Feeling Overwhelmed? A Creative Tip

Too Much World and Not Enough Me

This world is a lot to handle. Too much so at times. The world around us can lift our spirits when times are good and drag them down when they're bad. Of course the world around us affects us. But living creatively is about the world inside us as much as the one outside. If we can actively do something to affect this interior world, it may change the impact of the world around us even on a tiny scale.

Living creatively can be tough at the best of times. So what to do to when times get rough? How to keep creativity alive and breathing at the very least? There is always something more urgent to do, something more important in the world that pulls at us or needs our attention. Responsibility feels like it's fighting with Creativity.... and knocking it out!

Why Our Creativity Matters

A focus on creativity is not to down-play the many matters in our lives and in the world that need attention and action. But creative solutions come from creative wellsprings We can use personal resources to help others, but first we need to charge up those resources. (Like they say on airplanes: first put on your own oxygen-mask )

We need our creative juices flowing for our own sakes and also for our effectiveness in the world, sparking our ideas and actions. It's worth remembering that many remarkably constructive contributors to the world (Albert Einstein, DaVinci, Jean Piaget, Nelson Mandela, Mark Twain, Carl Sagan, among others) have stressed the value of play and imagination, especially in times of drought or adversity.

Resiliency

A resilient approach to solutions is a major aspect of creativity. It is often hardest to be find or maintain this route when feeling fearful or threatened. Conditioned knee-jerk responses set in and tend to bully-away our creative urges. It takes some gumption (and practice) to insist that creativity matters in such fraught times. Yet, creative practice is about seeing possibilities rather than remaining stuck. The alternative ideas sparked by creative practice are exactly what we need to help us out of fear and towards possible constructive actions.

Good times are not necessary for creativity. Living the good life, our lives may be rich, full of abundant choices -- too many choices to decide among, in fact. We can feel overwhelmed by our freedom!

But choices become a burden particularly in conditions when we feel we have got to be right, or have got to be good. Making no choice, doing "anything but ..." procrastination is a familiar but unsatisfying avoidance strategy. How theb might we gently lean ourselves towards doing something to prime our creative energy?

Tip: Open the Door to Creativity

Take a breath. Do something creative with a small "c". Call it playing around, fooling around, or even making a mess. Don't bother thinking much about it, just take a little time and DO it.

Here's something I do when my abilities can't keep pace with my demands. I can't even face the blank canvas up at the studio at such times and curse whatever made me think I was an artist! That's when it helps to think small and give oneself some structure to keep from spinning out. My tip below says "art" but you can replace that with whatever your own dread of the moment happens to be.

Don't bother how it looks to others. You're in your own playground now: just see what you like or don't. If you don't like it, cut it out or cover it over with something else. Don't even think about a finished product. You're just playing with scraps, not pushing a rock up a mountain. You don't even have to paste anything down. You can photo one arrangement of scraps, cut it up and then make it into something else. I take photos because I know from experience in this playground that things do turn out.

Here's a sample of some of my "scraps". They were done in about an hour ... no judgment. I used magazine scraps plus white paint in some. Even what you don't like gives you information you can creatively use.

What results from such activity may surprise you, even inspire you onward. Such simple activities that are not goal-directed often spark your energy for other creative ideas and actions. The point is just to DO it. You may even find yourself smiling in the process!

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