4 Secrets To Inviting Creativity (Guest Post by Shannon Trindade)
Today I’m delighted to be hosting Shannon Trindade here on the blog. Shannon is a writer, blogger and communications pro who helps business & individuals all over the world connect better with their audience.
She’s an excellent writer & communicator & has a powerful message about creativity to share with us today. So, without further ado, over to Shannon…
If you’re like me, you’d do almost anything to experience more “ah-ha moments”. Those moments of pure creative energy are priceless.
In addition to feeling euphoric, creative moments allow us to experience being connected to something bigger than ourselves. More accurately, it’s a type of connection beyond what our brains can comprehend, control, and measure.
So how do we get more creativity in our lives?
It’s clear you can’t force creativity and ah-ha moments into your life, but you can help them evolve naturally.
Like everything in the world, creativity is energy.
Creativity demands space, and it’s your job to give it the space it needs. (you can tweet that)
I love experimenting with opening up space in my life, both physically (cleaning out a closet) and metaphorically (releasing old beliefs). If you’d like to experience more creativity, check out my favourite ways to invite creativity into your life.
4 Invitations To Creativity
1) Creativity comes from action, not thought: I am a serious over-thinker. I can stress myself out thinking about the best topic for an article, edits for a client, or content for a new program. Unfortunately, this doesn’t work so well; a stressful writer isn’t tuned into creativity. The only time creativity makes an appearance is when I simply show up and start writing. Even if you’re not ready to write an assignment or work on a project, free writing is a great way to dump out the metaphorical garbage taking space in your head and make room for the creativity you seek.
2) Embrace silence: Our world doesn’t always make it easy to sit alone in silence. While silence in your environment can be an amazing, creative tool (no TV, music, or internet noise), I am specifically referring to mental chatter, which is often worse than environmental noise in regards to pushing creativity away. What can you do to eliminate the noise in your head? One of my favorite tools is meditation. There are many meditation styles and techniques to fit with all personalities and preferences, and they all focus on clearing the mind and embracing silence. Give one a try, or better yet, commit to a daily meditation practice!
3) Practice awareness: This relates to embracing silence and decreasing the amount of mental chatter you regularly experience. Awareness focuses on the deep inner reality of life at any given moment. While it includes your past experiences, current life situations (good and bad), hopes, and dreams, it does so without controlling or taking your life the way mental stories often do.
Great tools to practice awareness are yoga, meditation, and the emotional freedom technique (EFT). As you become aware of what you are experiencing, moment to moment, you clear out the negative thoughts of the past and worries of the future. It’s in this newfound space where creativity drops by for a visit.
4) Take control of your life: I realise this sounds a bit wishy-washy, but creativity flows when you’re whole being is in synch. This means feeling great in all areas of your life (spiritual, emotional, mental, and physical) and doing what you can to increase your overall wellbeing.
Maybe that means eating healthier, exercising, visiting family or friends, taking time for yourself, or realising you actually have control over your thoughts and feelings – and certainly how you allow them to affect you. Yes, this can be scary, deep, and requires you be courageous, but the process is incredibly rewarding!
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Try some (or all) of these tools and watch more creativity show up in your life. But, be sure when creativity appears you don’t ignore it. As a friend recently wrote, “When creativity calls, answer! She’s mean when you send her to voicemail”.
To Your Creativity,
Shannon
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Question For Reflection:
What methods do you use to encourage creativity in your life?
Share them in the comments below!
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Shannon Trindade is a writer, editor, and communication pro who helps businesses and individuals connect with their unique audiences.
She loves being around (both online and offline) internationally minded thinkers, splits her time between the U.S. and Brazil, and firmly believes we are all connected and must learn to cherish and appreciate our differences. You can connect more with her at ShannonTrindade.com and WritetoConnect.org, or on Twitter at @ShannonTrin.
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(Picture Source: Shannon Trindade)
The mental chatter doesn’t bother me as I’m sitting down to write – it bothers me when I’m trying to get the “oomph” to sit down to write. My mental chatter are lists of what else I should be doing. Environmental chatter is what does me in every time I try to write – I must be sensory because tuning it out is a bit of a torture for me when I’m trying to write. An office setting is fine for work, but writing a book? Silence is key for me. Nice post.
Thanks for sharing, Elyse! I love that we are practically the opposite in our chatter challenges 🙂 I tune out like crazy once I show up and start writing.
I appreciate this post. I often times have to have quiet in order to spark creativity. No tv, no internet, no music, no kids, no husband. Just me and the quiet. I have difficulty blocking out the noise, and so I’ve had to learn to create the quiet. Going to places like a library or simply shutting myself up in my room with a sign on the door that says, “Shh! I’m writing!”
That is just like me! I love working at the library and turning my phone on silent/internet off. I have to create the quiet no matter what! We are planning to have kids soon, so I’m sure it will be even harder to get that quiet time. Thanks for sharing!!
It’s interesting how each artist differs. I find creativity is waiting to break out all the time. I could sit down in the middle of a hurricane and write (if people would just leave me alone–LOL)!
I agree…the creative process is so unique and different for each of us. Yet, it’s the same in the end….just making it happen somehow! 🙂
Thank you for the post and sharing your creativity secrets – we all have our ways of letting the creativity show up and be. Like Tamie, I also can sit down and write during a hurricane, I put my ear buds in, put on some music and a way I go – or I sit in my writing room on my sofa (where I am right now) and just let the words fall onto the page. Showing up to the page is half the battle.
Hey Marion! Yes, showing up is always my biggest obstacle too. Then it flows and flows and flows….then it needs edits and edits and edits! haha
Showing up makes all the difference doesn’t it? You never know what’s going to come out when you just show up. Can be awesome.
For me, music seems to drown out all the mental and environmental sounds and allows me to zone on the project at hand. I can, as a writer, accomplish more in 1 hr under headphones with a variety of music (mostly New Age) than sitting at a desk for 8 hrs without the headphones. Great post.
Glad you liked it, Bob! I can definitely relate…I think us writers are all easily distracted! 🙂
That’s so true Shannon….way too easily at times. 🙂
This is such a great post Shannon – some really practical & helpful tips here. Some fantastic insights into creativity, Thanks so much for guest posting.
I saw a TED Talk about #2 in your list. I have been working to take 10 mins every day to do absolutely nothing….for 10 I sit down in a quiet place and try to keep my mind from chasing the rabbit (Pacific Rim Fans unite!).
There are fans of ‘Pacific Rim’….? 😉
I may be the #1 PR fan! I love anything Mecha.
Hi Lisa! It’s so funny to me that doing nothing is incredibly hard! We are wired to move, move, move, do, do, do…even if it’s mindless doing. Being silent – even for a min – is so powerful.
Shannon you are so right!
Good post. I particularly agree with the first point. Creativity is manifested in concrete works. Thinking about something and giving it form for perusal by others are two different things.
Thanks, Charles! Yep, thinking about and doing are two totally different things!