Module 5: CREATIVE
"The essential ingredients for creativity remain exactly the same for everybody: courage, enchantment, permission, persistence, and trust."
~ Elizabeth Gilbert ~
ABOUT THE MODULE
Gather your paper, pens and palettes, its time to play.
Being creative makes us happier and healthier. When we get into the flow of a creative activity it's like a form of meditation. We tune the world out and get lost inside what we're doing. And we've already said how good meditation can be for our body, mind and soul.
This module encourages you to explore what you love and what makes you - you! It's time to put your own unique brand on your remarkable life.
Choose your next 30 day focus and get creative with it.
You can express your creativity through far more than traditional artistic pursuits like writing, painting, music or dance. Think: a delicious (or not) new recipe, designing a major project gantt chart, or offering an original idea during a team meeting.
And if you're still convinced you're not creative, read Elizabeth Gilbert's Big Magic.
I believe everybody is creative, artist's of our own lives.
Curiosity will help you get creative, start there.
Start now...
"Clean out a corner of your mind,
and creativity will instantly fill it."
~ Dee Hock ~
Do the exercises, explore the resources and consider how to get more creative time into your schedule.
Record your creativity in your journal. Keep it with you and jot down anything and everything you create. From the brilliant business case, to the delicious muffins, and that piece of amazing piece of code that makes you smile.
And for the final word...
"You do not need anyone's permission
to live a creative life."
~ Elizabeth Gilbert ~
Enjoy
Veronica
JOURNALING
Here are some journal prompts to create some new, and different thoughts.
Your entries can be as short or as long as you like. The prompts are there to help you get started, and to keep you thinking creatively.
Maybe it't time to try a different colour pen or to draw some borders around your pages or special words.
After each of the exercises, try writing how you feel, and what you think.
Or answer some of these questions:
- When was the last time you really felt creative, fully in the flow? What can you do to recapture or repeat that time?
- How was I creative today? What did I create today?
- Imagine you've woken up this morning with the magic power that you always wanted. What will you do with that magic power today?
- What's your favorite color, place, food, book, song, or movie, and why?
- What's something you're good at? How does it make you feel when you do it?
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Exercises
Complete the exercises
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Practices
Try the practices
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Journaling
Use the prompts to help you reflect
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Extra Creative Resources
Browse more things to watch, read, listen to, and explore
EXERCISES
- Create a SWIPE file
Exercise 1
Exercise your inner magpie and collect anything that shines in your mind, eye, ear, hand, nose and mouth. Gather it all together to charge your creativity battery. - 7-Day Creative Challenge
Exercise 2
Tap into your imagination, use ideas from your SWIPE file and take the creative challenge.
PRACTICES
- Effortless Breath
Exercise 1
You'll need 10 minutes and a spot to lie down flat for this one.
This is a great practice to open up your creative flow. - Drawing Meditation
Exercise 2
Use this as an active meditation.
Get yourself some coloured pencils, felt tips or pens, print out your favourite page and spend a few minutes colouring in. You don't have to think of anything - just enjoy the sensation of watching the colour appear on the page.
Module 5 Webinar
Watch this for more information around the content of Module 5
If you'd like to be inspired with more creative things to read or see or listen to browse some of the resources here.
These resources are for you to explore and enjoy, now or later...
Read:
- The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win your Creative Battles by Steven Pressfield (again)
- Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear by Elizabeth Gilbert
- The Artist's Way: A Course in Discovering & Recovering Your Creative Self by Julia Cameron
- Play: How it Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination, and Invigorates the Soul by Stuart Brown
- Steal Like an Artist: 10 Things Nobody Told You About Being Creative by Austin Kleon
- Creative Confidence: Unleashing the Creative Potential within Us All by Tom Kelley and David Kelley
- Ignore Everybody And 39 Other Keys to Creativity by Hugh MacLeod
- Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
- Creativity:Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
- Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within by Natalie Goldberg
- Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action by Simon Sinek
Investigate:
Watch:
- Elizabeth Gilbert - Your elusive creative genius (19:09 mins)
- David Kelley - How to build your creative confidence (11:46 mins)
- Janet Echelman - Taking imagination seriously (9:19 mins)
- Tim Brown - Tales of creativity and play (27:47 mins)
- Amy Tan - Where does creativity hide? (22:52 mins)
- Adam Grant - The surprising habits of original thinkers (15:25 mins)
- Mac Barnett - Why a good book is a secret door (16:59 mins)
Listen:
- Creative Commoners - Try Episode 140: How the Creative Mind Works
- The Introvert Entreprenuer - Try Episode 115: Chelsea Karcher on Creativity in Leadership and Entrepreneurship (34:25 mins)
- Jess Lively - Try Episode #142: Curiosity, Epic Self-Compassion & Creativity with Elizabeth Gilbert (Big Magic) (48:18 mins)
- After the Jump - Try Episode #67: Expressing Your Voice Through Social Media (30:00 mins)