Creativity is a Muscle
Just like we need to work our glutes and biceps through movement, if we want to feel more creative, we must practice feeling and being creative.
I feel lucky to be able to bring this into my work with therapy clients. With young clients, we often end our sessions with drawing: depicting our family members and what they mean to us, designing a room using just one color, crafting our dream album cover. Above is my “album cover” I created the other day, featuring a favorite animal. These exercises last no longer than 10 minutes, we enjoy ourselves and I often move along with my day without thinking too much about it—yet its impact keeps me going all day.
Two things are important to point out:
1) It’s really not that hard to incorporate creativity into your day.
And it’s not that serious.
2) Create and let go. Create and move on.
I watched a video of an artist who creates transient art using live pieces of nature, only to take a photograph of her creation and promptly wipe it all away.
By implementing these small spurts of creativity and generating impermanent art throughout our day, I genuinely believe it strengthens our creative muscle and helps bring a lighthearted spirit throughout all areas of our life.
I have talked all about this when it comes to getting dressed and playing with the clothes in our closets!
Also, practicing the art of letting go is actually incredibly good for us and helps us practice cognitive flexibility which we LOVE <3
SOME IDEAS:
Play with the clothes in your closet and get dressed a little differently for just one day. Feeling “bored” of what you have? Do it for a week and then let’s talk 😎
Create unique art for your living space using just your hands! Suspend ideas of what you want it to be
Have fun on Canva just playing around with collaging, or make a physical visionboard/collage with magazines and items around the house! How cool are these “junk journals” people are making?
A classic creative exercise from The Artist’s Way: morning pages
Change something: your movement plan, coffee order, even your water of the day (lemon and tarragon, why not…?)
Attend a local event: dance class, art class, witchcraft class, writing class etc
Try a completely different genre of music than you normally listen to, or read a fiction book instead of your usual non-fiction
Go to a museum and then commit to creating some art at home
New recipes of course!
Try collaborating with someone in some way, currently I’m helping a friend with some freelance work stuff and it works a totally different muscle than therapy, it’s been so fun!
