Creative choices can carry a lot of emotional weight. Some of them are the pivotal, life-changing choices you remember because they highlight the ways you decided to honor your true self or turn away from what you really wanted to create in order to play it safe, avoid confrontation or out of sheer fear of success. Creative choices are also easy to romanticize; to dig into and exploit the inherent emotional trigger points that allow you to celebrate or judge yourself over and over … [Read more...]
Waiting for Someone Else to Validate your Creativity?
Creativity is such a personal thing, a unique, individual expression of your deepest self shaped by life experiences, desires, hidden patterns and areas of healing. It’s this personal self-discovery process through creative acts that builds you up, tunes the creative voice and exposes your soft spots, showing you where the biggest areas of growth and joy can be found as you explore your path. So in this very personal process, why do we often look for others to validate our creative … [Read more...]
Creativity Kick-Start: Busting Through Creative Doubt
Creative doubt is the great equalizer. Everyone has faced tough choices that require deep clarity and courage, wondered if the path ahead is really the right direction or doubted if the opportunity to share the deep, beautiful creative parts of you in a way that’s meaningful and appreciated will ever materialize. Maybe you’ve worked towards something all your life only to still doubt if it’s truly right for you, or keep pushing back against the small, faint voice in your heart by … [Read more...]
Managing Demands on your Creative Time
It’s no secret that life requires you to manage demands on your creative time. Projects take longer than expected, plans go sideways and people change their minds and hearts- which means you need to expand and contract with the creative flow of the present moment. While this sounds reasonable from the mind’s point of view, it doesn’t mean you aren’t entitled have an emotional reaction to sudden changes, or the right to get frustrated when people keep demanding more than … [Read more...]
Creativity Kick-Start: Tips to Identify and Tame Creative Distractions
Playfulness and an open mind are key creative tools that fuel new ideas, and can also lure you towards interesting creative distractions. There’s a delicate balance you need to cultivate and hone that keeps you open-hearted and aware of new sparks of ideas, but at the same time disciplined enough to take consistent action towards something tangible. It starts with truly knowing yourself and how to work with or avoid the little things that can easily turn a string of … [Read more...]
What’s your Eye Candy? Use it to Spark Creative Inspiration
The phrase “eye candy” is more than a silly euphemism, it’s a great way to describe how powerful images can spark creative inspiration. Colors, nature, pretty clothes, cuddly critters or pictures of mouth-watering food you can almost smell through the screen - each apply pressure to your creative nerve in different ways. Whether it’s a nudge or a full-body, zombie-like trance depends on how in tune you are with what inspires you, and if you are spending time in places that feed your creative … [Read more...]
Creativity Kick-Start: How to Rethink Creative Opportunities
The new year is a built-in invitation to look at everything with a fresh set of eyes, but it’s also a chance to rethink creative opportunities left over from last year. Are there some half-baked ideas still hanging out in the back of your mind? Any current ideas that feel played out and uninspired? What about projects that involve collaborators and shared paths? Do they still feel like a fit? It’s human nature to want to scrap the old and start over once you get a whiff of … [Read more...]