Get Your Creative Juices Flowing
Creativity is in everyone, everyone is creative. It’s just that for some of us that creative spark may be buried under responsibilities, negative feelings, and old stories where we tell ourselves that we aren’t any good.
Creativity needs to be given a chance at life, remember when you were a kid and would get out the crayons and colour, you would draw your home and family, you would make furniture for your dolls.
Creativity is still in you, it just may be buried.
There are many simple—and fun—ways to let your creativity loose, whether you’re interested in nurturing your hobbies or your business. You can apply creativity to any endeavor or craft.
Don’t wait for inspiration to strike. Sometimes good ideas just pop into our heads (write those down). But more often, it takes effort. You can’t sit and wait for a brilliant idea to come along, you’ve got to start building up your creative discipline. Spend time pursuing creativity, ideally everyday.
Practice “creative grazing.” Pay attention to a lot of different ideas and perspectives. When you are shopping, or talking to others, or online. Take notes, even take pictures. Then every few weeks or months, the “creative grazing” turns into some fun exciting creative endeavours when you take those ideas, colour schemes and pictures and turn them into your own projects.
Respond to a need. “Necessity is the mother of invention. A need or problem encourages creative efforts to meet the need or solve the problem.” -Plato
When things aren’t working out for you, than is the time to get your creative problem solving hat on. You don’t have an umbrella and it’s raining, what can you use? Your corkscrew breaks just as company is walking in the door, how can you open the wine?
Maybe the problems are bigger and you can work out a way to solve it, so many companies are started by people seeing a need in their own life and solving it, and then sharing it with others. Let’s start with solving a need of your own.
Make time for creating. It seems like such a simple answer but carving time out for creative adventures can easily be shuffled down the list of priorities. We often put off what we think of as play time, but creativity is so important for our emotional and mental well being.
Fitting creativity into your life, whether it’s 15 minutes or several hours, has far-reaching effects. When feeling frustrated or overwhelmed by to-do’s, make space for being creative. Whether you come out of it with a painting, a pot holder, or a page of writing you are refreshed and ready to focus on other things with renewed clarity.
Schedule time if you need to, but definitely take time.
Learn from others. Study the people who do what you want to do. Learn something new, learn things for the sake of learning but also learn things to become better and more confident at it.
Remember that you will not be at the same place as them, don’t be hard on yourself. Just keep working on it until you are as good (or better).
Set limits. While creativity needs room to breathe, setting limits also is valuable. Narrowing what’s available to you forces you to try new things, and think creatively. Perhaps you photograph only textures, write only 200 words, or cook only local, seasonal foods.
Change mediums. Think of changing mediums as “creative cross-training”. If you usually write prose, try poetry. If you paint, try pastels or pencil. If you do crossword puzzles, try Sudoku. You can almost always learn something that you can bring back to your usual medium.
Seek out inspiration. Your imagination is powerful, but it needs fresh ideas. Engaging in activities that inspire you, such as visiting a museum, attending a live concert, reading your favorite author, taking in a sunset will all help your creativity soar.
Have an amazingly creative day,
Larissa
