Getting Your Creative Juices Flowing . . . Again

She gasped, amazed, in sheer joy as I dumped the precious treasures onto the counter. My 9-year-old granddaughter stood silent for a few moments, taking in the sight. I had just given her the gift of a lifetime.

Not really. But it seemed like it to a child.

The cause of the joy was a bag of odd cardboard shapes collected throughout the holidays: empty wrapping-paper tubes, shoe boxes, glitter notebook covers, a paper drink umbrella. Next came the bin of craft supplies—tape, glue, markers, stencils.

Her creative soul was on fire.

What sets your creative soul on fire?

Two tips to ignite your natural creative juices and set your brilliance ablaze:

1. Use positive self-talk to nurture your mind. Remind yourself that you are creative. I can hear it now. When many of us are asked to be creative, we shout with our inside voice (maybe even out loud), “I don’t have a creative bone in my body.” According to a study conducted by Adobe, only 1 in 4 people believe they are living up to their own creative potential. Last I checked, all of us were children at one time or another. That makes each and every one of us naturally creative. Jane Piirto, author of Understanding Creativity, tells us that “Creativity is a basic human instinct to make that which is new.”
2. Schedule time to play with your passion. The same study shares that 75% of respondents said they are under growing pressure to be productive rather than creative, even though they are increasingly expected to think creatively on the job. Yet people in the survey reported spending only about 25% of their time in creative activity. To get your creative juices flowing, you will need to find time to create—whether you are on or off the clock.

My granddaughter spent the next two hours “creating” an Amazon rainforest scene. She loves animals and has been studying them and playing with them since birth. What are you passionate about? What do you find yourself tinkering with for hours, losing track of time both at home and at work? (Catching up on email doesn’t count.) Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, in his book Flow, describes this as “the state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter; the experience itself is so enjoyable that people will do it even at great cost, for the sheer sake of doing it.” Those places are where natural creativity will abound.