Keeping Creativity - Alive and Thriving/
I ask the question: what are the things that keep creativity alive, throughout a lifetime career… for you? Not just what inspires it - but what keeps it alive?
Trying to pinpoint what actually cultivates and sustains creativity, can often bring with it a sense of ambiguity.
I’ve had this conversation with well established and long serving creatives, and their responses tend to reveal a pattern where most conversations revolve around inspiration, or drift into the technical and the tangible. But when asked something deeper - what allows your creativity to flow, what keeps it steady, what brings it back to life if it fades, or accessing it on cue - many realise they’ve never really paused to consider how they work. Only that they just do.
Their reflections seem to come from a deep-rooted knowing. Not just with the work itself, but their relationship with it - that’s not always easy to articulate.
And while there’s something quite special in that, there’s also something powerful in learning why it works, and what, exactly, makes it flow. Especially, for those times when feeling like the work is heading off course - or it’s ready to move into new levels.
A vast body of evidenced recommendations from substantial scientific research and practices of Positive Psychology, exploring sustainable ways for keeping creative passion and purpose alive and thriving, suggest many contributing factors. The overall message however, is around how creativity lasts not because we chase it, but because we learn how to stay with it.
Whether having progressed through formal studies or ardently self-taught, what underpins creativity is rarely found in skill mastery alone.
It’s found in the places that can return us to ourselves - in both our inner and outer worlds. Where we feel grounded and engaged enough to explore, and free enough to create with energy and meaning.
It sits within the inner story of who we are, that form the unique factors that keeps our creative work alive. And, being okay with trusting this knowledge… and trusting that this sense of knowing, of ourself, is also evolving.
If we only ever ‘just do’ what comes naturally, without understanding why, we can lose connection with the very qualities within that help our work when challenges arise, or when we feel uninspired or uncertain - and when we need to step up to newer levels.
“We do not learn from experience… we learn from reflecting on experience.”
How do we tap into it…
Creativity sits within our responses to the discoveries and insights from our journeys.
What we see and feel within the environments, and the intertwining of pressures and pleasures for achieving. What excites or annoys us, what makes us feel stagnated, or alive and stokes the passions within. And, despite or inspired by… the reliably constant movement of shifting times.
Tapping into what sits uniquely within, is about consciously refining what we know about the finer details that sit beneath and sustains our creativity, which is distinctly personal. It calls for a light yet curious form of introspection, with a focus on what defines and drives us.
It goes beyond developing business and creative skills and styles, as these can all be obtained and mastered practically, externally. We’re talking about the facets that sit within, and define our creative blueprint.
The more we understand what defines us in terms of our own creative pattern, the more freely we can return to it, again and again.
“Locked away deep within your creative blueprint - reveals your best strategy - you. ”
Sustaining creativity isn’t found in doing more, but in knowing more about what holds us together.
There’s personal introspection needed to understand what makes you you - and others nothing like you. Because, what energises one person, may not work for another. And that’s the point - there is no single way. But there is your way.
The instigators behind keeping creativity not only alive, but also thriving, is sitting within your own blueprint. What channels your strengths, your rhythm, your edge, and what brings out your enjoyment… and, your advantage.
The more clearly you see them, the more confident you’ll be with shaping your creativity, and your path - in a way that truly aligns.
Confirming ways once known, and also learning about what’s not known, adds to your repertoire.
And it’s worth exploring.
Michelle
If you feel drawn to explore your creative blueprint in a more personal way, you’ll find an option in the menu.
Concrete Olive menu - Creative Blueprint
Also, don’t hesitate to book in for a quick chat via the ‘complimentary 15-minute Quick Connect’ if you’re curious and would just like to understand it all a bit more.