Yes, You Are Creative — Exercise that Muscle

Do you give yourself time and opportunity to explore and create without judgment?

If you want to be creative, stop judging yourself. Photo by Alice Dietrich on Unsplash

As children, we have an unlimited capacity to create. Then we grow up, and we learn a million rules and measure ourselves against artificial standards. Later, those restrictions spin tape recordings in our heads that just keep playing. If you allow those inner (or outer) critics to prevent you from playing with creativity, you will diminish your capacity to access those lovely right-brain functions.

Reasons to honor your creativity

It’s no accident that therapies for various ailments and injuries include planned creative opportunities. Art therapy is an example. If quiet creativity helps Alzheimer patients, mental health patients, and rehab patients, doesn’t it make sense that such endeavors can improve your well-being? How delightful to think that an hour daily of finger painting or writing poetry could increase your life expectancy.

We’ve convinced ourselves that we must multitask. We often feel like everyone wants a piece of us. Life’s pace is fast and furious; most American say they get only four or five hours of sleep at night. We’re learning that’s terrible for creativity, since so much brain housekeeping happens during sleep. That housekeeping is essential, and may be why we often say our solutions came to us in our sleep.

Even the simple act of listening to a recording about improving your creativity can reduce stress and lower blood pressure. Stress is deadly. Refocusing your thinking creates healing time. Experts are finding that right-brain activity allows people to reframe their reality and express their problems more clearly.

We know our quality of life increases when we exercise our right brain, our creative muscle. Those creative sparks come and go. We can push them aside or embrace them and allow ourselves to daydream. Make it a priority to consistently tune in to your muse and make friends with her. Stifle your inner critic (a left-brain function). Never allow yourself to believe you can’t draw. Or paint, write, or dream. You can.

Right brain exercise strengthens the left brain, too

The left brain is usually more taxed than the right brain. It handles your daily loads and crises. You activate it for decision-making, scheduling, and planning. All work and no play is exhausting. Try to hush the pragmatic part of your mind each day and let the softer side take over. You’ll thank yourself while you have fun and feel calmer, and your left brain benefits, too.

Discovery fuels progress

Experiencing others’ creative work puts you more in touch with your creative muscle. Mindfulness plays in here. If you read a book, try not to skim the pages because you must take the dog out soon — give the book your whole attention. When you look at a photograph, a painting, a drawing, slow your busy brain down (hush up, left brain!) and follow your imagination into the image. Bide awhile.

Do you allow yourself lots of time to experiment for no reason but joy? That often leads to solutions for your most profound problems. Perhaps you’ll come upon a new way to organize your clutter. Or maybe build a better mousetrap? Think of it — what if you could spit out the great American novel or paint a better version of The Night Hawks?

How to exercise your right brain and give your left brain a rest

This is the sort of exercise you can warm up to! It’s as important and healthy as hitting the gym or running, but you don’t get sweaty. Even if you’re not in the mood to paint a masterpiece or write a sonnet, you can (and should) give your right brain a workout.

• Spending time with family and friends is as helpful to the right brain as a treadmill is to large muscle groups. Join social events or volunteer at your church or a hospital, and you’ll create opportunities to enhance your soft skills and right-brain health. Benefits: less risk of dementia, lower blood pressure, longer life, a positive outlook

• Sketching, painting, sewing, or 3D. You can explore dozens of crafts, from woodworking to paper folding. These things shut off conscious thoughts and worries, and like practicing mindfulness, such quieting has incredible benefits.

• Think about acting, dancing, singing, or working on the crew of community theater for a chance to get moving and spark your right brain exploration. Benefit: Shut off logical thoughts and get your creative juices flowing.

• Meditation, mindfulness practice, or attending yoga classes connect your body and mind in a non-threatening, non-stressful mode. You can discover how your brain works and which thought processes hold you back. Therein lies the path to your deepest creativity.

As I write this, I hear readers saying, “I don’t have a creative bone in my body.” Creativity is part of human nature, but you’ve learned to judge yourself without empathy. Take a break if you feel anxious or uncomfortable as you exercise your creativity. Back up and see what you reacted to in a positive light, make friends with that moment, and walk a little further.

“Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while.” — Steve Jobs

So, how do we allow ourselves to experiment? I stifle all expectations and avoid setting goals to get in that mindset. I quiet my mind and see what’s undulating around in there. What needs to be addressed? What tools do I need? Markers? A keyboard? A lug of clay? Then, I sit with the tools and let them show me the first step. I become aware of my breathing, mood, and well-being (or lack thereof), and then I keep floating forward.

“Don’t think. Thinking is the enemy of creativity. It’s self-conscious, and anything self-conscious is lousy. You can’t try to do things. You simply must do things.” — Ray Bradbury

Being your creative self

Let’s digest all of this. If you want to nurture your creativity, and you should, one of the best things you can do is embrace boredom. If you put aside those time sucks that fill your unplanned moments, you can recognize and experiment with ideas from within. What are time sucks? Screen time. Social media. Videos and streaming. Snacking. Complaining. Shopping. (OnePoll recently found that the average adult wastes two hours daily with time sucks. That’s 624 hours each year.)

If you spend some of that time brainstorming more ideas than you think we need, you give rise to creative thinking and start exercising your right brain. Collaborate with other people on those ideas, and you’re on the way to building a better mousetrap. Or posting five new stories on Medium.

Bottom line, have the confidence to try something new even if you aren’t sure of a perfect result. Make time to practice new skills for the joy of the journey. Who cares about the outcome? Are you ready? What have you always thought about doing but didn’t have time? Make time. Go do it.

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