10 Ways to Unleash Your Creativity

Let Your Creative Spirit Flow

By Mary Beth Maziarz

When it’s flowing freely, creativity feels like the easiest thing in the world. Idea builds upon idea, and action steps naturally fall into place. We’re a little braver than usual, a little wiser than we’ve noticed in the past. There’s a certainty to our thoughts and actions that just feels right.

On the other hand, when we’re not feeling creative, everything feels harder. So how do you pull yourself out of the creative doldrums and get back into the flow? Start by priming the pump of inspiration. Here are ten simple and practical ways to stimulate the creative process in your own life

Mary Beth Maziarz is the author of Kick-Ass Creativity: An Energy Makeover for Artists, Explorers, and Creative Professionals (Hampton Roads Publishing). She is also a professional songwriter and performer whose music has appeared on more than fifty television shows and films (including "Joan of Arcadia," "Everwood," and "Party of Five"). She even appeared as herself on an episode of Dawson’s Creek, and has performed as an opener for the legendary Etta James.

Define What Creativity Means to You

One person’s scary blank canvas or page is another person’s enticement to create anew. What kind of activities and experiences draw out your creative soul? Maybe it’s seeing an art or crafts project through and presenting it as a gift to someone special. Perhaps it’s performing a song you composed yourself. It could be nurturing your garden so it will be at its most beautiful when you host a backyard party. It might even be the vision and business plan of building a “dream business” that is both creatively satisfying and financially successful.

Tip: Start a wish list of “Coolest Possible Scenarios.” Keep your list in a journal or diary and keep jotting down activities and opportunities that you would welcome into your life. Note any signs or sparks of inspiration that feel related to bringing your dream scenarios to life. These little nudges help move us toward action!

Unlock Your Imagination

When we occasionally find ourselves at a creative standstill and feel too paralyzed to move, it helps to stimulate different areas of the brain. For example, stepping out of the verbal mode (talking about a project) and into a visual one (seeing the possibilities in front of you) moves you more quickly out of a sluggish period.

Tip: Feeling a little stuck? Picture your goals in your mind, draw them in map form, or write them down – or try a combination of all three. Make sure you include visual landmarks that show you—and your subconscious mind—that you are on the road to your goal. For example, “see” a visual of you jumping for joy having achieved your goal!

Truly Go with the “Flow”

An optimal state of mind (and effectiveness) is reached when we formulate goals that are challenging but attainable. Action steps that challenge you but are within your realm of skills and possibility encourage us to enter the creative “flow.” When experiencing it, creative work feels better, easier, and more fluid. Each next step seems to come naturally, without internal argument or resistance, making the reach for our goals more pleasurable (and successful!).

Tip: Remember a time when you were working on a project and everything seemed to click into place, as if you were moved along by an unseen energy. Allow yourself to become so intimate with your projects that creating is like a dance, a ballet, where your intentions match your ability to reach them. That is “flow.”

Limit Distractions

Often in the creative process we find ways to distract ourselves when results are not immediately forthcoming. We might run to the kitchen for food, obsessively check email, or busy ourselves with a constant stream of media in order to maintain the feeling of “progress,” but filling our days with chatter and chaos can siphon away creative energy and form a veil of static around us. On the other hand, quiet time each day allows inspiration to penetrate. Take a look at how you spend your time today, with an eye for seeing where time is lost and where quiet time may be found.

Tip: By finding ways to nurture silence and empty your mind, you welcome inspiration to fill it. Create opportunities for ideas to arrive by carving out some silence in your day.

Turn it Into a Game

Observing your daily creative urges can give you insights and momentum toward pursuing your larger life dreams. In the spirit of playfulness and staying light, you can turn your quest for creativity into the “And Then What” game. Discover the core of your desires by naming something you want, and then ask yourself what receiving it would mean to you in terms of what would happen next. If your game plan calls for becoming more creative in the kitchen, your “then what’s” might include trying out more exotic recipes. This might then lead to you learning more about other places in the world, which just might tickle that hidden desire you’ve had to travel. A ha! You want adventure!

Tip: Use your creative urges as clues in a game of self-discovery. Ask what your art wants of YOU. Perhaps you’re meant to chronicle life’s moments, express emotion, or help others . . . looking at possible ways your path could unfold helps define your creative purpose.

Invite Creativity to Your Home

Your home is your temple of creativity so it is important to make it a space for your creative expression. You can use intention in your space to represent the life you desire. For example, looking for a partner? Place things in pairs around your home. If you wish to be more reflective, you may literally and figuratively achieve this by adding a mirror to your work area, or by moving your desk in front of a window with lovely view.

Tip: Create movement and stimulation by de-cluttering and beautifying your environment.

Ask yourself what feeling you want to experience in a space, then choose a fun, personal way to represent it through arrangement, color choices, or décor.

Be Playful and Have Fun

One of the key parts of creativity is to keep things light. Resist the urge to be so serious! Rekindle the playful and easygoing side of yourself. You can rise above dreary, uncreative moments by remembering that there are delightful high-points just around the corner. If you find yourself bored and blue on a project, there is no harm in skipping past the boring parts to the fun stuff, even if it is not the next step chronologically.

Tip: If you are feeling stuck in the middle of a never-ending project, write a “thank-you speech” that you might actually give someday or an e-mail you might send, acknowledging the completion and success of the project. Embrace the feeling (if only imagined) of relief and gratitude.