How to build your creativity

Ready to Start a Journey of Creativity and Spiritualty

Most people feel they would love to say they are fulfilled spiritually and creatively but rarely is this the case. The truth is both creativity and spirituality are not something you are given but more about things you discover on the way of life's great journey. Unfortunately, with the pace of most peoples' modern lives, life's journey tends to be a mad rush to get from A to B as fast as possible with little time to explore our own feelings and spiritual beliefs. This lens is intended to give some suggestions of exercises that are simple to carry out, but either slow us down and give us time to breath, or open our minds to start exploring. The exercises I suggest will be non-religious or rather not religion specific so everyone what ever their spiritual path will feel comfortable taking part.

So lets stop rushing through life's journey and start enjoying the scenary!

Notebook Therapy 

get scribbling, make room for creativity

It is often reported that a stumbling block to developing creativity is the fact that most peoples heads are crammed full to overloading with information from the day. Worries, to do lists, constant internal dialogue, visual and audio stimuli all buzzing around our brains, no wonder there is no room for creativity.

There are all sorts of wonderful techniques for quietning the mind and some of those I will investigate as we cover different exercises. But many of these meditive techniques take practice and some even years of training and dedication. We want to skip that and fast track ourselves to being open to creatvity.

My First exercise is to grab yourself a notebook and pen. Get ones that you really like so that the whole process is a pleasure. Find your self a quiet moment where you wont be disturbed and get scribbling. Write what ever comes into your head, your to do lists, meal
, random thoughts. It will act as a mind purge. You may only be able to stick to it for a minute or two at first but stick with it and try and fit in some notebook therapy every day, gradually building up your time.

Over time you will find your mind starts emptying of the junk you don't need, freeing up valuable space to develop your creativty or explore your spirituality. The obvious getting things off your chest will act as a therapy session (cheaper than regular therapy) you may start to view emotional issues in wa you hadn't before and with time positively learn to
 with them if not accept them. Not only that but you will start to see threads of creativity as your mind becomes freer and more used to this free flow of expression. thoughts will come more easily, and start to form more tangible ideas. Don't restrict your self to words, doodle, sketch, use coloured pens and bring your notebok to life.

Your on your way to being more creative!

Great Creativity Advice from a great creativity Blog I've discovered

I discovered this creativity blog by Justine Musk. I think she is totally right, by pursuing creativity not only do you feel more fulfilled and more rounded as a person but also others have a more 3dimensional perception of you too. I haven't explored many of her other posts but probably worth a more in depth look.
10 reasons why pursuing your creative work is actually highly productive (+ not selfish or self-indulgent) by Justine Musk
1. Carving time from your regular, 'productive' life to pursue a hobby or project that you're passionate about means that you increase your chances of being in flow.

Which I wrote about in this post here.

Long story short: flow is you in your element. It reinvigorates you. It wakes you up to new possibilities for yourself and increases your sense of well-being.

This is good for you.

It's also good for the world, because

2. Your happiness and well-being are contagious.

Human beings are wired into each other to an extent that most of us don't even realize. The mirror neurons in our brain enable empathy: we absorb and reflect what other people are feeling, and their moods influence our moods (which go on to influence the moods of others).

This is called emotional contagion.

And because of how we network off each other, you're more contagious than you know.

In their book CONNECTED, authors Christakis and Fowler show how we're influenced not just by our friends, but our friends' friends, and even our friends' friends' friends. What you do and what you say and how that makes other people feel ripple out along the invisible lines that link us to each other, just as the bad mood of someone you don't even know comes echoing down to affect your day.

When you are happy, you are healthier, more productive, better able to contribute to society. Imagine if you could cultivate all those benefits in yourself - and radiate them out to the people in your network.

The world becomes a better place.

3. You are less likely to tolerate other people's bullshit when
 DOES NOT DEPEND on their acceptance or approval.

Elizabeth Wurtzel expresses this rather nicely:

I would argue that a woman is more likely to put the kibosh on her manhandling, leering boss if she has lots of things she likes to do, because there is something about loving life and yourself and your enthusiasms too much that makes it hard to put up with any idiot's crap. And the people most likely to be in possession of that quality known as joie de vivre are people who have insane interests, consuming passions, constant sources of enjoyment that do not depend on the approval of other women. Women must learn what it means to be besotted with something other than some useless bloke.

When you look to your creativity for a sense of your identity (you don't know who you are until you know what you can do), that means you are not looking to other people to define your worth. After all, as Eleanor Roosevelt so saucily put it, "No one can make you feel inferior without your consent."

So developing your creative side increases your sense of personal power because

4. It deepens and strengthens your sense of who you are.

We are what we make. It was writing, for example, that helped me find my way back to myself when I made the mistake of giving waaaaay too much of my power to someone else (*cough*a man*cough*). I let that someone shape my sense of who I was - or more specifically, who I wasn't - according to what that person thought I should be (which had everything to do with that person's agenda serving that person's interests).

The result was a kind of amputation of self, a numbing-out. Reading through my blog and other writings, as well as the reactions they inspired, brought me back to enough sense of self that I could build on, reset, start again. Saying I'm happier for it is like saying I was happy to walk away from a car accident. What you feel, instead, is a deep shaken sense of relief - and gratitude for the second chance (or third, or fourth).

5 more tips for building your creativity

more great advice from 10 reasons why pursuing your creative work is actually highly productive (+ not selfish or self-indulgent) by Justine Musk

5. and knowing who you are allows other people to know you better.

We all want to connect. We all want to be recognized for who we are (and not the car we drive, the clothes we wear, the title on the business cards we do or don't hand out). But how can other people - including your friends and loved ones, including your own - know you, the way they want and need to know you, if you don't express those deeper parts of yourself?

We are what we make. But are we making the right stuff?

6. which means you have a stronger personal 'brand'.

God, there's so much about personal branding these days. You're a brand, I'm a brand, soon even the family dog will have a brand. But all the douche-y associations with branding (bad branding) aside, the reality is that other people will react to you, choose or ignore you according to the mental imprint they form of you. Being known for something that you do (and are good at) outside of the way you earn your living can make your 'brand' more memorable.

Who would you rather talk to at a cocktail party: an accountant, or an accountant who moonlights as a jazz pianist?

When I was 17, I spent a year as an exchange student in Australia. I lived with four different host
,which means I had four different host 'fathers'. One had a passion for bonsai. He was often in his greenhouse, nurturing his remarkable little trees. Of all the people I met that year, twenty years on he's the one I remember the most (along with this crazy Belgian girl who liked to get us into trouble, but that's a different kind of blog post).

When I was a teenager, my own passion for fiction writing paid unexpected dividends when my school nominated me for a four-year scholarship to a highly competitive Canadian university. I had an erratic academic record (let's just say that I did not have perfect attendance). I wasn't valedictorian (the thought inspires laughter). I wasn't much of a joiner (the one time I tried out for and made a sports team, I quit when I discovered that all the mean girls were on it).

What I did do, was: write novels. And other things. I had so much practice under my belt that I'd gotten rather good at it. "Justine," my guidance counselor told me, "that's going to set you apart." And it did (I was one of a handful of students chosen from across the country to get this scholarship.) It was, I realize now, my first lesson in the importance of differentiating yourself- which, in today's cluttered, noisy, post-consumer society, is not just important but necessary.

7. It opens you up to new people, ideas, and connections.

As Michael Margolis points out in his speeches and courses on 'brand storytelling' (ie: how you present yourself through your bio or your 'about me' page), your interests allow people (including, say, the potential employer interviewing you for 
) to find points of connection. Your passion allows you to open up new conversations with people, which brings richness and diversity into your life.

A less-than-obvious benefit of this has to do with the importance of weak ties. (Strong ties are your relationships with family members and close friends; weak ties are acquaintances, people you know only passingly.)

Sociologists have discovered that most new information (like the kind that would help you in a job search) comes to us through weak ties. People inside the same networks tend to know the same stuff. It's by linking - however casually - to people outside your usual habits, places and routines that you open yourself to new influences, new facts and forms of knowledge. This could end up changing 
 (or introducing you to your life partner).

8. It makes you creative in other areas of your life, including your regular work.

Creativity thrives at the intersection of different disciplines and perspectives. The way to seem like a freaking genius is to take ideas from a field totally alien to your own, and find ways to adapt and apply them. Creativity, after all, is finding the unexpected connections between things: combining and recombining old ideas until you come up with something - original.

In the book THE MEDICI EFFECT, Frans Johansson suggests that the best way to stimulate the kind of creative insight that, you know, changes the game (what exactly is 'the game', anyway?) - is to educate yourself in a second discipline, something other than what you already do or what you're already known for.

When you pursue your creative work, you might regard it as something you're doing strictly 'on the side' - but you're opening the door on a dimension of ideas that just might find their way to the center of your life. In a good way.

9. It's good for your brain.

Dude, learning something new is so good for your brain. It's like the old saying goes: Use it or lose it. The brain turns out to be far more plastic than we realized. It changes and grows according to the experiences we provide it. Developing a new skill(set) forces the otherwise-lazy brain to form new neural pathways that keep you sharp as you grow older (and older). One of the best ways to stave off Alzheimer's? Learn a new language. Or a musical instrument.

Your brain will thank you.

10. It makes you totally sexy.

I mean, c'mon. Being passionate about something - anything - lights you up with the kind of energy that attracts total supermodels. (I swear to God.) Which doesn't necessarily mean that they'll sleep with you. But they're more likely to consider it. Or at least to consider considering it.

You know what I mean

The Creative Brain

It has been established for many years that people that display different skills, whether an excellent artist or a brilliant mathematician, have different parts of their brain more highly developed. This has lead to the theory that people with highly developed "right" brain activity are more creative than the "left" brain logical types. Whether this is something you are born with or something that you can develop is open to debate.

The Right-Handed Brain

Traditionally the Right- Handed Brain person is thought of as the naturally creative person. Creative, daring and flexible, you are likely to consider your intuition as valuable as your IQ in making decisions. You "see" in pictures not words. But by boosting your left brain, you could become more organised and that could make you more productive.

The Left-Handed Brain

Those with left-handed brains tend to be thought of as logical and analytical. You are good with words and wonderful at detail and reasoning, logical is your middle name. You are good at finding the right persuasive argument. You find inspiration in being quiet and alone. But by boosting your right brain you could become more intuitive and that could make you more creative.

What's next?
More Creativity & Sprituality Exercises

I will be adding more and more exercises to help build your creativity and explore spirituality, so be sure to drop by again. Feel free to use the comments box to add any of your own suggestions on how you get your creative juices flowing!