How To Create As Easily As You Breathe

How easy do you find it to create? Does your creative energy flow like the breath of a Buddhist meditating on a mountain top? Or is it more like a heavy smoker wheezing after a brisk run on a cold morning? Here are 5 steps to being able to create as easily and as naturally as possible:

1. Accept that creativity is a natural state of being. Just as we're born knowing how to breathe, we also know how to create, imagine and invent. Look and listen to a group of children under the age of 5 and marvel at all their imaginative stories, curious questions and spontaneous playfulness. This is how we all begin, it's the natural human state of being. It's only as we get older we forget how to be this freely creative. But your creativity is still in there, you just first have to acknowledge that it is.

2. Invite your creativity to come out and create! However talented anyone is, however creative you are, if you don't invite that creativity out to express itself, it might has well not exist. It's like having a championship winning basketball team one season, then the next season never telling your top players when and where the games are so they don't even get the chance to show up and play to their abilities. Give your creativity the opportunities it needs and deserves to come and create.

3. Follow your creative passions. A common trap to get caught in is creating what we think others expect us to create, instead of where our passions lay. You end up creating only what you think you SHOULD be creating, to subconsciously win approval and acceptance from others. The problem is, when you do this, you'll always have a cloud of resentment hanging over, and never freely create what and how you want to, which means you never see your true creative potential blossoming. So follow your passions and create what you long to create!

4. Create every day. When you create erratically or only when you have time, you never allow yourself to get into a flow. Imagine breathing only once every 30 seconds, then holding your breath for 15, then inhaling a few short breaths, then holding it again for 10 seconds. This kind of stuttered and irregular breathing would make you anxious and highly strung! So create in the same steady and regular way you breathe. Start with creating every day for a minimum of 15 minutes, then build up slowly to creating more fully and deeply.

5. Keep your creative ideas coming. When you have no ideas, sitting down to create feels overwhelming, and you feel so anxious about choosing somewhere to start, you end up creating nothing. If you have an ideas book full of ideas to develop this issue never arises. Get yourself a notebook, carry it around with you and jot down ideas as soon as they come to you. The more you use it, the easier it'll become, and you'll soon never be short of a creative idea to develop again.

In all of these tips, the important thing to remember is that you're finding - or rather re-discovering - your natural creative state. There's nothing radically different or new, you're just allowing your natural creativity to come through and flow as easily as air flows to and from your lungs each moment of each day.

Pick one of the above tips and starting taking action on it today...

And to give your creativity the boost it needs to get going again, download your free copy of the powerful and practical Explode Your Creativity! Action Workbook at http://www.CoachCreative.com.

From Creativity Coach Dan Goodwin