Your Inner Child Holds the Key to Your Creativity and to Our Joy
“Everyone is born creative; everyone is given a box of crayons in kindergarten. Then when you hit puberty they take the crayons away and replace them with dry, uninspiring books on algebra, history, etc. Being suddenly hit years later with the ‘creative bug’ is just a wee voice telling you, ‘I’d like my crayons back, please.” Hugh MacLeod
“Creativity takes the heavy mass of our lives and transforms it back into available energy. Taking the mundane or the weighted, the overlooked or the too familiar, art is able to re-show us ourselves and ourselves in the world. Art holding up a mirror to life is commonly misunderstood as realism, but in fact it is recognition. We see through our own fakes, our own cover stories, we see things as they are, instead of how they look, or how we’d like them to be.” Jeanette Winterson
Everyone has creativity. To get in touch with new energy in you, try one of the following exercises.
Action board — use a large bulletin board to post 3×5 index cards for the 5 main categories of your life. You may wish to use general categories; such as goals, deadlines, dreams, etc. of be more specific, such as marketing, sales, etc. Using different colored 3×5 cards may help you to see the categories more easily.
Every Sunday evening or another evening of your choice, review your boards and update them for the upcoming week/month/year depending on your system. This update will go quickly and will give you a clear, concise review of where you are and where you are going. This will lead to greater confidence. Remember if you fail to plan, you are planning to fail.
Begin keeping a creative basket — pretend you are 10 years old or ask a young friend and/or family member to help you. Take a large basket with a handle and put all the things in it you might enjoy using to create a new project. You may include sequins, glitter, paste, colored pens, watercolors, sketch pads. You may use these materials to play with often as way to express your creativity.
Love Jar — collect a glass or clear plastic jar. Using bright construction paper, cut into strips. On the strips of paper, write down short suggestions for yourself of ways you can feel greater love in your life. These activities will also add new confidence skills. For example:
- Clean out a cupboard or drawer today.
- Take a warm bubble bath.
- Explore a new lake or a nature retreat.
- Make a list of 15 of your strengths and put it in your wallet
- Create a bulletin board of special cards others have sent to you or go to a card store and pick out 5–10 cards that you really love.
- Make a picture wall of your favorite picture.
- Make a cassette tape of your favorite inspirational quotations.
- Trade skills with a friend to explore new ways of doing things.
- Choose a new hobby or improve on an older one.
- Have company for dinner and create an original menu.
Begin keeping a loose-leaf notebook I call my “life-book”. The 5×8 size is convenient. I keep everything I might need to know in the immediate future. I also keep an index-sized Rolodex but the lifebook goes everywhere with me. It is a great companion when you’re remodeling or moving. You may have a companion on your computer.
Play is essential everyday for everyone. Plan to play everyday. The time you allot to play will repay you in increased productivity. Be sure to set time limits for play so that you don’t use play to prolong procrastination for some work you need to do.
Creativity Comes From Our Letting Go of Thinking
“Don’t think. Thinking is the enemy of creativity. It’s self-conscious, and anything self-conscious is lousy. You can’t try to do things. You simply must do things.” Ray Douglas Bradbury
I believe that emotion is energy. So choosing to use your energy positively is a choice you can make any time of the day. Staying in your fear won’t help you in any way except to keep you from moving forward. So the first thing I ask myself when I am feeling fearful is, “What am I trying to avoid not completing?”
Procrastination is one of my favorite methods to stay in my fear and not move forward. I have had to put several action thoughts, prayers, and deeds into affect to change my old self into new and better action goals.
- I use the focus–refocus –then review action steps to plan my day.
- I always keep small legal pads at each place I use in the home and/or office. I work at home but have three workplaces. The variety gives me new scenery and different computers. A writer’s life is a solitary profession. Writers also have to be relentless about rewriting. I have found physically moving to another workspace helps to help me find a new train of thought.
- After I have several ideas on several notepads, I do a “brain dump” of organizing for all the material I have notes. I have been training my brain for 30 years how to be my servant instead of my master. I believe this is one of my life issues. I call my main lessons life lessons so that I can remember they will be with me for life.
- Writing down my goals or plans in a large, hardcover notebook that I have divided into 3 sections helps me to keep it simple. Then I use a red pen and circle my goals for the day. I may use a different colored marker for each day as I move through the week. But usually I have to move on to new topics.
- For translating my goals and plans into action steps, I use clipboards. I learned clipboards from the Navy when I worked in Guantanamo Bay. I keep 3 clipboards focused on 2 different directions I may or may not be following. If something loses favor with the direction I want to go in, it is easy to discard that topic. I generally keep a clipboard free for home care and/or personal errands.
- In the past few years, I have kept alphabetized white cover notebooks to keep all aspects of a topic I am researching. But, for now, I have so much material I no longer follow that smaller notebooks serve me better.
Everyone has creativity. To get in touch with new energy in you, try one of the following exercises.
Action board — use a large bulletin board to post 3×5 index cards for the 5 main categories of your life. You may wish to use general categories; such as goals, deadlines, dreams, etc. of be more specific, such as marketing, sales, etc. Using different colored 3×5 cards may help you to see the categories more easily.
Every Sunday evening or another evening of your choice, review your boards and update them for the upcoming week/month/year depending on your system. This update will go quickly and will give you a clear, concise review of where you are and where you are going. This will lead to greater confidence. Remember if you fail to plan, you are planning to fail.
Begin keeping a creative basket — pretend you are 10 years old or ask a young friend and/or family member to help you. Take a large basket with a handle and put all the things in it you might enjoy using to create a new project. You may include sequins, glitter, paste, colored pens, watercolors, sketch pads. You may use these materials to play with often as way to express your creativity.
Love Jar — collect a glass or clear plastic jar. Using bright construction paper, cut into strips. On the strips of paper, write down short suggestions for yourself of ways you can feel greater love in your life. These activities will also add new confidence skills. For example:
- Clean out a cupboard or drawer today.
- Take a warm bubble bath.
- Explore a new lake or a nature retreat.
- Make a list of 15 of your strengths and put it in your wallet
- Create a bulletin board of special cards others have sent to you or go to a card store and pick out 5–10 cards that you really love.
- Make a picture wall of your favorite picture.
- Make a cassette tape of your favorite inspirational quotations.
- Trade skills with a friend to explore new ways of doing things.
- Choose a new hobby or improve on an older one.
- Have company for dinner and create an original menu.
Begin keeping a loose-leaf notebook I call my “life-book”. The 5×8 size is convenient. I keep everything I might need to know in the immediate future. I also keep an index-sized Rolodex but the lifebook goes everywhere with me. It is a great companion when you’re remodeling or moving. You may have a companion on your computer.
Play is essential everyday for everyone. Plan to play everyday. The time you allot to play will repay you in increased productivity. Be sure to set time limits for play so that you don’t use play to prolong procrastination for some work you need to do.
Creativity Comes From Our Letting Go of Thinking
“Don’t think. Thinking is the enemy of creativity. It’s self-conscious, and anything self-conscious is lousy. You can’t try to do things. You simply must do things.” Ray Douglas Bradbury
