communicate more flexibily with others and we just have more goddamn fun.

Here are all the ways you are being creative in your work and life:

Walking down the street

Having a conversation

Balancing your checkbook

Managing other people's money

Staring at your screaming kid and wondering what to do now

Figuring out how to write that email to your boss worded in just the right way

Lying in bed at night chasing your thoughts

Reading a book

Taking a photo or posing for one

Having a really bad day or week or even year and reaching for all the ways you can get through it

Giving someone a hug. Receiving a hug. 

Cooking a meal or walking up and down the grocery aisles

Getting out of bed in the morning

Getting dressed

Driving around town

Saying hello to a stranger you walk by on the street

Picking up the phone to call a good friend

Writing your status on Facebook

Buttering your bread

Reading this

Breathing