If your life is dull, meaningless and filled of routines, it’s time you developed a creative habit. This is a habit that must give you energy, hold your interest, challenge your thoughts, stretch your imagination, and generate new discoveries and problem-solving ideas. Practicing a creative habit can increases your self-confidence and self-acceptance.
Here are some ideas of how to develop a creative habit and improve your life within weeks.
1. Do something you have wanted to do by have been postponing for a long time. E.g.: learn how to cook, work on your car, decorate a room in your house, develop a business idea, learn how to dance, begin a collection, learn how to make jewelry, learn a foreign language. Follow your desire and listen to your heart.
2. Do something creative when you are in the grips of a negative emotion, such as anger or sadness. Keep a log of your activities and progress. You will be amazed with the results in your life, in a very short time. (Hint: Watch Billy Elliot dance his anger off in the film listed above.)
3. Join a group or a class and learn to make something with your hands (e.g.: pottery, gardening, baking, making jewelry, welding, making furniture, knitting, etc.) Engage your body in the creative process, especially if you spend hours in an office.
4. If you like music, join a choir or learn an instrument. Organize music nights at your home. (A client of mine organized ‘opera nights’ in her home; her guests dressed up as famous opera characters and each performed their favorite aria. Then, they had champagne and a lavish, home-cooked dinner.)
4. Finish a project that you began and abandoned some time ago. When you finish it, have a party to celebrate your completed creation.
5. There are hundreds of books and video-tapes on craft-making. Borrow a few from your public library and read through them. Find a craft or activity that interests you and emerge yourself in it. Allow yourself to have fun in the process.
6. For Christmas, a birthday, or for a special a holiday, make gifts for your family, friends or loved ones, instead of buying them: they can be hand-made cards, home-made cakes, a craft, a knitted sweater, a carved toy, a framed sketch, a collage, anything that excites your fantasy and gives you pleasure to create. Invite your family to do the same. Hand-made gifts are special and very meaningful not only for those who receive them but also for those who make them. They are less likely to be thrown or put away, and gain value as time goes by.
7. Take a cooking class or create your “Party of Chefs”, in which you invite friends to participate in a collaboratively cooked dinner. Rent a cooking video, open your recipe books, and have a lot of fun creating in the kitchen!
9. Interview three people that you consider creative in any domain. Ask them about their creative habits and their relationship to their creativity. Ask them about the gifts they received from their creative habits. Ask for advice of how to develop and maintain a creative habit.
10. Stop associating with people who drain your creative energy due to their actions, words, or attitudes. Instead, use your time to develop a creative habit.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Maria Grace, Ph.D., is an expert at teaching people how to learn lessons from popular movies to find the job, home, relationship, and healthy body and mind they want. She is a Fulbright scholar, licensed psychotherapist, sought-after public speaker and coach, and the author of “Reel Fulfillment: A 12-Step Plan for Transforming Your Life through Movies” (McGraw-Hill, 2005). “Reel Fulfillment” was praised by Publisher’s Weekly as one of the top “self help books out of the self-help box” for 2005-2006.
For more information visit http://www.mariagrace.com and http://www.reelfulfillment.com
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