What comes to mind when you hear the phrase improve creative output?
A spark of prolific creative ideas and hours of non-stop writing? A clear vision of the strides you are making on a business or passion project? Good progress on a life goal or building healthy habits? Or something else entirely?
Clearly knowing what creative output means to you and why it’s valuable sets the stage for how you can open up to more, and increase your energy as a creative channel.
According to Shakti Gawain (and I agree with her), “a creative channel is simply being fully and freely yourself and consciously knowing that you are a vehicle for the creativity of the universe.” The creative expression can be in any form or fashion, and has far reaching influence on joy-levels, health, relationships, project or business, artistic talents, passions and more.
Therefore, to be the most powerful creative channel, and improve creative output in all areas of life, starts with going inward.
You must understand what needs to be cleared away and what needs to be put in place to enhance the way you hear your own creative spirit.
Taking the Plunge Inside
The title of this post reads like a bit of a riddle to serve as a reminder that pushing, stretching and doing more is not always the way to stronger, more authentic creative expression.
Going inward reveals what every person who wants to be more creative needs to know – how to better understand yourself, quirks and gut feelings while discerning valuable thoughts from ego noise.
The more you allow yourself to open as a channel for your own creative inspiration and intuitive guidance, the better you can create from a natural, more expanded space in a way that simply flows.
Taking the plunge inside also enables you to get to what’s true for you, and helps you release:
- Outdated values, shifting away from what you were taught to value and towards what you truly value from a heart-centered place
- Old beliefs that keep you stuck, leave you wanting, or limit what you think is possible to create
- Repressed anger and frustration
- Societal belief systems that no longer resonate
- Thought forms like self-criticism, worry, the “shouldas” and more
When you are tuning in to what are you feeling on a regular basis, and honoring what comes up through time alone, self-care and acknowledgement, there’s a very clear “side-effect”. You can…
- Save time and energy
- Build focus on what’s in alignment
- Clearly see what is out of alignment
- Improve your ability to hear, see, connect with and act on inspiration
- Update your inner system and retrain it to listen with a more refined sense of clarity
- Release old baggage and free up space for creative energy to come through
- Increase the quality of creative output
You also start to notice how your creative energy feels when inspiration speaks to your heart and soul.
It can present itself as a sensation of anticipation and anxiety, or a clear compulsion to do something from out of the blue. Another familiar way creative energy can alert you that it’s ready to flow is a tingling sensation in a certain part of your body, or tears that come to the eyes, combined with a feeling of being emotionally moved.
More walks in nature, meditation, yoga, exercise and connecting with the chakras can also help open up creative energy in different ways. In particular the sacral chakra, home to our creative self and identity, tends to hold a lot of baggage, so spend some extra time in this area of your body, doing some deep listening.
It can also help to work with the third eye chakra. It serves as the direct connection to inner wisdom and the creative insights of the universe, acting as a virtual eye that invites you to reach beyond physical seeing to inner knowing.
Add in some sound meditations from YouTube to help clear, strengthen and balance each chakra, or align them all each day.
Taking a pause, a great thing to do in fall, offers another reminder to see and listen with all of your body. This inward reflection also illuminates what’s beyond the doubt, fear, frustration or confusion, helping to improve your creative output in ways that feel authentic and make your heart sing.
This week, how can you practice more unconditional love for yourself by going inward? What ways do you notice your creative output changing?