On the rearranging of disagreeable ways:

Creativity has nothing to do with the act of creating or invention. It is not solely artistic but the best art certainly interacts intimately with the idea of creativity. Creativity is kind of a misnomer for the ability to see something in many different ways. It's divergent thinking. Its resourcefulness. It's cleverness. At its best, creativity allows us to make the most of what we have.

In order to decide how you can make the most of what you have, you have to be able to see different ways of how to do best by what you have. For example, if you have a towel and you can only imagine it to be a device used to dry off wet things, you are limited in a situation in which you need something to serve as a pillow but only have a towel. (That example was inspired by The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.)

On the other hand, using a towel as a pillow is a creative use of a towel. An increasing amount of imagination is required to see an object or situation in increasingly unconventional ways, considered to be more creative ways. It's not that you have to accept that believing a towel is a device used to dry off wet things is a wrong conceptualization of a towel, but you have to accept that in a situation in which you have a towel and need something that is not a towel, the towel can and must be thought of differently.

As a poor kid, I accepted that fact. First, you look around you and see that what you have is not quite what you want and sometimes not even what you need. You must then fully understand what you want/need and what you have. Then, you have to accept that what you have is not some kind of punishment. It does not matter if you have been wronged or if you deserved better. If you feel like your limited situation is a punishment, at least face the toil of having to be creative as your penance. If you feel you have been wronged, embrace the toil as something that will make you stronger and prove you to be more resilient than those who have wronged you would have imagined. Sometimes, you are your own disciplinarian or have done yourself wrong to land yourself in your situation. Maybe you deserved it. Good for you. But now you have to learn from it and, as always, make the best of what you have.

As I just implied, you have to exercise creativity even in non-material circumstances. Exercising it in material circumstances can help you conserve resources but being able to exercise creativity when you are depressed, for example, can save your life. I have demonstrated a dangerous ease for depressive proclivities. However, if I think to myself that my depression can be solved by a change in perspective, that there must be a better way to look at things or a better attitude to have towards them and cling to that conviction, I have found myself able to recover without ever having used mood enhancing drugs.

It's only in the context of creativity that the expression "Pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps" really makes any sense.