Creatively Run Down or Unwell? Call Your Creativity Doctor!
Most of use when we feel unwell or out of sorts in some way, will seek some kind of medical help, traditionally from our local doctor or General Practitioner.
But who do we turn to when our creativity feels sick or unwell? Whether we feel just a bit off our best or that the illness is terminal and the decline of our creativity inevitable, what can we do?
Where can we go for help when we cant function creatively in the way we know we can? Theres no Creativity Doctor for us to make an appointment with. Or is there..?
What we CAN do is take on the role of being our OWN Creativity Doctor. Whats a Creativity Doctor? Well, theyre just like a regular doctor, only they deal specifically with your creative health.
The bonus when you choose to be your own Creativity Doctor is that youve lived with yourself and your various stages of creativity all your life, so you know yourself better than any doctor could.
So here are some simple steps you can take to help raise your creativity from feeling fragile to fighting fit again:
Symptoms
How do you know youre not at full health creatively? What are the tell-tale signs, what readings can you take, wheres the evidence, whats the current reality of the situation?
Gather together as much as you can. Look at all the creative areas of your life and work out how well they are right now relative to how good theyve been in the past and how great they can be in the future.
You may find that your creativity is already in much better shape than you realised, just you werent giving yourself enough acknowledgment and credit for all the ways your creativity is being used.
Diagnosis
Make an honest assessment of how your creativity is right now, taking into account all the evidence and symptoms. Again look at the parts of your creative life you feel arent as well as youd like them to be and consider the factors around them. Whats changed recently in your life thats had a negative impact on your creativity?
What are you doing, or not doing, now that you werent in the past when your creativity was in what you considered to be better shape? Whats the difference that makes the difference to your creativity? What makes you most happy creatively?
Often its tiny actions repeated over a sustained period that bring most change in our lives and because they appear to be so small and almost insignificant, their effects can creep up almost unnoticed.
Possible Course of Treatment
Now youve got as accurate a picture as possible of your creativity as it is right now, and the factors that have an effect on it positively and negatively, you can start to form a solution.
Put simply, what can you do to improve your creative health? If there was absolutely nothing holding you back, whats the first thing you would do to begin to improve your creative health?
Consider all the options available to you. Think about the things youve done before that have been positive and produced favourable results. Also look at new ideas and activities you can get involved with that you expect to have the desired result, an increase in your creative health.
As well as creative actions, consider also your mentality and your belief system around your creativity. Whatever we do, we are all ultimately limited by the beliefs we hold about ourselves. Steadily improving and developing these can bring amazing benefits in the long term.
Put the Treatment into Action
Enough planning, now we get to the action part. Taking into account all the information youve gathered, whats your course of action going to be, to get your creativity back on track?
Whats your first step going to be? When are you going to take it? What specific actions can you put into place and repeat regularly to restore your creativity to optimum health?
Think also about support systems. Who can help you in your course of action? What books can you read, what groups could you join, what websites and forums could help you? What other resources are available to you?
We all feel a little under the weather from time to time. But by being your own Creativity Doctor, with some honest questioning, regular focused action and a bit of support and encouragement, we can all start to get back to our creative best in virtually no time at all.
Copyright 2006 Dan Goodwin.
Creativity Coach Dan Goodwin is the author of Create Create!, a FREE twice monthly ezine for people who want simple and powerful articles, tips and exercises to help them unleash their creative talents. Sign up right now and get your FREE Explode Your Creativity! Action Workbook, at http://www.CoachCreative.com
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