| Guest Blogger Suzanne Murray writes about: Freeing Your Creativity. Does it feel like your creativity is locked up tight in a box you are afraid to open? You put it in there long ago when your third grade teacher didn’t like your drawing or your father disapproved of you wasting your time writing poems or your grandmother told you that you didn’t have as good a singing voice as your sister. It happened to me in junior high school when my in my design class the teacher exclaimed about a drawing I actually really liked, “Suzanne, you can do better than that.” Decades later I’ve yet to pick up another drawing pencil. The Creative Self The creative self is a tender and vulnerable part of us, so it doesn’t take much to discourage it. I could have left the creative urge locked up with my drawing pad. Fortunately, I found other outlets. In college I developed a passion for black and white photography for creative expression. It was a fine replacement for drawing. Eventually creative writing became my main form. I was lucky enough to grow up in a city, San Francisco, with a parent, my father, who valued the arts so I wasn’t weighed down by the general cultural beliefs that the arts and creativity are frivolous. I had implicit permission to play with creativity from early on and it informs my life in countless ways. Back before I started my own writing and creativity coaching business and needed a resume to apply for work, the line that got me the most interviews was “creative problem solver.” My relationship to creativity allows me to use the process to access the field of all possibilities so that I can come up with new ways of looking a situation and new solutions. We all have this capacity. I was lucky enough to grow up in an environment that gave me permission to play with creativity. Whether you know it or not you probably are using this ability to some degree on a regular basis. You’ve probably had the experience of trying to solve a problem at work using your rational, linear mind. Frustrated to give up and let it go, you drive home and as you pull up to the house the solution pops into your head. That’s one way the creative process works. Trust the creative process You learn to trust that if you give a problem over to your subconscious the answer will show up. To reclaim your creativity, to set it free, consider the ways you are already creativity in every area of your life and the benefits it brings. How have you been discouraged over the years from being creative and what action could you take today to begin to reclaim those gifts? Play with the idea. Have fun. That’s the heart of the creative process. Joy and a deep sense of satisfaction. Wishing you the joy of creativity in this new year, Suzanne Murray Suzanne’s website: Creativity Goes Wild |
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