[In this 5-part series, I want to share with you some of my top creativity tips gleaned from working as a creativity coach for the past thirty-five years and from having written 50+ books over the past fifty years. If you’re interested in training as a creativity coach, please take a look here.]
My 97 Best Creativity Tips: Tips 1-20
My 97 Best Creativity Tips: Tips 21-40
My Best 97 Creativity Tips: 41-60
Here are tips 61 – 80. Enjoy!
61.
Know your own rhythms. During what part of the year do you generate the most ideas? When do you need to rest? When do you like to play? Honor your own unique process by giving your needs time on your calendar.
62.
Expect setbacks. No artist experiences one success after another. Determine to come back. Remember that you will need to demonstrate your courage all over again.
63.
There’s necessary arrogance and unnecessary arrogance. Learn the difference. Your creative life depends on fostering the one and minimizing the other.
64.
There are just too many ideas to keep in one’s head. Coax yourself into the habit of organization. Get better organized and stay organized.
65.
What if it takes years and years to create beautifully or to sell anything? You will need stamina. Get fit and stay fit—emotionally as well as physically.
66.
When we aren’t really using ourselves we feel disappointed, depressed, and worse. Use yourself! Challenge yourself more, take new risks, inaugurate grand projects, and use yourself to your full capacity.
67.
There is always the doing—the repeated doing over time—the doing by which we learn our craft. Do so much that you become a master, even as you remain your own apprentice.
68.
Do you have a plan to survive the countless rejections that will come your way? Create that plan!
69.
Do you keep your creative work close enough? Is it always available? Keep it so close that when you turn around you run right into it!
70.
It is so much more exhausting not to work than to work. If you procrastinate you’ll feel more exhausted than if you’d created for hours. Never forget how tired not working makes you feel.
71.
If you love solitude and indwelling, you can live much too claustrophobically. Remember to throw open your windows and let some fresh air in!
72.
Whatever pain and suffering you’ve experienced in your life has been a blessing at least in this one regard: you know some true things that you couldn’t have learned any other way. Do those experiences find a way into your art?
73.
Do you need creating to be easy? If you do, change your mind! Creating is often exhausting. Accept that you’ve embarked on an arduous journey.
74.
You and you alone decide what is meaningful. Use your creative nature to make new meaning each day. Treat meaning as a wellspring and a renewable resource and you will never run short of meaning again.
75.
Take that risky first step. Picture yourself separated from your creative work by a chasm that is a thousand feet deep but only a foot wide. Yes, it is deep! But see how easy it is to cross right over?
76.
Create everywhere. Create in the rain. Create by the side of the road. Create wherever you find yourself!
77.
Say, “I will astonish myself.” Then you’re bound to astonish others.
78.
You are an individual. Think for yourself. Decide for yourself. Create in your own voice!
79.
Don’t say that you’re unable to craft beautiful things until you’ve given yourself years and years of trying. What if your grand piece is destined to be your ninth and you stop at eight?
80.
Forget about control. We control so little! Aim for influence instead. Become a positive influence on your creative life.
My 97 Best Creativity Tips: Tips 1-20
My 97 Best Creativity Tips: Tips 21-40
My Best 97 Creativity Tips: 41-60
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This Post is republished on Medium.
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Photo credit: iStock
