I’ve never had a really creative idea sitting at my desk. All the big ideas that made a difference happened when I was playing outside.”
—BARBARA CORCORAN
Lately, I’ve been on a mission to re-discover my creative self. Creativity is how we keep ourselves energetically alive. We express our creativity in all sorts of ways, from the way we dress, the art we make, what we cook, the books we read and the music we listen to.
Studies have shown that learning new things as adults can enlarge our brain maps. We benefit from the novelty of new experiences, and to maximise the positive effects on our brains, we need to be continually learning.
Quite often however, we become creatively blocked, held back by negative beliefs and worries about time, money and the support to pursue our creative dreams.
Rather than trust our intuition, our talent, our skill, or desire, we fear where our creativity will take us. Rather than paint, write, dance, audition, and see where it takes us, we turn back on ourselves.
Author Julia Cameron describes cutting off our creativity as making us savage. “We react like we are being choked. An artist must have downtime, time to do nothing. Without it, the inner artists in us feels angry, out of sorts. If such deprivation continues, our artist becomes sullen, depressed, hostile.”
For me personally, work is my creative block of choice. I feel guilty when I spend a day off away from the business, yet I will also feel resentful when I’m doing work on a day off (!).
“In order to recover our creativity, we must learn to see workaholism as a block instead of a building block. There is a difference between meaningful work toward a cherished goal and workaholism. That difference lies less in the hours than it does in the emotional quality of the hours spent. For a workaholic, work is synonymous with worth, and so we are hesitant to let go of any part of it,” writes Julia.
So in an effort to clear the way for creative flow, The Sweet Meadow is closed for winter holidays until Thursday, August 29. A business is only as healthy as it’s owner, so this is a good excuse as any to hang up the Dr. Martens and relax!
How do you hold space for yourself? What are your favourite ways to invite more presence and creativity in your life?
Who knows what magic we might invite into our lives as a result of re-discovering our creative self.
See you in a few weeks.
ABx
“When my daughter was about seven years old, she asked me one day what I did at work. I told her I worked at the college…that my job was to teach people how to draw. She stared at me, incredulous, and said, ‘You mean they forget?’”
—HOWARD IKEMOTO, ARTIST
