Think of the 5 Keys of Conscious Creativity as different wells you need to fill. You don’t have to constantly attend to each well, but you need to make sure that each of the five wells does not run dry. If you keep enough water in all of your creativity wells – keys – you will be consciously creating.
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Key #1 – Curiosity
The power of curiosity as a skill is that it creates distance and objectivity and silences your inner critic. It reminds you to engage your childlike sense of awe and wonder by asking open-ended questions that invite inquiry and reflection. Ask “why” over and over like a 3-year-old to get more interesting and profound answers to your most important questions. One of my favorite curious questions is “What if…” These two mighty words drop us instantly into the realm of possibility instead of keeping us stuck in past failures or the threat of failure.
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Here are a few questions I have asked myself:
- What if someone did buy my art?
- What if I took an hour each weekend for play?
- What if I took an art/music/dance class?
- What if I took a painting break in the middle of the day?
Key #2 – Compassion
“If love and compassion are in our hearts, every thought, word, and deed can bring about a miracle,” says Thich Nhat Hahn. When it comes to owning our artistry, your fear can often feel like a fire-breathing dragon. When you are in fear or judgment you cannot access creativity which creates blocks, fear of the blank page and procrastination. Practicing loving-kindness towards your own creative expressions as well as nurturing the ideas of your teams and communities are essential to conscious creativity.
How do you begin to practice compassion towards your own creativity?
- Allow your “art” to be good enough and release perfectionism. I know, easier said than done but it does get better!
- Learn to enjoy the creative process and detach from the outcome.
- Just get started! Write a few words or make a few colorful marks on a canvas. Getting started is the hardest part.
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Key #3 – Constraints
David Sturt and his team conducted a study of 1.7 million people doing award winning work around the world. What they discovered was that the most innovative ideas were inspired by constraints. According to psychologists, you are much more creative when you have less to work with! Ideas for innovation, problem solving or designing something original don’t originate in a vacuum, they flow from new combinations of existing ideas, elements and limitations.
Let me give you a fun example. If I asked you to pull out a pen and a blank piece of paper and to draw a life-like, realistic representation of a human figure, you might balk. You would most likely remember all your childhood fears about drawing, art making and looking silly in front of your peers. In fact, you are probably sitting there right now saying to yourself, “I can’t draw.”
But what if I gave these instructions instead? Using ONLY triangles, rectangles and circles, draw a human figure. Are you breathing a sigh of relief, seeing possibilities in your head? Imagine the creative combinations of shapes you could use to draw hundreds of different human figures.
Key #4 – Congruence
Congruence in this context means harmony and alignment of your thoughts, your feelings and your intuition. Bringing your whole being into inner congruence allows you to release judgment and access clarity. It creates a growth mindset versus fixed mindset. Once you feel that deep inner congruence that Yes, I am creative – you have even more experience of what Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi coined as flow.
Flow is being completely involved in an activity for its own sake. The ego falls away. Time flies. Every action, movement and thought follows inevitably from the previous one, like playing jazz.
~Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
We unintentionally stop creative flow when we are out of alignment. Congruence in this context means bringing your thoughts, beliefs and actions into balance. When you are in total congruence, it feels like the universe has your back, life just flows and everything is working perfectly. Conscious creativity is the essence of flow.
Check in with your head and heart – are they aligned and supporting you in accessing and owning your artistry?
Key #5 – Courage
Now is the time to embody the dragon, to soar into the unexplored territory of Conscious Creativity and release any fear of looking silly, stupid or not appearing to be the smartest person in the room.
“To live a creative life, we must lose our fear of being wrong.”
– Joseph Chilton Pearce
One of the clients in my advanced coaching program said to me this week, I’ve worked so hard to create the freedoms I said I’ve always wanted and now I’m afraid of slowing down or allowing myself to enjoy it. I’m afraid of losing balance. If I relax will it all unravel? Her belief is if she leans into play, the money will go away; she has to be always producing in order to prove her worth and value.
Her fear has come at the sacrifice of her creativity and her commitment to her most important projects – the one’s that have been calling her, tugging at her for years.
Together she and I worked through the first 4 steps of the Conscious Creative Model™ so that she could come back to step 5, courage, and create a clear course of action. Her first simple action was to schedule two hours for creative play into her calendar each week.
The easiest way to activate courage is through creative play. Creative play is a powerful transformational tool for making the unconscious conscious.
Creative Activity: Let’s Play
So right now we are going to engage the practice of conscious creativity through a quick sketch series.
Here’s your creative constraint – using only simple faces or stick figures, no words, answer these three questions
- How did you feel about your creativity one year ago?
- How do you feel about your creativity today?
- How do you want to feel about your creativity one year from now?
If you can see that there is a gap between where you are now and where you want to be in a year, then I invite you to join me for regular creative play on the 15 Minute Creative Facebook page where I share playful creative activities a few times a week that take about 15 minutes. You can like and follow that page HERE.
Creatively Yours,
Dr. Minette
Dr. Minette Riordan is a risk-taker and curiosity seeker who loves jumping feet first into business building and art making. Her mantra is, “how hard can it be?”
A modern day Renaissance woman, Minette is an artist, writer, award-winning entrepreneur and advocate for creativity as essential to the well-being of all people and our planet.
She has built several successful businesses and published 3 books including her best seller The Artful Marketer.
She believes that we are all creative and when we become disconnected from our inner creative fire, we lose sight of our passion and purpose.
She is not alone in these beliefs. Recent studies by IBM and LinkedIn cite creativity as the single most important trait for today’s leaders yet only 1 in 4 people believe they are creative.
Minette helps leaders and their teams reconnect to their innate creativity. When we are all working in our highest and best creative genius, we can solve all the world’s problems.
When she’s not traveling to speak or lead workshops, you will find Minette in her studio making art that’s beautiful and inspiring. Learn more about her creative adventures at www.minetteriordan.com
