Everyday Creative: Being Mindful

This month, unlike last month, was really challenging for me to complete. The task this time was to be mindful. I must admit that while spring is usually a time for renewal and reflection, I’ve spent mine feeling completely out of sorts, which is why I was excited to focus on being mindful with the slight hope that it would bring some peace to the chaos I was feeling.

The first thing I needed to do was to rouse myself out of the dream sleep that so many of us are in. How many of us often feel like life is passing us by, without even a chance to stop and enjoy it? I know that’s how I’ve been feeling, so I relished the thought of delving into this further and finding ways out of it.

I began by being ever vigilant, as Maisel suggests, about being mindful. I am one of those people who stop every so often, while working to listen to my breath or glance out at the blue sky just to regain focus, but again this spring was different. I appreciated the exercise, which required me to do “brain surgery.” By that I mean, really listening to myself and when a worry arose I imagined taking it from my mind, tossing it in some container and sealing it up. I am visual person, so using that imagery really helped.

The next few weeks focused more on critical thinking and analytical skills. After completing graduate school, in a very theoretical discipline, I am pretty convinced that I’ve got those skills down. Although, I do tend to over-use them so thought this was a good time to analyze that!

Toward the end of the month, I was asked to study a blade a grass – yes, just one single blade. Why? You may ask. Well, as Maisel explains the answer is two-fold. First, it gets us away from thinking about our project and gets us back into nature – a truly great inspiration. Also, it reminds us how just a single blade of grass, as simple as it may look, is actually part of a larger structure – an entire patch of grass. Putting that into perspective allowed me to also put my chaotic spring into perspective.

Finally, I finished the month by losing myself and not getting caught up in the petty day-to-day trivialities that can often clog our minds and hamper our creativity. The last exercise asked me to picture a dumpster and each day taking something like fear, anger, guilt, etc and depositing it in the dumpster and ridding my mind of it, because when you think about it there’s really no tangible use for it.

  • Next month I’ll “Be Exploring.”

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More of My Favorite Creativity Blogs


Last year I created a compilation of the creativity blogs that I read and enjoy. Now, I’d like to share a few more blogs that I’ve discovered since that last post.

Creative Something
This blog is written for the creative person in all of us. Tanner Christensen covers a wide range of creative ideas and specializes in inspiration and motivation.

Creative Every Day
Leah Piken Kolidas is the creator of the Creative Every Day Challenge and Art Every Day Month Challenege. An artist, who inspires readers to live a more creative life, Leah encourages readers to join her in her Challenges.

ABCcreativity
A whimsical blog filled with tips, inspiration and motivation for anyone on a creative journey. Andrea Schroeder is a multi-talented artist with a passion for the spiritual side of creating.

Brainzooming
The brain child behind this blog is innovator extraordinaire Mike Brown, who takes a practical approach to creativity, focusing on it from an implentation and strategic perspective.

Jamie Ridler Studios
A creative self-development coach based in Canada. Jamie Ridler’s blog is filled with creative inspiration. Also check out her amazing Creative Living podcasts.

  • What’s your favorite blog on creativity?

Five {5} Creative Questions with Shannon Kinney-Duh

The amazing Shannon Kinney-Duh is my guest this month answering Five {5} Creative Questions.

Shannon has been teaching yoga for 9 years, and has been actively exploring her own creative journey throughout her life. What she loves most is discovery and learning new things, and inspiring others to do the same. As she practices yoga and makes art, she feels more deeply connected to her true self.

Her life’s mission is to create, connect with and enliven joy, personal growth and the unlimited potential in herself and in others.

She is also a certified Hatha Yoga Teacher through the Temple of Kriya Yoga in Chicago, and completed their Kriology program. She’s participated in Eric Maisel’s Creativity Coaching program and the Holistic Life Coaching program through the Spencer Institute. She has years of experience teaching and facilitating individuals and groups in creative exploration and mindful living. She loves all art forms, especially fiber, intuitive painting and art journaling. She considers herself a student of life.

You can find her online at Free Spirit Knits.

1. What does creativity mean to you?
Creativity to me means living in the present moment. It’s playing with my son, it’s making messes, it’s getting lost in paint, it’s thinking a new thought. I believe a big part of creativity is embracing our authenticity and letting it shine.

2. What is your creative process, and what tools do you use to stimulate it?
In order for my creativity to shine best, I need to take good care of myself. This means that I have to find balance between my family life and personal interests. My balance comes when I take time each day for stillness. This might be taking a yoga class, or listening to a guided meditation, or writing in my journal, or simply stopping for 5 minutes to notice my breath. I feel stillness is the key to connecting to our heart centers, the place where our intuition and creativity lives.

3. What is your most creative time of day?
I think this is such an important question. I have learned that my most creative time is first thing in the morning. I used to use all of my vital energy during this time cleaning the house, folding clothes and running errands. I found that by the end of the day I was mad and exhausted because I could never find any time for creating. Now, I honor my natural energy and head to my art room when I wake up. It’s a routine my 2 year-old is used to as well, and he’ll pull out his paints or train set and create alongside me. It’s my favorite part of the day.

4. How do you infuse creativity into your daily life and tasks?
Being a mom – integrating creativity into my daily life is a must! I feel like most of the activities I do with my son are creative in some way. If I pull out his paints, I might paint along with him, or pull out my journal and write a bit. If I take him to the park I’ll turn my cell phone off and walk slower so that we can really enjoy being in the moment. If I find a new recipe I love, I’ll let him help me cook it, then I might take a few photos and share it on my blog. Integration is something I’m getting so much better at, and I feel much more creatively alive because of it.

5. What creative tip or resource would you like to share with our readers?
Recently, I have integrated my biggest passion in life; art, writing, journaling, yoga, meditation, and inspiring others – into an e-course called Inside Out: A Creative Adventure of Self-Discovery. This course is so near and dear to my heart. I have had 100’s of people join me in this journey from all over the world, and I have to say, connecting, sharing and growing with like-minded explorers in a creative, mindful way, has become a wonderful complement for those on a creative journey.

I truly believe we are ALL creative and deserve to feel like artists. We all know our life’s purpose, and how to live with more meaning, creativity and joy, yet with the craziness of life most of us forget. Inside Our E-Course helps us remember.

  • THANKS Shannon!

Everyday Creative: Being Human

While last month I was just embarking on my everyday creative challenge, this month I am proud to report that I am finishing up my second month. It always amazes me how quickly time flies. But really, I am getting ready to start my third month of this journey? Anyway, I digress into my own humanness, which is ok I learned, because this month was about being human.

To begin the month I was asked to forgive myself and forgive myself for all my previous failures. I think in the last 10 years or so, I have been able to do this and so pretty much breezed past this section. Although, I did complete the exercise at the end of the first week, because I thought it seemed pretty cathartic:

Take a pencil and mark on a piece of paper a line for each of your failures throughout your life (perceived or real). One by one erase the lines while forgiving yourself for each one. As you do this, admit that maybe this one was a failure and let yourself move on from it. Learn and grow from your failures.

The next several weeks were filled with more forgiveness. Forgiving myself completely then forgiving others. By the third week I was ready to wrestle all my demons for one final time. It was here that the mission of the book and my creative journey all made sense. The way to being an everyday creative isn’t bound by learning artistic techniques and skills but rather by manifesting your potential as a creator. Just this slight difference made all the sense to me.

With that epiphany I was ready to move forward with my challenge. The exercise that accompanied this week is meant to have a cleansing effect. The cleansing effect, however, is to improve not your studio space or even an actual physical space but rather your self-talk. I find the concept of cognitive behavior therapy techniques so fascinating and so powerful, which is why this exercise really resonated with me. It asked me to consciously pay attention to my self-talk, and if I heard that it was saying something negative about creating that I was to respond to it with a casual, “How dare you say that.” Just that brief shift in thinking was enough for me to see how my thoughts were affecting my creating. And at the end of each evening, when I thought about the day and my negative slips, I just forgave myself.

By the end of the month, I had stepped into my humanness and forgiven myself and others, who may have interfered with my creative journey in the past. Plus, I learned some skills that would get me through the rest of my journey. So much so that I coasted through the last couple weeks on deflating your ego (I hardly have one!) and boredom (I am too busy for that!) instead anticipating to “Be Mindful” for next month’s challenge.

Creativity is…{Fill in the Blank}

A few weeks ago an idea for a blog post popped into my mind. It was about how creativity is a leap that you take. When I thought more about the idea, I remembered I had recently done a post on how creativity is about perspective, using an idea from my own experience to highlight how it was similar to creativity. I also remembered another post I’d written awhile ago on how creativity is about persistence.

And in that moment, a blog series was created. Creativity is… asks the question what is creativity like and what does it mean to you. So, I took to my twitter account to test the waters and see what other people think creativity is. The responses I received were varied and included:

…a lifestyle choice of curiosity & adventure from @bcre8uv
…imagination in action! from @creativityassoc
…is what soothes my soul from @DeBelle77

Soon, I’ll return to that initial idea that creativity is…a leap to share the exciting things that are going on in my life that made me link the two in the first place!

  • In the meantime, creativity is…{fill in the blank with your answer}

Calling All Creatives: TEDxCLE

For the latest installment of Calling All Creatives, I had to overcome some obstacles before I could write this post: a possible closed event and a snowstorm. TEDxCLE is an independently sponsored TED event which promised to bring together some of the most creative thinkers in the Cleveland-area on a late February day during a notoriously snowy winter here in Ohio.

When I first heard about the event, from where exactly I can’t remember, I knew wanted to write about it for Calling All Creatives. Well, that was the easy part. I then had the difficult task of getting a ticket to an event that was taking applications for attendees. Yes, you read that right. There was an online application form that needed to be filled out to see if you qualified for a ticket first. This puzzled me for months, because it did not include the time and/or price. Would I want to be accepted to something I could not attend nor afford?

Luckily, about a month before the event, I started following TEDxCLE on Twitter, where it was revealed that tickets would be going on sale to the general public. And guess what? The price was extremely reasonable and the time fit into my schedule.

Immediately after the announced ticket sale date and time, I bought my ticket. Lucky for me that I did, because the next day or so the event sold out. So with ticket in hand, I was ready for my TED experience.

Or so I thought. The morning of the event a snowstorm shut the city and every public school down in the area. I anxiously checked Twitter and to my surprise the event was still on. Now, I had to decide if I wanted to risk the icy roads and if the TED event was worth it. In the end, I made the last minute decision to go and haven’t regretted it since!

The event was held in a wonderfully restored theater. And the throngs of people proved that a little snow doesn’t scare Clevelanders away from a revolutionary event like TED.

Some of my favorite moments from the event included a presentation from Terry Schwartz of Pop Up City explaining how broken cities are like broken ceramics and the way to fix them involves making small repairs, which can be noticeable, since we will never fully restore them completely to their original state.

Also, Aaron LeMieux of Tremont Electric talking about alternative energy and his discovery of using kinetic energy as power was another highlight for me. He described how his idea was born during a hike on the Appalachian Trail, while he was still in college. He also discussed how it took him almost 10 years of creating prototypes to finally discover the best solution.

Finally, and probably my favorite presentation was by Danielle DeBoe the owner the boutique ROOM SERVICE and creator of Made in the 216, an event featuring local artisans. She highlighted the path to living a passionate life by demonstrating all the creative twists and turns she took along her own personal journey.

Please check out the rest of the presentations here. I promise you won’t be sorry and you’ll definitely feel inspired afterward.

Five {5} Creative Questions with Karen Gielen

I am happy to introduce Karen Gielen this month, as she answers Five {5} Creative Questions.

Karen is a mother, artist, writer, and graphic designer. At 69% right and 31% left, she is considered an extremely right brain dominant thinker. Her interests include portrait illustration, advertising and marketing, graphic design, painting, singing, writing poetry and children’s stories, knitwear designing, photography, and numerous arts and crafts. Her repertoire of creative interests is constantly changing and she is learning that she needs to allow her creativity to flow where it wants to flow. Some days it wants to come out in her writing and some days only a pencil or paint brush will do.

Find Karen online blogging or tweeting under the handle cre8tivkj.

1. What does creativity mean to you?

I believe creativity is something everyone is born with. It is taking our thoughts, emotions, and experiences and turning them into something others can touch, see, or hear. As human beings we are all meant to be creative. It pains me when I hear people say they do not have or they are not very creative.

2. What is your creative process, and what tools do you use to stimulate it?
My creative process varies from day to day. Some days it just flows and words and images come without effort. Other days I need to allow a problem to incubate after researching and brainstorming. I tend to be an internal problem solver and I don’t usually pass my ideas by others before executing them. I am inspired by many things. Sometimes I will draw an image that comes to me in a dream. Nature can inspire a poem or a painting. I can overhear a conversation that will spark an idea for creative expression. Sometimes necessity will drive me to create something to serve my own purpose. Other times I will play and explore and creative ideas start flowing. My creativity usually has a domino effect, one idea will spark an idea for a completely different type of expression, when I write a poem it will spark an idea for a short story or a painting, etc.

3. What is your most creative time of day?

I have many creative times during my day. When I wake up, often times I will have pictures in my mind that I will sketch out and sometimes I will paint or draw them in more detail later. I have had entire children’s books clearly defined in my mind when I wake up. My creative juices will start flowing while I run, shower, and many times when I am trying to go to sleep at night.

4. How do you infuse creativity into your daily life and tasks?

Since I have small children and a very busy household, my environment is often times very chaotic and noisy, if I don’t have a piece of paper or sketchbook handy at all times I will lose ideas quickly. Whenever I get a quiet moment I cherish it and I’ll sit down and write or draw. I am working on finding balance between my busy household, caring for my children and nourishing my creative spirit.

5. What creative tip or resource would you like to share with our readers?

The more ways you find to express your creativity the more creative you will be. When you have many experiences to draw from when addressing a problem or even expressing yourself, often times, you can take techniques from one area and apply them to another in a new and creative way. Also, allow yourself the opportunity to play. When we play our minds relax and creativity is more apt to flow. I have found if I discover on my own how to do something I am more creative with a medium.

  • THANKS! Karen.

Everyday Creative: The First Month

Last month I wrote about why I was starting this challenge and this month I want to give you a status update on how I am doing. Going into this, I realized I wouldn’t be perfect, because humans like creativity can be messy and inspiration can often follow a non-linear route. Nonetheless, I am proud to say that I stuck with it (ok, most of it anyway) this first month.

The first week began by making creativity my religion. It doesn’t matter if you already have a religion because this is an addition to your current religion. Like religion, creativity is a way of life that also has rituals and ceremonies. Actually, one of the first exercises is to craft your own rituals for creating. I settled on starting my creative work with a positive invocation and affirmation statement and also working on small sketchbook collages to rev up my creative energy before tackling a big project.

The next few weeks were a little bit more challenging for me. They focused on not only finding a time and place to create but also embracing the mystery of creating. Time is such a complicated issue for me. I’ve yet to a find a balance between work, family and creating. This one is going to require some extra work on my part. So is the space issue. Right now I am working from my home office aka the dining room table and my art supplies are in various bins in a spare bedroom. Not an ideal situation and again something that I need to work on for the rest of the year.

The concept of creativity being a mystery I get. I’ve always felt that creating is a spiritual exercise and have been surprised by the mysterious nature that ideas pop into my brain. I’d like to control that better and understand more fully where those ideas are coming from and how I can increase them. The exercise for the mystery section really didn’t sit well with me because you had to create poetry for 3 days straight. Ok, confession time here, I hate poetry. I have no idea why, but I just do. So I skipped that exercise.

Finally, toward the end of the month, you are asked to “do the tiniest thing.” Now this is an idea I can wrap my brain around. I am a notorious “chunker” and love the process involved in creating. This section was easy, because it required me to look at some of my long term creative goals and start small by doing one little thing a day to move them toward completion.

By the end of the month, I was able to confidently recite the positive affirmation, “I am a creative person” and actually believe it! This will also serve as a good daily reminder for me as I move onto next month’s activities to “Be Human.”

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Plan Your Own Creative Retreat

Have you ever dreamed of going on a creative retreat but didn’t have the time or money to take one?

Why not plan your own?

That’s what I did last weekend, and it was so worth it. The winter had been taking its toll on me and with my birthday just around the corner next week, I thought it was a perfect time for a little rest, reflection and creativity.

So I devoted an entire day, when I knew I didn’t have any obligations, turned off the phone and computer and enjoyed the silence. I spent a lot of the day musing, reading, creating, and planning. I now have a clear vision of where I am going and all it took was about 12 hours of my time.

If you don’t have the time to spend an entire day for your retreat, I would suggest taking a morning or afternoon and finding someplace quiet where you can think without being disturbed.

Here are some more tips on planning your own creative retreat:

1. Start out with an opening ceremony to get you focused on creating. Try lighting a candle or even reciting a creative mantra. I took mine from the Rituals: Light for the Soul Kit:

I look upon an empty canvas
And see there an unformed opportunity
To express my life
And how it could be
I begin

2. Reflect on the questions I created for a bi-annual Creative Check-In to determine not only goals for the upcoming year but also celebrate achievements from the last 6 months.

3. Look for images to reinforce those 6 month and 1 year goals. Create a visioning collage to inspire next years’ successes. For mine, I used images that I cut out of my favorite magazines.

4. Work on your creative project. Once your goals are established and you have a visual plan for them, then have some fun by creating. I completed a few small sketchbook collages, with no particular goal in mind.

5. At the end of the day, blow out the candle and take a moment to reflect on your creative achievements and future goals.

  • What would you include in your creative retreat?

Five {5} Creative Questions with Andrea Schroeder

This month we feature the inspirational Andrea Schroeder. You may know her better online as the author of ABCcreativity. But above all else, Andrea is a creative being and believer in possibilty. Andrea takes this sense of possibility, blends it with sparkles and secret messages about the magic and wonder of life, and uses it in all of her creative work, infusing it with flashes of inspiration and reminders of what an incredible being you are.

After graduating from Ryerson University in Toronto, Canada with a bachelor of applied arts in fashion design, Andrea explored many different avenues of art and design including costume design, textile design, textile art, knitting, cloth dollmaking and interior design.

Andrea has also spent years studying new thought and other spiritual and philosophical teachings and is currently an accredited new thought healing practitioner at the Centre for Conscious Living in Winnipeg, Canada. Andrea describes this as ”a believer in possibility, a creator of dreams come true and a mentor for others in creating their happily ever afters.” Andrea blends spiritual and artistic creativity in all of her creative work, which is filled with maps that will guide you on your path in creating your own “happily ever after”.

1. What does creativity mean to you?
i see myself above all as a creative being in a creative universe. my inspiration, intuition, uniqueness and gift flow through my creativity out into all parts of my life. creativity is life for me.

2. What is your creative process, and what tools do you use to stimulate it?
my process is simple – be present with my creativity and let it flow. i see creativity is a way of life and not something to pick up and put down. so i don’t really use tools to stimulate it, i try to live in a way that nourishes it. if i ever feel creatively blocked, i take a break and get centered (usually with meditation, rest or play) and the creativity quickly starts to flow again.

3. What is your most creative time of day?
morning.

4. How do you infuse creativity into your daily life and tasks?
i bring fun projects with me everywhere – i always have coloured pens, a sketchbook, and a knitting project with me. i love to really pay attention to my surroundings and be inspired by them – the colour of the sky, the shape of the leaves in the trees, the colour of the wall in the restaurant, everything. when you really notice what’s going on around you, everything can be inspiring. life is so amazing!

5. What creative tip or resource would you like to share with our readers?

meditation is really key for me in living a creative life. i share some of my guided meditations here.

  • THANKS Andrea!