Fostering Creativity, Part One: Being Gentle With Our Creative Selves...

After posting about being at the mid-way point of my 365 {photo a day} project. I 1) received so much support and encouragement that I am so grateful for. So thank you. But, 2) I also received a lot of comments complimenting my ability to change course, be lax in certain areas, and choose not to share my work on certain days. Many of you were relieved and felt that you now could lighten up on your own expectations. It brought up some interesting points and topics of discussion of things I feel very strongly about with regards to personal creativity and I wanted to devote some time to sharing my views.

So often, we start out enjoying our creative time. But somewhere along the way, past the point of excitedly dipping our feet in new waters and before we get to where we feel truly confident in our talents, we begin treating our creative selves somewhat harshly: we expect a lot, we are highly critical, we often and easily get angry and/or frustrated. If we view our creative spirits in the same way we view the creative spirits of children, how would we feel about our the ways in which we are attempting to foster creative growth?  With children, we nurture creativity: we praise efforts, we encourage growth, we withhold criticism, we don't  judge their artwork by the standards of others, and we celebrate growth and improvement. Because of these gentle, positive messages, we allow children to feel that they are safe to learn, safe to experiment, safe to try new things, and safe to be themselves within their creativity. We teach them that if they keep working on something, that they will improve. And we let them know that their creations, the manifestations of their inner selves, are beautiful.

What might our creative potential be if we were to be as nurturing to our own creative spirits as we are to those of children? What if we praise our efforts, no matter how small or misguided? What if we stopped criticizing our own work harshly? What if we infused our creative process with gentle positive messages? If we apply the same theory of thought concerning the creative souls of children, then this gentle approach would allow us to grow creatively, to feel safe to learn and try new things, and to feel confident about being ourselves.

A common misconception is that in order to improve at our skills, we need to push ourselves. We believe that criticism {even the harsh criticism that we give ourselves} is helping us to get better. However, studies have shown that children respond far better to positive reinforcement than negative and our creative spirits {being childlike in nature} respond the same way. There are a number of ways to improve at a skill that don't involve harsh criticism: research, tutoring, focused practice. These methods can be very powerful if we're coupling them with feelings of encouragement and safety. Our creative souls need to feel that their steps of learning, their experiments, their attempts at greatness will not be belittled.

Creating should, first and foremost, be something that we do for ourselves. Both the process and the end result should only be shared if we feel inclined to do so. We need to take away our self imposed measures of success and simply ask ourselves if we enjoy doing what we are doing. And if the answer is yes, than we have definitely succeeded. By definition, creating is a process. Part of that process is learning. We need to incorporate that aspect into the positive feeling we have surrounding the other aspects of creating and enjoy it as such.

We need to be encouraging and supporting and rallying on our efforts, however small or elementary. We need to be our biggest fans, not our worst critics. Every single creative venture is an opportunity to learn and, more importantly, an opportunity to have fun. Children color and create because they enjoy it. Before we were trying to be the best or stay on top of our skills or carve a name for ourselves in the creative world, we enjoyed creating too. So if we can get back to that place of just wanting to create for ourselves, for the way we need it to complete us, and the feeling it brings, while leaving aside any negative aspirations, our creations can come from a place of deeper authenticity. This, coupled with our nurturing and positive reinforcements, has the power to skyrocket our creative potentials.

**{I'm thinking next week} I will discuss how to tap into your personal creative flow and use it to further your creative potential. **