In her best selling book, Big Magic, Elizabeth Gilbert, asks the question, “What is creative living?” Her answer, “Any life that is driven more strongly by curiosity than by fear.” Julia Cameron uses the term, creative recovery, in her well known book, The Artist’s Way. The two basic tools of the Artist’s Way, Morning Pages and the Artist Date are all about curiosity. Being curious is about learning, investigating, exploring, researching, discovering answers and solutions. Many of us are blocked from living a creative life by our fears. It may be fear of failure, fear of success, fear of what others think of us, fear of not finishing, fear of beginning, fear of not being good enough and the list goes on. So how do we blast through all of these fears that immobilize us and keep us stuck? Here are a few tips that have worked for me, try them, they could work for you too.

  • Creative visualization (visualizing my ideal retreat in a beautiful place near a body of water)
  • Listing all of my fears relating to a specific project
  • Listing what I can control and what I can’t control (from the list of fears above)
  • Taking an Action Step (even a baby step) toward realizing my Vision
  • Creating an affirmation around my Vision that I want to manifest
  • Writing daily morning pages
  • Sharing my Vision with someone
  • Making a Vision Board of what I want to create
  • Continuing to fill my creative well through weekly Artist Dates
  • Putting my Vision out to the Universe and letting go out of outcomes and results

What about you? What does creative living mean to you? What blocks you from living a creative life? Which one of the tips I’ve recommended will you implement this week?

What is Creative Living?
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One thought on “What is Creative Living?

  • October 24, 2017 at 5:44 am
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    Nancy, there’s a cool app that will help you with daiy writing. It’s called Writelight and there are hundreds of cool writing prompts, that help to understand, what’s your way, what’s your vision, how to move towards it.

    Reply

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