What’s the Secret to Being Creative?

For some people, getting the creative juices to flow is easy. For others, just thinking the words “I must be creative” stops all color, all ideas, all flow. If you’re like me, and you find yourself in this category at times, don’t despair. There are solutions.

Creative Energy is Elusive.

A creative spark can appear and disappear just as quickly. The secret to staying productive as any kind of artist is to discover how to switch that light on and off at your will.

A Creative Muse Can Help.

A creative muse can be found in everything. It lives in a sunset, in a star, in a bird’s chirp, and in the melody of a beautiful song. The greatest part about this is that every creative person has access to this inner muse.

The trick to finding yours is tapping into your senses and letting them fly freely. Once you set your senses free, you enter a zone where you can create a world that touches and inspires others.

So how do you tap into your creative inner muse?

You have to clear your mind and here’s how. 
I challenge you to experiment with the following actions to see which one most effectively gets you into that creative zone.

1. Sit quietly and listen to music.

2. Create a collage of colors, shapes, and words. Then, stare at it through unfocused eyes.

3. Free write for ten minutes. Set a timer and write without any regard for grammar, spelling or logic. Just write whatever pops into your mind and don’t stop to analyze or think.

4. Get up and move for ten minutes. Break out into a light jog, brisk walk, jumping jacks, whatever you can safely perform.

5. Read quotes.

6. Meditate or pray.

7. Go out into nature. Sit on a park bench. Stare up at a tree. Admire a flower.

8. Play with color. Get a paint brush and splash paint on a canvas or color on paper with a crayon.

Okay so there you have it, eight solutions that can help free your mind so you can find your inner muse and get those creative juices flowing.

Try them and please share your feelings on this little challenge. Did it work? Are you feeling more creative?

As a novelist, I’m always interested to learn what motivates people to go beyond their comfort zone to that place where real growth happens. When creating characters, I enjoy learning lessons through them. What makes them act the way they do? Why do they care so deeply for certain things? How did they become so cynical, so happy or so fearful?

A Comfort Zone Can Steal the Magic

We’re all driven by different things. Our past experiences shape the way we view the world and the way we interact with others. We all come equipped with driving forces that dig deep and push us towards or pull us away from defining moments. Getting stuck in a comfort zone robs us of defining moments.

How do I get out of my comfort zone?

I’m driven by the word CAN’T. When someone tells me I can’t do something, I do it double-time. The catalyst for this motivation to jump out of the comfort zone digs deep.

When I was in kindergarten and sitting in a circle for story time, a girl bullied me. Each time I’d raise my hand to answer a question, she’d hit me. After several grueling rounds of this, I stopped raising my hand and eventually lost all confidence to speak to anyone but my best friend, Todd, and my immediate family members. For two years, I spoke only to them. Talk about getting stuck in a ‘comfort zone’ that was anything but comfortable!

Bribed with adventures and treats that would make any well-adjusted child leap for joy, I turned my back on any hope of being a ‘normal’ kid. Then one day, my best friend begged me to speak to his mother because that was the only way I could go to his baseball game. For three hours, I stood next to his mom as she watched soap operas and waited patiently for me to whisper something, anything, in her ear.

Todd begged and cried for me to brave up and say something. By the end of the third hour, my best friend knelt down exhausted and said to me, “I knew you couldn’t do it.” This little action switched something in me so powerful that I managed to whisper ‘yes’ into his mom’s ear.

I haven’t been able to stop talking since.

Fast forward to high school English class. To graduate, I needed to present my book report to the class. I refused, deathly afraid of public speaking. My English teacher allowed me to present it to him after school.

When I finished, he told me, “You won’t succeed in a professional setting, so get used to working harder instead of smarter. That little insult sparked an inferno inside of me, and I marched off to college shortly after and majored in public speaking, and graduated Summa Cum Laude.

Whenever someone tells me I can’t accomplish something, I accomplish the S*#T out of it!

That is my fuel. What’s yours? What gets you out of your comfort zone?

There are no excuses why we can’t achieve great things in this lifetime.

We are equipped with everything we need to be successful. So why do so many of us stop short of achieving our dreams?

No Excuses to Back Down, You Say? Hmm…

We’ve all been there – to that moment in time when we just want to stop all action on a goal because all the odds are stacked up against us in achieving it. We’ve been told there should be no excuses, yet everywhere we turn we see this gigantic, scary obstacle blocking us, warning us to just turn around and go the other way.

No Excuses Still?

I’ll be honest, I get that urge to quit halfway through projects every time I write a novel or paint a picture. Yup. Every single time.

I’ll try to explain this with an example of what happens when I set out to do an oil painting. I sketch. I add my shadows. I paint my colorful mid-tones. Then I step back and that’s when the derailment occurs. The shadows aren’t quite right and the objects aren’t exactly up to par. I decide the only way to fix the mess is to start over.

No Excuses? Say What?

I toss my brushes into my wash bin, rip off my gloves and give up on it for days. The lure of fixing it creeps into my mind. I start to think, hmm, maybe there are no excuses…

So, I waltz back into my studio, reexamine, maybe brush on a stroke or two of a highlight, step back and nod in approval. I say to myself, “Okay, maybe one more dab.” One more dab turns into twenty and my heart starts to charge again. “I might just be able to save this painting after all.”

On go the gloves and the soulful music as I dive heart first into the zone. The result – well, I’ve yet to paint over a canvas and start over again.

At that moment when you think of giving up, remember your greatest breakthrough could be in that next brushstroke, that next chapter you write, that next mile you run.

You’re right there. Don’t give up! Think, No Excuses!

Have you experienced a breakthrough like this after almost giving up? If so, comment here. I’d love to hear about it. Do you believe like me, that there are no excuses to achieving those things that make our hearts sing?