Cultivating Your Creativity

It is that time of year again. Time for me to spur my creative impulses on to develop new things to keep myself occupied. I tend to go through periods of time where I have lots of creativity and then I pass through creative deserts. I am currently heading towards desert if I'm not careful.

There are several things happening that are contributing to this dearth of creative responses. First, I am on LOTS of allergy medication as the pollen count here in my state has soared to record levels of whatever it is I am allergic to at the moment. I am spending time sleeping when I would usually spend that time thinking and creating. Second, my computer access at work has been decreased now that my current intern is taking over session leadership and is also taking over session documentation! Hooray!! What a nice situation to occur, but it does have some ramifications for my own process...

So, it is now time to discuss cultivating my creativity. (NOTE: I am not a gardener, so some of my analogies may be incorrect. Everything that I know about gardening, I learned from my Mom.)

Here are some of my tips for cultivating creativity:
  • Do something new everyday. Improvise a song or color a picture. Write a poem or make a gift. Something new needs to happen each and every day
  • Look over past efforts. Looking at the half-finished song that you wrote in 2009 may spark new ideas or may encourage you to finish the first effort.
  • Do not be afraid to fail. No one is perfect and creativity is a practiced skill just like playing a musical instrument. I know that my first efforts at something new will not be great, but it will be a process.
  • Enjoy the process. Have you ever just found yourself enjoying a journey even when you are not looking forward to your destination? The process of creativity is much more important than the product of creativity.
There are many other tips that I could probably think of, but my brain is fried, and it is time to go to work. I am going to make something new today...

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