The creative process is one of the most personal, intimate things someone experiences in their lifetime. It’s unique to you, and only you will know if it feels authentic or fulfilling. Doing what others do to “get into a creative space” may work to blow open an entrance into the rabbit hole, but the real gift is in the process — how YOU as an individual feel and deal with what’s poking its head out of the sand, staring at you.
What’s really happens during the creative process? It’s how we translate our surroundings, impulses, images, emotions and social/personal programming into a specific creative expression. We take these pieces and observations from the outside world, inward, as a first step. But the real gumption towards creative expression starts as you transmit this input through yourself, through your own vision and experience, knowing what to leave out because it doesn’t resonate. Sometimes you have an active choice to kick it off. Other times the creative expression comes out as it chooses, pouring through you effortlessly at any time.
Are you Willing to “Go There?”
We all have a story to tell, but are you willing to tell it? Are you willing to dig deep and see how the pieces that stick in your mind, that continue to make themselves known and visible on the surface, are begging for creative expression? They are showing up for just that reason. It’s part of what makes you unique — your view on how the bits and pieces of you tie together and come out into a formation of your making: aka creative expression.
Doesn’t matter what it looks, sounds or smells like. No need for it to make sense to anyone else or for you to share. What does matter is that you acknowledge the need and right for creative expression to emerge and wiggle its way out, somehow. Make time and space for it to peek its head through the door and zip around the page, canvas, kitchen counter, garage or whatever feels right. The options are as endless as your imagination.
The more honest you are with yourself, the deeper, more intense, more personal your creative process becomes. And in turn, it transforms you. It’s a never ending cycle of beauty and rebirth — if you let it run its’ natural, wild course.