DETECTIVE WORK: AN EXERCISE

  1. My favourite childhood toy was…
  2. My favourite childhood game was…
  3. The best film I saw as a child was..
  4. I don’t do it much but I enjoy…
  5. I could lighten up a little I’d let myself…
  6. If it wasn’t too late I’d…
  7. My favourite musical instrument is…
  8.  The amount of money I spent on treating myself to entertainment each month is…
  9. If I weren’t so stingy with my artist I’d buy them …
  10. Taking time out for myself is…
  11. I am afraid that if I start dreaming..
  12. I secretly enjoy reading…
  13. If I’d had a perfect childhood I’d have grown up to be …
  14. If it didn’t sound so crazy I’d write or make..
  15.  My parents think that artists are…
  16. My God  / Universe thinks artists are…
  17. What makes me feel weird about this recovery is..
  18. Learning to trust myself is probably..
  19. My most cheer me up music is…
  20. My favourite way to dress is…

Basic Principles

 

  1. Creativity is the natural order of life. Life is energy : pure creative energy.
  2. There is an underlying, in-dwelling creative force infusing all of life – including ourselves.
  3. When we open ourselves to our creativity, we open ourselves to the creator’s / universe’s creativity within us and our lives.
  4. We are, ourselves, creations. And we, in turn, are mean’t to continue creativity by being creative ourselves.
  5. Creativity is God’s /Universe’s gift to us. Using our creativity is our gift back to God / Universe.
  6. The refusal to be creative is selfwill and is counter to our true nature.
  7. When we open ourselves to exploring our creativity, we open ourselves to God: Good Orderly Direction.
  8. As we open our creative channel to the creator / universe, many gentle but powerful changes are to be expected.
  9. It is safe to open ourselves up to greater and greater creativity.
  10. Our creative dreams and yearnings come from a divine source. Ase we move towards our dreams, we move toward our divinity.

(c) BRIDGEMAN; Supplied by The Public Catalogue Foundation

Twelve tips for being more creative in the next year.

1. Start small but start.
2. Be willing to be a beginner.
3. Be willing to look bad at it. But give your time to gain skills.
4. Don’t compare yourself to people who have been doing it for years or decades.
5. Stop staring at other people’s work online and use the time saved to create your own instead.
6. Sign up for a class or a workshop as it gives you support and a structure.
7. Try and find a way of doing what you want in small amounts of time. Don’t wait for great swathes of time to start. Do a drawing while on call waiting. Practice drumming in a traffic jam on your steering wheel.
8. Integrate being creative into your life instead of thinking you have to upend it to be creative. Ie I can only write this novel if I abandon my family and job and live as a hobo on a Greek beach…
9. Try new things even simple things like a new recipe or a new route to work can shake up your thinking and create unexpected connections which is the life blood of creativity.
10. Don’t ask other permission to do it. Just get your own permission.
11. Try not to berate yourself for not starting before – its probably fear. Fear is dissolved by kindness not by cruelty.
12. Start small but START.

In company

women repairing.jpg

Perhaps you have had The Artists Way book by Julia Cameron for some time? Possibly years. Perhaps you started the tools but something happened and you tailed off maybe only using them for a few weeks? Joining a facilitated group gets you support, it makes it easier to keep going and also to get back on the creative horse. Furthermore (and this is slightly frustrating to me) one reason why it works is because it drills down on the thinking and behaviour which has got you into the uncreative blah space you are in over time… think about it where you are in relation to your creativity probably happened over months and years so its unlikely some kind of quick fix will rectify it. This is why I  don’t offer this as a short course, because part of what makes this course work is living with the tools and questions for some time. Having said this my participants most frequently say how quickly the course progresses and how time seems to speed up doing it!