Hello again and welcome to another week’s words on nurturing your creativity. It’s lovely having you with us in the Creative Wings to Fly community and we really appreciate you reading these posts, sending us your thoughts on them and sharing your own experiences and ideas with us. We read all your replies and they all mean a lot to us. Thank you!!!
And talking of gratitude… That’s the topic of today’s piece. 😊 Here at CWtF, we have quite a few routines and rituals we use to keep our creativity in shape. Just as exercise is essential for physical health, so certain practices are essential for creative health. A great example of this is the practice of gratitude. We’ve learned from many great teachers about the power of gratitude in our lives more generally and, specifically in our own projects, it’s become a key part of our work on creative wellness.
We knew it had to be an early focus in our teaching, too, and that’s why it’s the subject of the second lesson in our first Creative Wings to Fly course.
https://creativewingstoflycourse.thinkific.com/
As we sit down to write this email to you, we take a moment to notice all the people and processes that have had to be in place to let us do this. The people who made this computer, or this desk, or chairs. The people providing the necessary electricity for everything to work smoothly. The people who taught us to read and write. The fingers that are able to type, the eyes that are able to see the screen, the minds that are able to put these words in order. We stop for a moment to consider all of this and be thankful for it. And for you, of course, as well. Both of us are so thankful that you take the time to read this, that you have enough respect for us and trust in us here that you would give some of your attention and consideration to these ideas.
The list of all the things and people to be grateful for could go on and on, when you start thinking about it! In reality, a short moment of recognition and acknowledgement is enough to put you in a good headspace before beginning whatever creative (or other) task you’ve set for yourself.
All this good stuff is there for you and you deserve it. That’s worth remembering, too. 😊
It’s a really simple, quick little habit to get into and it can have a massively positive impact in dealing with any kind of creative block. Why is that? What’s so great about being grateful?
Well, if we explore the causes of artistic block, we find that one of the sneakiest triggers is comparison. Comparing our work or – maybe especially – our success with others’ is frequently toxic for our own creativity. It’s a way of beating ourselves up, an invitation for the nasty inner critic to let rip and tell us how much better or at least more successful someone else’s work is. If we go around comparing our sales with J.K. Rowling’s, we are likely to feel unsatisfied, to say the least. If we keep looking at the Instagram accounts of artists with followers in the hundreds of thousands, we can easily feel downhearted at our own, comparatively meagre statistics. Someone else wins another prize while we receive another rejection.
(It can work in the other direction too, incidentally. Unhelpful ideas of somehow superior status because of external validation can send even the nicest of us into diva-territory, if we’re not careful.)
The trouble with comparison is that we get caught up noticing all the things we don’t have and forget to notice all the things we do have. We keep fixating on what we are not and don’t bother to see what we already are. This applies every bit as much to our creativity as it does to our lives in general. We are not really honouring ourselves and our own inherent worth when we keep our focus on other people. Equally, we are not honouring our own talents and our own unique voice when we keep focusing on other people’s voices. That’s a really sad state of affairs and it’s exactly the right conditions for block to settle in.
Here’s the good news, though. It does not have to be that way any more. Once you start appreciating all the things you do have, all the things that are there for you, working in your favour, things automatically start to flow much more easily. It really works!
You can appreciate someone else’s work, be genuinely happy for their successes and still create your own amazing creative work. There is room for us all.
This is like replacing your old fizzy, sugary drink with clear, cool water. It’s healthier and it’s better for the environment, too. Replace comparison with gratitude. Give it a go and see what happens.
And, if you want to explore this further, you can still sign up for our first Creative Wings to Fly course here:
https://creativewingstoflycourse.thinkific.com/
Meanwhile, thanks so much for joining us today. 😊 Till next time.