Articles helping you increase your creativity
“If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you, If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.”
I used to believe that I shouldn’t sit down to write unless I had a compelling vision of what I’d say. Unfortunately, this attitude was the reason why, for many years, I didn’t do any creative writing. Sure, I wrote a lot, but only when somebody else (1) gave me a subject to write about and (2) was willing to pay me a bunch of money or give me a good grade.
Talking about creativity and passion go hand in hand. It is far easier to be creative when you have passion. What is passion? My favorite definition is Boundless Enthusiasm. If you wake up in the morning excited, or are kept awake at night with ideas and plans and dreams, well you have found your passion.
Every day, we see new problems arise that have some effect on our lives. As members of a community, we can ignore them, which many do, or we can, as other pioneers in the past, explore them and come up with a method to live with our challenge or we can change our environment to cope with the new predicament.
This article was inspired by a dialogue that I had with someone who commented on one of my blog posts. The post was about the resources that were required for Creativity. The person was looking for a definitive manual, a list of everything that they would need and the steps that they would need to go through. On reflection, my reply was probably less than helpful, but in a roundabout way I indicated that no such thing existed.
A glass can hold iced coffee (my favorite), orange juice, diet soda, vodka or sludge water. The glass doesn’t care. The glass can also hold vinegar, lemon juice, salt water or pickling brine, it makes no difference to the glass.
Have you ever thought about the child you used to be and how as you developed into adulthood that child inside you changed and evolved? Yet some of that inner child always remains inside you and if you wish to be more creative it can be a useful exercise to access that child again.
Nike made famous the slogan “Just Do It!” that got us all moving…and now I’m proposing we try the opposite slogan – “Just Do Nothing”.
Creativity comes mostly from our dream state. Invention, ideas and artist images are seeded in our dreams. When you awake in the morning take time to reflect on your dreams and see if you can bring some of that world into this one. You will be amazed at how many wonderful ideas you will get while asleep and dreaming. It is great practice to keep a dream journal by your bed so that when you awake you can jot down what you remember. Many people complain that they do not remember their dreams. Well that is because it takes practice. Every time you awake concentrate on remembering. It may take a moment but you will come back to the dream state and remember bits and pieces or whole segments of your dream. Practice makes perfect. We are being taught lessons during our sleep so our lifestyle can improve. We are also getting warnings about what to do and what not to do in life. We are also being rejuvenated during our dreams to increase our creative flow. Many inventors have claimed that they “dreamed” their inventions. Einstein was a known day dreamer who could think of major inventions in a flash of thought. Salvidor Dali was known to paint images he saw in the dream state.
(Wo)men entrepreneurs know that success is less about strategy and more about centering and intentional action. We also know that it is not about overnight success, but the realization of creative breakthroughs that show up on our journey, at unexpected moments and places, when we blend heart, mind and spirit. A way of being, honoring and realizing a relationship with ourselves and infinite possibility.
