Finding your unique way to keep the creative energy flowing
On my Instagram recently, I opened up a bit more about my own creative process and shared a handful of personal projects I explored over the last few years. I mentioned that one of the best gifts we can give ourselves as a creative person is to take the time to truly understand our creative needs and process.
Before I truly understood my own, I remember being very creatively frustrated without truly knowing why. I would have ideas that would simply build up with no forward movement to bring them to life. It was the most annoying cycle of feeling creative and then stuck and therefore never truly feeling like the creative person I knew myself to be. So I would settle back into my day job thinking, “well, I guess this is it”. Defeat and self-pity is never a good place to hang out in and is the biggest waste of time.
It wasn’t until I read Rick Rubin’s book The Creative Act that I learned more tools and mindsets about creative work in general. For me the most helpful takeaway was to simply create without adding on too much pressure of how it needed to grow. I had to literally remove any prior study of clarity focus and manifestation concepts and just let a project be a project. Prior to this mindset switch I would think of a creative idea (usually a creative side hustle or potential career path), and then attach all sorts of performance pressure to it like a marketing strategy, a monthly income goal, a budget, etc. While those things are important to consider when starting an actual business, it did nothing for my creative ideas and personal projects. It was unecessary. All my ideas would get stuck at the door of performance pressure.
Once I stopped doing that and would launch projects simply for the hell of it (or the fun of it), the block released naturally and each project could exist and grow on it’s own timeline. Some projects would never make it past the ideation stage and some projects would launch and literally go nowhere. Other projects would have a longer trajectory, there was no rhyme or reason and I don’t think there needed to be. It was a liberating feeling that kept my creative flow flowing and I left frustration at the door.
Another helpful mindset switch for me was replacing performance metrics with “creating to learn”. This may actually be a life theme that I need to look more into now that I think about it.
I’ve noticed, that when I launch a creative project with the desire to learn- for example, to be a better photographer, or writer then I put myself in the seat of the student which is a very open place of full potential. This, I have found, allows for my personal projects to have to space to expand naturally and without limitations. I believe this to be the ultimate goal for creative work- for them to take shape naturally, organically, in the field of unlimited potential and on their own time. It’s a place of creative trust, patience and allowing. As I write this, I feel I would like to give a workshop on this topic. Learning vs. Performing and how it unlocks our creative potential. Who knows what I will call it but maybe something like that.
If you’d like to read my full post of personal projects launched in the past couple of years, visit here.
