As adults, when we think about creativity, we imagine giant crayons and finger paints. When we were five year olds, this was our way of expressing our creative spirit. This is also an age when we identified being an artist.

So, now that we don’t wrap our fists around a big, purple crayon–or create a turkey with our handprint–are we no longer artists? Are you no longer creative?

If we believe this, we are conflating skills and tools.

Crayons and finger paints are simply tools. We start with these simple, colorful tools, but they are not the limits of our creativity. We learn to play with the media, and these tools help us develop our skills.

We experiment with something new while learning to explore and grow. Creating our art helps us to connect what’s in our mind with something tangible. We become better at communicating our ideas and seeing how others respond to our expressions.

So, creativity is a skill. We just apply it to different tools today.

We have an opportunity to use our creativity every time we present our ideas. A sales call becomes a jazz session, riffing back and forth with your prospect. The boardroom white board becomes a blank canvas where you can draw the landscape of a new business strategy. The tools change, but we still learn to play with them and grow our abilities through them.

Also, if creativity is a skill, then it’s something you can develop. The more you work that muscle, the stronger and more adept you get. The skill of creativity enables you to experiment with new tools and skills. You learn to try things that might not work. You learn that failure is not the end. It’s an education in artistry as you learn a new “media.”

Creativity is more than a tool. It’s a skill of a lifetime.