Or, How To Let Creativity ‘Happen’!
How would you like to be much more creative? And you don’t need to buy anything, read anything, or do anything? All that’s required, in fact, is for you to ‘listen in’ for inspiration and to let go of wanting to control what happens next. And, for you to take one step at a time. Interested?…
One Step at a Time – Where Inspiration Comes From
Ask the poet, the painter or the person next door where their inspiration comes from and the best answer you’ll get from them is this: it comes from within.
Truth is they just don’t know where it comes from, they don’t. They may have been thinking long and hard on the matter, beforehand, they might not. Inspiration just appears – the creative spark, the “Aha! moment”, the grand idea.
And then they get to it, suitably inspired, and they take a first step. A step that feels good to take, where thinking is minimal, and outcome is unimportant.
Step. Step. Step…
How a Creative Life Unfolds: A General Example
So you might have big (or small) plans for your life – start a new career, write that novel, extend your home, go on the adventure of a lifetime, strengthen your relationships, etc. – but, truly, the only effective action steps you can ever make (in any direction you care to go) is by taking one action step at a time.
This is true, no matter whether you have a BIG vision for life or a small vision for this week – you still have to take a first step in that direction.
Sometimes, you may even be unaware of the second step, and that’s fine. Trust. Wait. Feel. (Know.)
Take the step – sometimes any step will do! – and wait until a next step makes itself clear to you. Where there’s a will there’s a way, remember!
Creativity and Thinking – What Not To Do
Thinking is good, of course, and very very necessary. But don’t overthink things and try not to take your thinking too seriously as you’re thinking. Specifically, resist those ‘pressuring’ thoughts that say things like:
- “You need to have it all mapped out before you begin!”
- “You should be making more progress than this!”
- “I have to make this work!”
The meaning behind these thoughts being: if I don’t do this well, I am a failure.
No, you are not and never can be a failure! You are so much more than an outcome or a situation or a thought. You are the creator of these things.
Anyway, it just so happens I have a personal example of how I’ve recently (at time of writing) been spurred to create thus…
Steve’s ‘One Step at a Time’ Example: How I Created SMNash.com
Yes, this is how I created this SMNash.com website/blog, too:
- I decided I needed to have a transformative coaching website, in June 2013, to support my new coaching practice.
- I then decided I might as well use the SMNash.com domain, with existing logo and colour scheme (the 7 year-old site wasn’t really being used by me for anything in particular)
- I thought it easier to go the WordPress route, and got my friend/colleague Georgia Davey to install WordPress, with Woothemes Canvas theme (she had created the original logo, and helped ‘tidy up’ the one you see now)
[2021 UPDATE: The WordPress theme is now Generatepress, and I designed it all myself – ahem!]
- I decided on the main tabs, then – month-by-month – I slowly started to write copy for these pages
- And I wrote my first blog post on January 29th, 2014, based on old issues of a newsletter I’d created with similar ‘creative energy’ for sister site, SelfHelpCollective.com. (I always knew I was going to reuse this content, thus, knew it had a larger audience than just my SelfHelpCollective.com subscribers.)
This whole process took about 8 months. I created when it felt good to create, when the words just flowed. I left it alone when it felt like too much effort.
One step at a time.
There were no time pressures. There was no need to have a perfect website. Just a ‘gentle guiding force’ that the coaching site needed to come into being; that the website could always be improved; that I just needed to start…
How About You – How Do You Create?
So. That’s me. That’s my ever evolving e-zine and blog. But how about you?…
What sort of changes, if any, do you feel you’re ready to make right now, one step at a time?
Maybe nothing comes to mind, and that’s fine. But maybe you feel a certain dis-ease about your life, maybe your inner wisdom is gently calling to you, asking you to go in some particular direction.
If you do have any thoughts about how you might like to change your life, please do leave comments below, or – better still – schedule a coaching conversation with me and we can talk about it together.
ACTIONS: Some Next Steps To Take…
Intellectually ‘getting this’ is one thing – getting that it’s important to take the right (inspired) actions time and again (or the wrong actions with inspired energy) – but it’s really only the first step to learning to live an inspired, creative life. Here are some next step suggestions to help you take one step at a time, to help you remember that you are so much MORE than the sum of your actions:
- ‘Relax into the unknown’
- Listen carefully for your wisdom & your insights & your creative inspirations
- Act/create, if you can then, without the ‘pressures’ of outcome
- Know all is well, whatever you do or don’t do
Or, a little more ‘actively’ maybe…
More Suggested Next Steps to Take
There are several actions you can take right now, to stay in this transformative Inside-Out conversation. You can join my Daily Reset e-zine, enrol in my 'Stop Suffering' e-course, or subscribe to my daily quotes newsletter (called The Daily Delight). And all for free. Over to you...
- Join The Daily Reset e-zine (daily reminders of Inside-Out Understanding)
- "Do You Really Want to Stop The Suffering?" (Free e-course at Teachable)
- Subscribe to Daily Delight (Daily quotes from new site, SteveMNash.com)