How to Unleash Your Creative Dragon

Yesterday I was chatting with a colleague about the conditions we need for our creativity to flow. In a time when I feel under constant pressure to achieve in life, this enlightened me and challenged me to shift focus.

Back in my undergraduate years I studied the concept of psychological flow theory. Flow theory states that to experience flow its vital to have, and believe in one's, ability to achieve, but also to feel challenged enough by a task that it stretches you. Even now, ten years later, I remember the conditions required to feel the desirable state, and I often notice myself falling into a flow state as I work. The problem is, as soon as I notice I am 'flowing' I lose the flow and revert to normal functioning.

When I am in a flow is when I feel I am being my best creative self. Over the years, I've learned that for flow to occur within me I need uninterrupted space, without external noise, self-acceptance and confidence in my abilities (or a lack of internal noise).

I was saying to my colleague that the time I often feel most creative is when I am laying in bed at night just before I go to sleep. This is the time when my mind is most quiet. I spend a lot of my waking day surrounded by external noise from everyday life. This includes the internet, email, social media, phone calls, people talking, all of which in turn creates noise in my head, or my internal voices so to speak. These are the voices of self-doubt, criticism and fear that often make me question my abilities. The noise is what disrupts my flow.

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So how can we ensure we leave space for creativity. Well, the other thing we discussed is that making a specific space to allow yourself to be creative can be disruptive to creativity because it forces the mind to do something it is potentially not ready to do.

What we need to do is give ourselves the freedom to think and be ourselves as we work. As soon as we forgive ourselves for being less than perfect and for not always meeting expectations placed on us by others or ourselves, suddenly the creativity flows. It may take time and hard to accept that a structured plan of 'must achieve' is not always the most productive way to create output. But if we do what we feel, and what we believe in, the rest will come. For creativity to flow we need to hush not only the external noise but the internal noise too.

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"When we stop thinking about what we should be doing and start doing what feels right, suddenly we find ourselves in the place we always wanted to be."

My friend used a great analogy, which may seem somewhat crude but is a very useful thing to consider when we look at the conditions required to be creative.

Do you ever make yourself need the toilet? If you say to yourself, right, I haven't been to the toilet today I must go, can you go? No! Of course not, your body will tell you when it's time to go. It's much to the same with what we create. Making the body do something does not mean it will oblige. Sometimes we just have to let nature take its course.