Lately, I’ve been infatuated  with the concept of creativity; I feel more creative each day and I want to be able to explore more of that side of me.

To be very honest, this feeling of being a creative is very new to me.

Why haven’t I always felt this way? Why am I just now discovering this creative side of me?

I think I know the answers; through my recent journey of working to become a health coach and my involvement in a lot of personal development work, I have learned to embrace a more mindful way of living, to abide in more self awareness and I have become more conscious on varied levels (socially conscious, environmentally conscious, nutritionally conscious…)

In all, I feel as though I am operating on a higher range of frequency and a higher dimension than I have ever experienced, which makes me more in tune to my creative side and allows me to wake up each day sparked with inspiration for ideas—not only that but I am finding that in living more mindfully—through awareness and conscious living, I am attracting connections and pulling in resources which are in alignment with my ideas and my intentions.

How can mindfulness inspire us to be more creative?

1)  Visualize yourself as a blank slate:

Self limiting beliefs are the number one obstacle that deprives us from tuning in to our creative power. Being able to inspire creative ideas begins with becoming mindful of the idea that we can be whatever we desire to be.

When that mindful idea can resonate with us, we are able to let go of those self-limiting beliefs and our creative powers activate; they start working for us. The concept of the blank slate means we give ourselves permission to start on a clean slate, a fresh page—we click the “refresh” button of our minds.

Creative ideas are most often blocked because we are not mindful enough to grant ourselves permission for a new start or chapter—to let go of previous mistakes or hurts.

If we can own the ideas that we can “make” ourselves anything we choose and that creativity lies within each of us—like a brush in the hand of a painter with a blank canvas, we can “make” ourselves out of nothing.

2) Set the intention to create:

Setting an intention by itself is a mindful act. Creatives become creatives not by accident, but by mindfulness. When we set the intention to create, often times we will start off with a blizzard of ideas yet be unsure of how to go about using them; mindfulness silences the background noise and gives us that sensitivity to pick out the good ones.

A creative always has an abundance of ideas but a mindful creative uses practices such as meditation and practicing self care to serve as a source of inspiration to sort through the blizzard of ideas—to get that one, creative idea that would make all the difference.

3) Integrate body and mind:

Move your body when your mind gets stiff: shake it off, sweat it out! Our minds and our bodies are integrated—there is a deep connection between both. When we are trying to get creative yet we experience a blockage or a “stuck” feeling in our minds, we can mindfully become aware of the mind and body connection that exists.

Through mindfulness we allow physical movement, we can: go for a walk, go for a run, do at home kundalini yoga, grab dumbbells and do some squats—anything, just as long as we get our body moving. Physical movement frees up blockages in the mind; through this we achieve better clarity and grant inspiration permission to allow a flow of creative ideas.

4) Experience more AWE moments:

Our ability to practice moments of “AWE” is mindfulness. That mindful act of being able to experience moments when we can just allow ourselves to be in awe of something can ignite inspiration to spark up a creative idea.

Moments of awe don’t have to be extravagant, as a matter of fact we come across these moments everyday, but because we are not as mindful as we should be, we miss it. Waiting under the rain for a few seconds and lifting your hands up with head tilted to the sky, smiling while sniffing the moist air and and allowing drops of rain water to touch your tongue—fully experiencing the magnificent wonder—is an awe moment.

Even though we’ve experienced rain countless times, we forget to be mindful, to experience the awe in that. Mindfulness is being able to experience the awe in even the tiniest things that come our way because moments of awe can lead to inspiration for creative ideas.

5) Practice spacing:

We can’t force creativity to occur, we can’t force great ideas to emerge—but we can practice spacing. Mindfulness is sitting still, it’s waiting it out, it’s allowing for spacing. It’s not rushing, it’s not forcing, it’s not frustration, it’s not impatient, it’s not agitative.

Mindfulness allows you to give yourself time when experiencing a stumbling-block during a creative process, use mindfulness to inspire your next creative idea by allowing yourself to give space during creativity. Space yourself out instead of being frustrated and angry, or instead of giving up, just practice spacing. Get engaged in something else that is more calming and soothing to free up the built up frustration.

If you are mindful enough during a creative process to know when to practice spacing, that mindful act eventually serves as that one element that gives the whole creative process meaning because that creative idea will click-in effortlessly when we are not trying to force it to happen.

6) Abide in your creative genius:

See yourself as a creative being and become mindful of that. In everything you do, live in the conscious awareness of your actions and your reactions. Creative ideas will emerge when we are constantly living in conscious awareness—not missing even the tiniest things that give us signal or hints to our next creative idea—that is how you show up as a creative genius.

Abiding in your creative genius signifies your ability to make every experience and every period that passes a nugget of inspiration, which will ignite creative ideas to abound continuously.

“May you realize that you are a walking creative genius”.

Meditate on that! 

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Assistant Editor: Renée Claude/Editor: Rachel Nussbaum

Photo: Ruffin_Ready/Flickr