How to Find your Creativity in 4 Steps
As an Artist,I have been struggling all my life to tap into the source of creativity.
As I grew up and became a Digital Marketer, I was accustomed to putting processes and systems into my activities.
To put a process and system for creating an artwork is an impossible task according to my brain as creativity flows through me randomly and most of the time, I can not access it when I need it, the most.
I had to systematize it and to do that I had to evaluate, find the source first.
In order to achieve anything in life, you need the power to move yourself first, then the world.
If you have ever completed a task or project that requires a lot of time, you know how difficult it is to keep yourself on track and make progress consistently.
How many times does a person try to lose weight, write a book, change a habit, read a book, or finish a task?
If one has done it once, he/she can do it again for sure. The first time is the most difficult one of them all. Everything comes to one point, the power to create.
What is the power to create?
Is it something that we get from a magic potion or reading a book?
I am not sure of the first one but there are chances of the second one to happen if you are willing to put those words into action in your life.
Everyone in this world has two inner voices according to my imagination; I call them the Inner Angel and the Inner Demon. Every human being inherits these I believe.
Let me give you an example of the Inner Demon and the Angel before we move ahead. I am a professional designer and I can design a book cover in less than an hour. Whenever someone asks me, “Hey, could you design a book cover for my next book”, I do not think twice. Can you guess why?
The Angel in me tells me that it is a piece of cake and I right away jump onto executing it. It makes me happy; it gives me the power to create it, from within.
The reply I would give the person would be “Sure, what is it about?”
I think you have understood what the inner Angel does, yes, he/she encourages us to do something because we have proven that we can do it.
Similarly If someone asked me,”hey, could you write a fiction story for me?”
I would think for a while because my inner Demon will start questioning my capabilities of finishing the task.
I will be presented with images of failure, previous failures, consequences of failing this task, and a lot of negative emotions that comes with it.
It will not take much time for me to either reject the offer or just not complete it once I start, ending up, making the negative images my reality.
Understanding these two inner beings itself will help you to understand why you are not able to move ahead on your tasks and projects.
Your success in life depends on the strength of your inner angel. If your inner angel is stronger you will have more success and if your inner demon is stronger you will have more failures.
You need to decide which one should dominate your life. Once you have decided and it should be the inner angel because you have the goal of finding the source of creativity not scarcity, you will learn a few techniques I have used to strengthen the angel and win over the demon every single time.
Let me tell you a small incident, I had a friend, let’s call him Aaron. He wanted to lose weight and every day before he went to the gym, he would search the internet for motivational bodybuilding videos to motivate himself. After a few days he stopped everything because he was too busy to see the motivational videos.
External motivation or temporary motivation does not have the power to move. You need to find the source and draw the power from it. It will become natural once you know the source. You might have a lot of questions now, like:
How do I find the source of the power to create?
How do I know if I have the power in me?
How can I know if something is really not possible or it is just the inner Demon?
We will find answers for all of the above questions in the coming sections, but before we proceed further I would like to explain one more thing. This power is the source of success for each person in one way or the other.
#1: Your Inner Strength
Every now and then I feel like doing mountaineering, I feel I should do it, but the next day I wake up and I feel it is not something that I should do or rather I feel there are better and more important things for me to do that day rather than climbing mountains for nothing.
Similarly, I would get ideas for different kind of businesses, I will do a market research, even if I find a market , I would feel it might not be something I can see successful at and just stop there and move on to something else.
Later, I realized that these are my inner demonic thoughts talking to me. I have never climbed a mountain before and I have never done that particular business before. It is my fear of failure that tells me that it is not worth the effort not the reality.
For years I tried to write for my blog but I couldn’t, I kept on demotivating myself by saying that I am not a native English speaker and my writing is not good enough to be published, even on my own blog.
My writing skills might not have improved but in the last few years, I have put the following practices to use and written more than 200+ articles in different niches and used these methods to create content based niche websites which I have sold for 10x the value or income it was generating at that point of time.
You do not have to be perfect in your writing but if you could convey your thoughts to others through words and if you are at least 50% successful with that, you could be a writer. Any skill can be improved or developed once you start.
Coming back to identifying our own thoughts, the power to move is the ultimate power, the power to identify the difference between the demon and angel inside.
Each of these inner characters has their own features, and learning how to handle them is another talent but I will cover them all in the coming sections. First let us see how we can implement the technique of:
INFORMING
Informing Technique:
Have you ever taken a decision in anger, fear or sadness?
If you have, you might know that these decisions were not a very good one for you in the longer run.
If you have analyzed why, you will understand that these actions or decisions to act were derived from negative emotions.
Emotion is a strong power that can move anything, both negative and positive emotions.
When you think about your failures of the past, you will be engulfed in negative thoughts and emotions which will create the fear of repeating the same actions.
These are safety features of a human mind.
Just like you are afraid of touching a live wire, or touching a burning candle, you are afraid of anything that MIGHT hurt you internally or externally. The human body and mind are synced to the core.
The energy that you possess in your body is directly proportional to the energy you feel in your mind.
Your mind is the source of your energy, negative or positive and the only way to keep control of the inner characters is to control the mind.
Controlling one’s mind is a deeper and is a spiritual subject, which is beyond my knowledge,perception and scope of this post.
We will now see how we can use these inner beings to create the power to move.
#2 Presenting Your Idea to Your Mind
Before we move into the presenting method itself, I would like to introduce you to the concept and why we need it.
What is keeping you from doing something?
Someone told me “hey it is not about doing something; it is about doing something regularly that is a problem to me.”
I understood that creating a new habit or removing an old one is something that is very difficult for every person I spoke to.
Some of the comments related to productivity problems were:
“I am unable to go to the gym regularly”
“Creating a daily writing routine is very difficult for me”
“I can’t stop eating junk food”
“I am unable to find time to prepare for my examinations”
There are some words that we can find in the above sentences that can be identified as negative thoughts, but it is not easy to differentiate from positive angelic thoughts.
Let us examine the above sentences more in depth.
“I am unable to go to the gym regularly.”
The above statement was from a college student. He was not sure why he could not make his gym, a regular part of his daily life.
Further questioning revealed that he was spending more time with his friends which created no time or very less time for his gym activities.
The days he went to the gym where the days he did not spend the extra three hours with his friends rather than his usual two hours.
This gives a clear idea of how our mind confuses us of the availability of time according to its comforts.
Our ego that decides who we are and what we should do is the power that we have. Controlling the mind is strongest of all powers, but controlling the ego is what we need to acquire the power to move.
I, one of the very valuable alphabets. It is valuable because everyone, every human being has been living with oneself from the time of his birth on this planet.
The ego decides what you should do and what you should not do, it is your personality that is created by your mind from the impressions and experiences you have collected over time.
It might not be your true personality for the outside world but it is the personality created in your mind by the ego.
Every mind has a character in it called the ego which expresses itself through angelic and demonic thoughts as discussed earlier. In order to be successful in any task you take up, you should present the idea or your task and how you are going to do it to the ego.
Presenting Method:
Sit in a comfortable position and close your eyes after memorizing the following steps (voice recording will also work).
Make sure that you will not be disturbed for at least 10 minutes of time.
Think of the task ahead of you. It can be anything from a workout routine to writing a book or even a post.
Just think about it. Relax and observe the fears, the obstacles you see on your path, the worries.
Listen to your mind, the demonic thoughts or the negative feelings.
Try to understand which is good and which is not for your progress. Let them flow slowly through your mind.
Think of the consequences of failure, what people will say about you?
Let yourself fail. Accept your failure. Now you see yourself not completing the task. Observe your feelings, emotions.
Now relax.
Think of one of your happiest moment in life.
Think of the happiest moment in your childhood. Think of someone who made you laugh.
Try to remember something funny that happened in your presence or an incident that made you happy.
Now think of the task ahead of you again.
Explain to yourself why this task is important, how this will change your life.
Imagine yourself completing this task, one sub task at a time.
Moving ahead, feel the happiness, feel the joy.
Think of the outcome. Believe that you have completed the task successfully.
Imagine yourself sitting in a closed room, you have just achieved that you wanted to complete.
Imagine yourself moving towards the door and opening it.
Bright light flowing in embracing your face, your dear ones smiling in joy, celebrating your success, your neighbors, your friends.
You are experiencing extreme joy in your completion of the task successfully.
Relax and surrender yourself to your mind.
Thank yourself for completing the task. Without your mind’s power to move, you would have never completed this successfully. Relax and keep yourself floating in the joy.
Now think of your mind, ask yourself what you would like to choose? The negative or the positive path?
Leave the choice to your mind and relax for some time.
Slowly open your eyes.
You will now see that your mind is calmer than you were before you started presenting your idea to it.
Your mind will be more than happy to have been given the chance to choose but it will choose the positive 101/100 times because we are positive beings.
You will notice that your mind is starting to feel enthusiastic about the task and wants to learn more about it. This is when you move from PRESENTING THE IDEA to FUELING it.
#3: THE FUEL
You might have the best or even the fastest car in the whole world, but it will not move an inch without fuel.
Similarly, you need to add fuel to the thought to convert it into action.
Without the fuel to travel the entire journey or without motivation, you will view each setback as a failure and not as just a setback.
The more you consider a setback as a failure the faster you will run out of fuel and stop the work in progress.
Just like identifying your enemies and their strength in a battle before it begins, it is important to identify the obstacles and roadblocks that might come your way once you start.
In battle or in life, preparation is a must. Your preparation for the task will fuel the entire journey.
You might have small blocks on the way , you will have the power to overcome, but you need to prepare for bigger blocks beforehand.
There are three types of blocks that you need to prepare for:
- Emotional Blocks
- Physical Blocks
- External Blocks
1.Emotional blocks are the ones that cause the most damage.
Even though your mind has accepted the positive path and decided to move ahead with the task, there might be chances of self doubt or fear of failure at certain points when you are facing setbacks.
When you are executing a task for the first time, you are leaving your comfort zone which is not easy for your ego to accept. Whenever you face this problem or feel like you are facing the block, just take some time apart and PRESENT the idea again to your mind and see your success ahead.
Do not depend upon external motivators to push you ahead at this stage as that can only be a temporary solution.
2. Physical blocks are not internal conflicts, but obstacles from outside your mental state.
It could be issues related to your body or physical capabilities.
For example, if you are planning to run a marathon, but you have a physical condition which does not allow you to take it up.
Sometimes these conditions are created and highlighted by the mind itself.
You will require taking a test with a physician or a doctor to confirm that your condition is real and not just an excuse from moving ahead.
The test or consulting a doctor can strengthen the positive belief in your mind and remove unwanted beliefs, if it has been creating an artificial obstacle.
On the other hand, if you are physically unable to complete the task, you should not really be doing it.
3. External Blocks are those come from the nature or other people and most of the time it can be overcome with problem solving skills.
For example: Man invented tunnels for rails in order to overcome the obstacle of mountains.
The best way to overcome external blocks is to consult with someone who has already completed this task.
I have seen that when you approach experts with a very specific question about something they have achieved in the past, they are more than happy to help you.
There are a lot of opportunities available online to seek this kind of guidance. For example, you could use clarity.fm to book a call with experts in a lot of different industries.
They can relate to you and see themselves in you, but it can be exactly opposite reaction if you approach them before you even start your journey.
You will see more help coming your way once you start than before…
#4: POWER TO MOVE
We learn to walk when we are kids and we learn it even though we fall 100 times.
Have you ever wondered why we never lost hope in learning to walk or learning to talk?
Yes, we never had an ego at that early an age. We are taught to be fearful and we are taught that once we fail, we might fail again.
It is true to a certain extent, but there are a lot of probabilities for failure and success.
We do not give enough chance or choice for success in our lives.
If you have done something right in your life, you will know that it still had the probability of failure until you finished it.
Now you will be able to do the same task faster, you still might have the chances of failure, but more confident of the success than the first time for sure.
You have the power to move yourself because you have done it once successfully. Completion is Power.
Athletes derive the power from their past victories, their short wins, their wins in their training period.
The emotion of success and victory are strong enough to be called upon when you are losing or when you feel you are losing.
You do not have space for negativity in your mind once you start your task. You are half way already. No turning back now.
Conclusion- Breaking the Limits
What do you want to make of your life?
Your success and prosperity depends on what you really want. When you get into doing something that is part of the flow you will be more relaxed and you do not know the time moving at all.
Controlling your mind is not an easy task but when you are in the flow, you will experience a control over it. With practice, this control comes naturally at your will.
Imagine how it would be if you could easily tap into this creative flow and choose your path to prosperity. We have no idea what we can do in this world or the potential of being a real human being.
Hope these thoughts help at least one person overcome their fear of failure and tap into their inner strength and source of creativity.
Please let me know your thoughts, experiences, responses and views so that we could have multiple perspectives on this topic. If you liked this post, please follow me here on Medium.
