There comes a time when you just have to force yourself to be creative. As a general rule, I leave periods for creativity in my agenda, lots of it. Sometimes I end up going for a walk, but the idea about the time is that it is my brain time; it is my time to think, create, and disperse any mood the world may have stirred up in me. It works wonders, when I adhere to the basic rule of making time for it.
I got away from this in the past year. I had other priorities, new frontiers to discover, new relationships to build. What I found at the end of the day is that when you don’t make time for creativity it somehow rests. Then when you do call upon it, it’s rusty, it’s tired, even uninspired.
I can give up just about any THING, but not my creativity. If this year has taught me anything, it’s that I need creativity to be happy and balanced. I let it go long enough that I found myself spending negative days ruminating about people ruining my happy life, when in reality; it was the absence of creativity that was making me grumpy.
So I forced myself to be creative. I practiced, I struggled with inspiration, I came up with nothing - time and time again. Then, thankfully, a couple of artist friends asked me to collaborate on their work. Somehow working on other people’s art was easier. It opened up my instincts and allowed the energy to flow like I had become accustomed to. Then, my creative spirit kicked in and it was back.
I had missed it so much I feared it had gone, but what the experience has taught me is that if you don’t want it bad enough, off it goes to celebrate with someone who does.
I can’t tell you how many times adults have told me they wished they had kept up their music lessons. As kids, we are creative spirits. We are alive with creativity. We are delighted by it in fact. Where we go wrong is that we let it go. We let life take over, sometimes we let gloom and doom take over. We forget there is a remedy called creativity to brighten our spirits and make us feel alive and spiritual.
This year I put a message out to the universe that I take being an artist seriously. I’m willing to work hard at it and not take it for granted. As soon as I reconfirmed this to myself, as soon as I was willing to surrender to it with blind faith, opportunities began to flow in. It was my decision all along.
So, sometimes you do have to force creativity. Just like we force ourselves to eat well or get enough exercise. It may be painful at first, it may not even leave you feeling uber inspired at first, but, if you commit to awakening your creative self, you will add tremendous peace and happiness to your life – you may even find yourself giving up blame.
May 2013 be your most creative year yet.