Isn’t the promise of creativity without struggle tantalizing? It’s like the promise of losing weight without diet or exercise.
Of course, your bullshit meter is sounding the alarm. Can there ever be creativity without struggle? If it were easy wouldn’t everyone do it? And without struggle, would we have any grist for our creativity? True, there is a relationship between creativity and chaos. And in many cases order can quell creativity. I’m not offering a struggle-free life, just an approach to creativity that might be less dreadful, less of a struggle. We all want to be in the “flow,” that timeless, energetic free flowing time of creating, as Mihalyi Csikzentmihalyi calls it. Allowing flow to happen in our lives can be easy and struggle free. Here’s seven tips for how to be open to creativity and flow (no guarantees, right? But you can’t even channel your creativity until you get into an open-minded, focused state of humor, play, and divergence.)
1. Love your inner reptile. Your brain has a high alert system that is designed for self-protection. Some people call it the lizard brain, others the gator brain. It is our most ancient brain, and it sees novelty as an “alien” or “intruder,” not good, threatening. And all creativity sparks from embracing the novel. Martha Beck suggests naming your lizard, and thanking him or her for the warning, and then just quiet your pet lizard. “Toss him a grape,” she suggests. John Cleese puts it this way – you need to create a tortoise enclosure, where you know it’s safe to poke your head out and play, “an oasis in your life.” John Cleese on Creativity. We all have reptile brains and they serve a noble purpose. They scan our horizons for threats. The idea is to give it the afternoon off in some loving way. Let it know it’s important, but you’re safe for now. If you put your lizard fears to rest, you can be novel, outrageous, playful or even scandalously creative.
2. Create your time and space. The first and most important step in being creative, in any format, is to give it time and space. Allow yourself time each day, without interruption, to do your work. Ideally this might be 1-1/2 to 2 hours, or more. Many famous writers wrote into the night in order to be certain they would not be interrupted. (Ann Beattie prefers to write from midnight til 3 am.) Others rose and wrote early before any other thoughts or obligations came into their minds. (Henry Miller “found that any [writing] after noon was unnecessary and even counterproductive.”) For creators who have day-jobs, (which is MOST of us) it is hard to imagine carving out two full hours a day. So how might this be accomplished? A friend of mine tells himself all he has to do is write for five minutes. And if that’s all he does that night, then fine, he’s met his quota. However, many nights, once the five minutes has passed he continues writing until the ideas stop flowing. Sometimes for an hour, sometimes into the night.
3. Don’t interrupt the “flow.” You’ve settled your reptile down, and you’ve made the time and space to work. Make sure you won’t have interruptions. It takes a lot for our brains to get into a creative space, to permit ourselves to flow. Let yourself begin and stay in the bubble for as long as the ideas flow smoothly. Be unavailable for that time frame, to any need aside from your own need to create. Let it flow; let yourself be wholly part of the flow, without a sense of the pressures of your “real” life.
4. Don’t ask why, or what’s the use? Is creativity useful? If we look around the world there are countless examples in the affirmative – from Shakespeare’s plays to Apple computers to Rodin sculptures, to the Beatles. Creativity – in its final form – is disruptive, a change agent, and a great contributor to the human experience. As you sit and do your work, you can’t help but wonder, what’s the use? We live in a world of to-do lists, meetings, and measured outcomes. Creativity just is. It’s easy to derail all that you’ve done to come this far – settling your lizard down, creating a space, making the time, taking yourself seriously – by asking yourself… will I ever get published? Will I make money at this? For now, its value is that you’re doing it. Enough said. I always say that writing is what makes my day my day.
5. Know that you’re good enough. Self-efficacy is the feeling of being good at something. It can build confidence, and/or confidence can build self-efficacy. Typically we’d like proof that what we’re doing is difficult (past failures can serve as proof). Having confidence can also boost efficacy. So, how to feel confident, especially in the face of past failures? Prove to yourself that you’re good enough. Think of three times in your life that you did something similar and it was well received. This can be something you did for or with a child, or something at work, something you did two or twenty years ago. Give yourself a mantra based on your proofs, which when repeated (and believed, because of the proofs) will help you turn your fear of not being good enough down to a low roar, long enough for you to create something and build new proof of efficacy and renewed confidence.
6. Skip the plug-in drugs. It is easy to numb that nagging desire to create, and most numbing methods give us some negative pleasure. Sit on the couch and watch tv. Drink a glass of wine. Play a game on your computer or phone. These negative pleasures are rewarding enough that we think we “need” them to relax, but actually creating would be far more relaxing, if achieved. If you think you watch tv for its creativity boost, then at least consider varying where you’re getting your eye candy from. Go out to the movies, museums, people watching or read a book. Vary your inspirations and limit the time you permit yourself to give over to plug-in drugs.
7. Don’t procrastinate, incubate. If you’re still not making time for the work you cherish and wish you were doing, don’t beat yourself up for procrastinating. Reframe the thought. You’re incubating. The time spent creating is mirrored by unconscious time solving the creative problem. Your brain serves up solutions in rapid fire, like flashcards. Your prefrontal cortex “sees” the solutions and says yay or nay. It is in this phase that people come up with new ideas because the solutions get randomly jumbled and recombined. It is important to capture those ideas – write them down, draw the image. Once you’re ready (or inspired) to work, see tips 1 through 6, and spread your work time over several days to bake in more incubation time. If you intend to give yourself a full day to write something – break it into five 1-1/2 hour stints. You’ll be more productive and more creative.
Hope this helps – if not, be sure and watch the 10 minute video of John Cleese – he says it very well and will give you laugh, to boot.
In the meantime, you can learn more about the creative process in the free Master Classes that are part of the Write Without the Fight Club – a paid monthly membership. The Club is a treasure trove of programs about how to activate and maximize your creativity – and these four courses are free. So join us in the Clubhouse.