It is not always easy to be creative and connected to our “source” that is providing us with inspiration and solutions…
Sometimes we face periods in our lives when we do not have any problem to create, come up with interesting ideas and thoughts, and perceive a more “colorful” world.
But at other times, it seems we are going through a “dead season”: nothing works out and despite our search for where things went wrong, we cannot find out why we are stuck..
But all of us have the opportunity to step back into being, experiencing present moment without wanting anything else. We can take back responsibility for creating our life. Because our mind creates it, we can take care of our mind, our set up.
Sometimes it is good to stop everything and dive deeper to find out how our mind, identity, was created before we started creating our life from this point.
Whatever is the trigger, i believe you are reading this article because you wish to live somehow more creatively.
Sometimes a life event can be the trigger: something brutally stops working, we do not manage anymore, and everything falls apart. Losing our job, a sickness, our love one or any other major change can lead us towards the desire to live in a different way and possibly to live more creatively.
In my psychological practice I quite often face people who feel as if they lost their joy of life, the higher meaning to their existence.
The desire to do things differently somehow vanished and they do not feel happy about this loss. They can feel the impact of routine and the weight of reality, where each and every one has to make a living and secure their family.
Social statuses, children education, loans … there is a big pressure on the need to success, on being inventive to find ways to make ends meet. On the contrary, I have the feeling that not many discussions tackle the topics of effective motivation and creativity development that could heighten productivity of managers thanks to self-growth, self- knowing.
And here we are not even talking about rare cases where someone has the chance of having a truly fulfilling job that motivates him for better results.
All this lead me to the idea that to reconnect with creativity one should maybe start caring more about their “inner playful child”.
Kids are creative and curious by nature and rather than allowing the latter skills to be lost because of cultural and sociological reasons, one should fight back against institutions putting too much emphasis on results and performances.
But what is creativity?
Lots of theories extensively cover the topic but I believe everybody is able to find resources about creativity for himself (I will provide a single reference here in the person of Csikszenmihaly who developed the “flow” theory about creativity).
But what can be done practically when we get into a situation of block, realizing that we want to live differently and more creatively?
I am often talking with clients about their “sources”, from which they can draw inspiration in difficult situations. That is why we focus on those and try to identify them together. It is ideal when this takes place in a proactive approach of self-development, not being in an actual demanding situation.
The source consists of “rituals”, common everyday life things about which we take for granted and are not conscious of anymore but still which have a calming effect and which bring positive energy.
The quest for those sources can sometimes be an adventure (not all of us are fully aware of what makes us feel good so it might require some time for observation).
The most important and first step for any change is vision. To try to recall dreams, fantasies, what we wanted to become, who we wanted be and who we were when we were little, in order to realize what acted as a block.
All of us have in our bodies supressed emotions, all of us were in certain level deprived of our needs as children and it is very good to work with our bodies and listen to our wisdom to process all those.
Because exactly those emotions and believes connected with them could play big part in our block to create.
Limits imposed by parents, school, where our limiting beliefs about ourselves are? All this is good in identifying why we stopped on the path to fulfilling our dreams.
It is not always that “dramatic”, small things are important to acknowledge: what kind of job we wanted to do a destination we wanted to go, a personality trait we wished for…
I believe that it is good to revise those dreams, write them down, look at how they changed and how we actually want things to be now.
he second step is to continuously keep working on self-knowing and self-awareness. We are not simply who we consider ourselves to be but we bear experiences and things deep inside which sometimes we do not even want to be aware of: our unconsciousness.
It never stops working and sometimes can reveal itself in dreams, through creation, a slip of the tongue or an incorrect utterance.
Illnesses of body and mind can be other signs that our unconscious is still active even though we believe everything is under control.
So that is why paying attention to it every day might be helpful to prevent this from manifesting when we do not want it to.
One of the methods to concentrate on our unconscious is to write a journal every day, jot down anything that comes to mind, experiences from the day, ideas, forgotten dreams.
By keeping a daily pace, devoting oneself again and again to free writing, what we are feeling, where in body we experience certain sensations and what emotions are awaken with them in us.
This way we can find out even our thinking about our selves. Who we are considering to be. How we think about ourselves.
Often the roots we find out back in childhood. But coming back to our past and becoming responsible for those forgotten parts of ourselves is often at least on beginning better to do with psychotherapist.
But in your journal, you can as well write about what you really want in life, how you wish to live… and things start moving and evolving within few weeks.
Another method to achieve the healing of our inner child and creativity is to allow time for you, to enable the outside world’s inspiration to soak in, to remark and notice beautiful, interesting things or moments, the beauty of the nature.
Why not give yourself the goal to observe and see, no, look at the world differently, freshly? Practice that regularly and write down some of the things you perceive.
Devote time to your “truthful” self, the sleeping curious and naive child that was once in you. Do things without any reason, not because of the result and consequence but rather for the pleasure of spontaneity that defines you, that makes you be.
A walk in nature, playing with snips, papers. I believe each of us can remember how we kept busy and were able to play with anything as kids.
Another method to achieve the healing of our inner child and creativity is to allow time for you, to enable the outside world’s inspiration to soak in, to remark and notice beautiful, interesting things or moments, the beauty of the nature.
Why not give yourself the goal to observe and see, no, look at the world differently, freshly? Practice that regularly and write down some of the things you perceive.
Devote time to your “truthful” self, the sleeping curious and naïve child that was once in you. Do things without any reason, not because of the result and consequence but rather for the pleasure of spontaneity that defines you, that makes you be.
A walk in nature, playing with snips, papers. I believe each of us can remember how we kept busy and were able to play with anything as kids.
A really good tool to stimulate our creativity is to list actions or things we enjoy, what fulfills and interests us. Write those as a column and match each of them with the last time you actually did them.
We might thereafter commit to doing these activities we liked on a regular basis. A call for action in a sense.
By simply trying to do things slightly differently, by changing the perspective, be fully in the present moment, devote yourself in playing, making up new ideas… there are no limits, creativity is everywhere, the only place where it is not is in routine.
