How to Motivate Yourself to Be Creative Again

Creating is a joyful experience, something that enriches our lives each moment we spend doing it. Hang on. No that's not quite true...

It CAN be a joyful and life enriching experience, but the problems come when we've become so disconnected with the good feelings of creating, that we question why we even bother trying anymore.

Creativity is a habit, and habits can be very powerful.

When you're creating and enjoying it, the habit perpetuates itself and you create more, and enjoy it more. Everything's dreamy.

But equally, when you're not enjoying creating, this habit also feeds itself. As you struggle to find any pleasure in creating, the compulsion to continue to create diminishes.

Obviously, the less you enjoy doing something, the less likely you are to keep doing it. So you create less and less, because on some level, the pain of not creating at all is slightly preferable to the pain of try to create and finding it an enormous struggle and frustration every time.

So how do we escape this negative loop and rediscover the positive side of creating?

Simply by going back to basics, and remembering why it is we create in the first place.

Take a sheet of a paper and pencil and write in the centre - "Creating gives me..." and "Creating makes me..."

Then start filling the page with completed versions of those sentences. Think about all the positive things creating gives you and brings into your life. You might think "but creating just brings me frustration and anguish, that's the problem!"

Go back in time a little further, explore a little deeper, recall the times when you've been freely creating and in full flow. How did you feel then? Write it all down.

You'll find, as all artists find, that creating is an essential and core part of our lives.

The specific reasons why we each create vary between us, but the underlying need and passion is the same. It's getting a clear picture of this need to create, reconnecting with all the good feeling it brings, that will inspire us to return to creating, today, tomorrow, and until our last breath.

So, once you've written as many statements as you can on your page, you might want to condense it down into a few key reasons. Call it "The Secret To Why I Create", write it on a single piece of paper and keep it somewhere safe.

Whenever you begin to feel disillusioned with creating, revisit your Secret. Then, a small step at a time, return to creating something you enjoy, rediscovering that irreplaceable value it adds to your life...

Ready to be more creative? Then sign up to "Create Create!" - Creativity Coach Dan Goodwin's free twice monthly ezine - today, and get your free copy of the "Explode Your Creativity!" Action Workbook. Just head over to http://www.coachcreative.com.

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