[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.]
Find tips 1-20 HERE
Here are tips 21 – 40. Enjoy!
21.
Creativity flows from self-relationship. You are the student and you are the teacher. The next time a creative problem arises ask yourself, “What do I already know that will help me solve this?” Begin to see yourself as your own best resource.
22.
Allow for fortunate accidents. Pull out odds and ends from your refrigerator. Try combinations of food—pickles with peanut butter, apple juice with radish slices. Most will taste horrible. But maybe one will be a revelation!
23.
Intending is more powerful than wishing. Intend to create. Hold the intention in your heart and in your belly. Grow creative through powerful intention.
24.
How satisfactory is the life you lead between your creative stints? Are there some important improvements to be made? As much as we might wish it to be, life isn’t only about creating!
25.
Creativity is your teacher. Pick a creative project whose express purpose is to teach you something about your situation or your nature. If no project comes to mind, try your hand at a ten-page autobiography.
26.
Have you abandoned some creative project that still retains a lot of juice? Return to it with optimism, an open heart, and a firm belief in renewed possibility!
27.
If you regularly block, what do you think are the sources of your blockage? Do you block only on certain work? Do you block at certain points in the process? Do you block at certain times of the year? Become your own expert on blockage!
28.
Learn some anxiety management tools. Anxiety makes us undisciplined. Learn a deep breathing technique or a relaxation technique to help you stay put. Anxiety is part of the process—learn how to manage it!
29.
A creative block is the wall you erect to ward off the anxiety you suppose you’ll experience if you sit down to work. Don’t predict that anxiety! And if it happens to come—so what, you can manage your anxiety.
30.
Time magically disappears but it only appears when you schedule it. Get your creating on your schedule!
31.
You can’t plan in advance for everything – for every mood swing, every mistake, and every shift in your circumstances. But you can plan to show up—that is three-quarters of the battle!
32.
Learn how to go directly to your work. When your work bell tolls at the appointed hour, answer it. Stop waiting!
33.
Schedule your creativity. Prepare a schedule for getting to your creative projects and commit to that schedule. Work on your current project for a month without second-guessing your choice or bad-mouthing your progress.
34.
Create first thing each morning. An hour of creating prevents a day of guilty feelings. Start each day making some meaning. Grow creative by putting creating first!
35.
Work every single day on a creative project, even for just an hour, Saturdays and Sundays included.
36.
Don’t shrug away the fact that you’re not completing your creative work. Get to the last sentence of the last page of the last revision. Then launch your piece into the marketplace. If you are not completing projects, do not accept that from yourself!
37.
Divide a sheet of paper into three columns. Label the first column “Starting,” the second column “Working,” and the third column “Completing.” List as many strategies as you can to help you start, work, and complete your creative projects.
38.
Creativity at times needs solitude. If solitude is eluding you, find an empty room right now and do not leave it for two or three hours. Go to a quiet place and work!
39.
What do you need to unlearn in order to become more creative?
40.
Enjoy the process – the mistakes and messes along with the successes. Don’t need your work to go smoothly. The ups and downs are part of the process.
My 97 Best Creativity Tips: Tips 1-20
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This Post is republished on Medium.
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Photo credit: iStock