Category: creativity

Igniting your Creativity

Posted on by Allan Johnson in creativity, habits, wellbeing

Discovering your inner creativity begins with looking inside yourself. It is about understanding your feelings, your emotions, your past experiences, and your patterns of behaviour. As you learn to tune out the voice of self-doubt and listen instead to the voice of your inner wisdom, you begin to find your true voice and express yourself as you wish.

It is not always easy to let go of the fear of judgement and failure. However, when you are creative in the way you want to be, you will feel the sense of fulfilment that comes from knowing you are ‘doing something’ rather than ‘doing nothing’ and focusing on something that is meaningful to you. You begin to live your life according to your own ideas rather than those of others. You begin to find your voice and let go of the voice of self-doubt within you. By expressing your creativity in the way that feels right for you, you get more in touch with your inner wisdom, become more self-aware and gain more confidence.

There are so many ways to express your creativity: painting, sculpture, breadmaking, housekeeping, writing, dancing, design, photography, sketching, furniture making, journaling, scrapbook, modelling, cooking, acting, and jewellery making. These creative activities teach you the courage to let go of fear and self-doubt and, instead, to listen to the voice of your inner wisdom, define your values, set goals and start living your life on your own terms.

If you have not thought much about developing your creativity, getting started can be the hardest part. Often it is the thought of starting something that stops us from starting at all. Starting on something new does not mean that you can not make any more mistakes. It is about stepping out of your comfort zone and going your own way and realising that it is okay to make mistakes along the way. In fact, it is okay to make mistakes. It is about learning from your mistakes, paying attention to what is happening around you, how you feel, what is important to you and what you need to do to get what you want. It’s about stepping into your power and living your life on your own terms

Here are some things to think about:

  • What is your passion?
  • How would you like to be remembered?
  • What would the world look like if everyone had the courage to live life on their own terms? 

Answer these questions openly and honestly. Take your time, write down the answers, and let your ideas flow. When you have finished, take a moment to read your responses. How do you feel when you look at what you’ve written? Do you feel excited? Do you feel encouraged? Do you feel motivated? If you have any of these feelings, then you have already taken a positive step towards becoming a more creative person.

There are so many ways to be creative. Think of the things you like to do and the things you do regularly. Are there ways you could be more creative in any of these areas? Is there something you hear on the radio or see on TV that you could create or do yourself? Is there something you already do that you could change or do differently? Is there someone you know who you could help to develop their creativity? Is there something you could do to make yourself feel more alive, excited, or energised? Explore these feelings and consider what steps you could take to become more creative in the way you want.

Today is a new day to be creative! Now that you have taken some time to self-reflect, you are in a position to shape your life according to your own ideas. Make it your mission to be creative every day. Choose a project, take some time for yourself, and do something you enjoy! Let go of the fear of failure and instead enjoy the moment. Express yourself. Be creative. Become the person you want to become. If you have not already, take some time to write down your creativity goals that will help you take action and start making positive changes in your life.

Take the time to listen to your own heart, discover your own truths, express yourself in the way that feels right for you, act and do something. Be creative in the way you choose and take the time to follow your own path. Through creativity you learn to live your life on your own terms, to trust yourself and let go of fear, to listen to your inner voice and come into your power.

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Journaling to Support Creativity

Posted on by Allan Johnson in creativity, habits

I’ve kept a daily journal for almost twenty years.  It’s served many different purposes throughout the years, but has always offered me many benefits and has become a regular part of my daily ritual. In The Artist’s Way, Julia Cameron suggests to her readers to begin each morning by writing three pages of stream-of-consciousness writing in longhand form. The topic of these ‘Morning Pages’ is not predetermined, nor are there any explicit goals or objectives for the content of the entries themselves. Rather, Cameron saw these three longhand pages as a vital way to clear the air for creative thinking, and bring focus back to the creative process.

Your entries might be completely and utterly mundane, but new insights and observations can emerge from this daily stream-of-consciousness writing more often than one imagines. Cameron also reasserts the importance of writing the Morning Pages out longhand, in order to stabilise the rate of thinking and the rate of writing, and to highlight the important physical connection between thinking and writing. 

By setting aside time each day to write about and reflect on your current projects, you will immediately be bringing a new level of focus to your work that might not be achieved otherwise. Many creative professionals find it helpful to begin each day by writing an entry in their research journal. They might review what they wrote about their reading yesterday, and use their daily entry as a jumping off point, or a ‘to-do’ list for the day ahead. There is also certainly a meditative aspect to this type of reflective writing, which can help to give you the motivation and focus to tackle the next step of your writing. 

Morning pages also allow you to record and analyse your own behaviours and habits as a creative. Do your entries suggest to you that you tend to do your best work in the morning? If so, then by all means examine your daily schedule and see how you can best accommodate this. Your research journal can serve to capture some subtle but very important insights about your own unique approach to the research process. 

You can learn a lot about yourself and gain a lot of insight into your life. There’s something magical about writing that thinking alone just doesn’t have.

Use these tips to take advantage of journaling to gain insight into your mind and your life:

  1. Review your day. Take a look at your day and make some notes. What is getting you down? What are the situations, people, habits, and beliefs that are causing you the most grief? Why do these things bother you? What can you do about it? What are these two things and what was so great or terrible about them?
  2. List progress toward your goals. Writing down your goals each day is a powerful way to stay focused on them. Write your 10 most important goals each day and notice how they evolve over time.Think about your goals and list the progress you made toward each. If you failed to do anything to make progress toward one or more of your goals, note that, too.
  3. Address your fears. Write about your fears. What are you afraid of? Why do you think you’re afraid of those things? How do your fears impact your life? What is your plan to address those fears? What’s standing in your way? List the obstacles in your life that you believe are blocking you from happiness or achieving your goals.
  4. List five things that make you feel grateful. What are you grateful for? Make a list of several items each day and notice how your perspective on life changes.
  5. Make a plan for the future. Aside from your specific goals, what does your dream life look like? How are you planning on getting there? Think about it and sketch out a plan.
  6. Write about what is causing you to feel negative emotions. What is getting you down? What are the situations, people, habits, and beliefs that are causing you the most grief? Why do these things bother you? What can you do about it?

Journaling each day can take some time, but it’s time that’s well spent. Develop a routine that incorporates journaling into your life. It won’t be long before you begin noticing the benefits. Do what the most successful people in the world do and write about your thoughts and your life.

Download your free 21-day course in The Path of Mindfulness. In this life-changing 21-day mindfulness journey, Dr Allan Kilner-Johnson guides you through a series of self-guided mindfulness exercises and shows you how and when to bring mindfulness into your daily life. 

Creativity and the Mindful Mindset

Posted on by Allan Johnson in creativity, mindfulness

When I moved into my new house over the summer, deep at the bottom of a box that hadn’t been unpacked during my two previous moves was my old, beloved copy of Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way.  If you haven’t read The Artist’s Way yet, you simply must.  It is a beautiful, suggestive book that offers some incredibly valuable advice and exercises for reclaiming your inner artist by recognising and then disidentifying from your inner critic.  

The book’s sudden reappearance during our move seemed consequential in every way.  It was almost exactly twenty years since I first began reading The Artist’s Way, and the rediscovery of my old torn copy of the book offered a very tangible reminder that mindfulness and other contemplative practices aren’t meant to dampen creative expression, but, rather, to open up and allow more direct access to creative potential.   

As The Artist’s Way makes clear, everyone has the ability to be creative and, once you learn how to unleash your inner creativity, you’ll be able to tap into it.  One of the most useful tools that I have found to connect to my own creativity is regular formal seated meditation and equally regular informal mindful practices throughout the day.  By developing a daily mindfulness practice we can connect more fully and more authentically with own inner artist and by first turning inward we are then able to turn outwards again to manifest our creative ideas, plans, and visions.

There are several things that you can to you in order to further develop the relationship between your mindful practice and your creative output:

  • Begin a journal—if you haven’t done so already, begin here! 
  • Use a reflective meditation to sit with the notion of creativity and what that word and concept means to you.
  • Use drawing, doodling, sculpting, or any art practice as a form of active mediation by connecting your breath to each movement 
  • Notice the details.
  • Draw upon a different medium to move through creative blocks.
  • As you dance to music that inspires you, pay particular attention to each part of your body working in unison.
  • Choose to avoid energy drains like social media, apps, and tv programmes which don’t inspire you. 
  • Explore.
  • Don’t rush outputs: give yourself enough time on projects to allow them to fully emerge.
  • Show gratitude for the simple forms of inspiration like a sunset, a flower, or a piece of music. 
  • Choose to avoid judging others.
  • Use your meditation practice to develop the relaxation that will enable your best creative thinking.
  • Trust the small steps to build into something bigger. 
  • Imagine a problem that you face from a different perspective.  How do you see the problem differently?
  • Stay curious and ask ‘what if?’