Welcome, welcome, welcome back to Live Free Creative podcast. I’m your host, Miranda Anderson. This is episode number 230 Everyday Creativity. Oh, I’m excited about this one. It’s fun because it just speaks to the cyclical nature of life.

I am in the middle of this master’s degree program. A Master of Applied Positive Psychology at University of Pennsylvania. It’s something that I didn’t even know existed as a field, as a study as a science until maybe about four or five years ago, and then recognized myself in it already. That is a thing that I do. I have been a self-study student of Positive Psychology for my whole life, and intensely for the last decade and a half.

One of the things that I’ve discovered within this scientific investigation, academic study of wellbeing and flourishing and what makes life worth living as a human being on this planet is the many different aspects of what it means to live a good life and things that I had never even considered thinking about from an academic lens.

Things that feel so natural to me because of just being the unique person that I am, and I’m sure that you have things like this for youth, things that feel as natural to you as breathing. I shared a few episodes ago about the VIA character strengths that can give you a little insight into some of the natural personality strengths and traits that you have.

One of my signature strengths is the strength of creativity. Now, I, my company is called Live Free Creative. This podcast is called Live Free Creative. I have lived what I consider to be very naturally creative life, and I never really looked at it from a perspective of what that meant from the outside or how that was beneficial, or what does the process look like, feel like?

How does creativity benefit a person? It just was part of who I am and what I do. When it came time a few weeks ago to really choose my final thesis topic, my capstone topic, I had about eight different ideas. This is part of, I would say, being an Enneagram seven, that I’m the adventurer. I’ve got lots of different I ideas going all the time.

Part of it is being a more naturally creative person that I have big ideas often and I want to put them all into practice. And I like easily interested in lots of different things. And I was talking to one of my professors, one of my advisors about these different topics and one of the things that she mentioned that I loved was this: which is the step that would open the doors to some of the other topics that I want to explore? Because this thesis project, my capstone is not the end of my graduate career. It is in some ways, but what it really is the bridge from my graduate studies into the rest of my life, into the rest of my career. How do I want to open the door of investigation into something that feels meaningful to. in the longer term? And what I settled on was studying how everyday creativity benefits people in particular women.

Everyday creativity, not life changing, world altering, community building creativity, although that’s wonderful, but what about doodling at home?

What about planning a beautiful garden? What about finding matching candlesticks to serve dinner to your family and the little bit of joy that brings you. How does everyday creativity benefit us? When we are so often, myself included, even as a natural creative, we’re so often rushed from thing to thing and sometimes.

Things that we might consider to be creative acts or creative practices feel superfluous. They feel unnecessary. We think when I have time, I’ll get to that. If things weren’t so busy right now, I would pause and take advantage of that moment. What I’m excited to study is how pausing and taking that moment for building simple, every day, ordinary acts of creativity into our daily lives, benefits, our long-term wellbeing, our short-term wellbeing also, and our long-term wellbeing. It can decrease our stress levels, increase our mindfulness, increase our openness to experience our awe, our connection to ourselves and others.

And not only to talk about it in a way that feels like, oh yeah, that of course, which is what I’ve done for the last, 40 years. But to also share some of the empirical research data studies and anecdotes that support that. So that’s what I’ve settled on for my capstone topic. I have an advisor who is a specialist in creativity.

A couple of her recent articles circle around this idea of “little-c” creativity or everyday creativity. And as I was planning what I wanted to share today on the podcast, I was looking through some of my archives that haven’t been shared on this main feed, and I came across bonus episode number seven that was released early in 2020.

I realized it was a perfect show to just wade into, ankle deep into this idea of everyday creativity as I experienced it and understood it a few years ago. This show was originally titled Daily Creative Practice, and I think that you will enjoy the simple, practical application of inviting creativity into your everyday life.

Segment: Pause For A Poem

The girls sit before the assignment,

identical blocks of salt.

And from tall, precarious stools,

look down into

the blank planes of possibility.

In the end though,

the only choice is to carve

something smaller,

so they begin

rough chunks like hail

fall before the rasps

and chisels beveled edges.

Salt permeates this air

as it has for years.

The floor gritty their

hands, eyes, even the skylights

made opaque with it disappearing.

Not unlike the way it is subtracted

from similar blocks

in the fields before

the tongues of the horses.

Beginning Sculpture; the Subtractive Method, by Claudia Em

Everyday Creativity

Now let’s dive into the episode.

Remember, this showed aired the beginning of 2020. If you can remember what that time was like, and it is just as applicable today as it was then. I hope you enjoy!

This episode could not have come at a better time because so many of us are dealing with stress or anxiety, uncertainty with the circumstances surrounding this global pandemic happening right now and a daily creative practice is something that can be grounding. It can be mindful, stress reducing, and really create a sense of ease and presence within your life.

This is vital in our daily lives without a global pandemic, and it’s even more important right now. So, I want to talk to you and share four specific steps for creating your own daily creative practice and helping you get started. I’ll also share some ideas for what that could look like or what it could be so that you can hopefully find some peace and joy that comes through this creative practice.

I always like to begin thinking about the reason or the purpose behind the things that I’m sharing or the things that I’m inviting you to consider. And creativity is one of those that I think we all know is important on some level, but a lot of times we don’t stop to think why creativity is energy building.

A lot lately, I’ve been thinking about the idea of creative versus consumption or creating things versus consuming, and I’m not only talking about creating as far as arts and crafts or those types of things, but just the difference between putting something out into the world versus consuming them something from the world into yourself.

There’s so much consumption happening right now in our day and age from consumption. Goods like material goods and belongings out there. We are doing more shopping and buying more things than we ever have before. There’s a huge amount of food consumption going on in lots of different areas.

A lot of people maybe even over consuming buying more than, we’re using wasting a lot. We are consuming media faster than we ever have before. Between our phones and our TVs and our computers and just the, there, there’s so much inform. So much material, so much media, so much consuming happening.

A lot of it in the background, like a lot of it that we don’t even think about. And when we are off balance, when we’re consuming vastly more than we’re creating or inspiring and putting out there, we start to feel a little bit of friction within ourselves because we are inherently creative beings. We are meant.

To speak, to teach, to share. Were meant to bring things forth, to write to cook, to, to play, and. in our current situation, in our current culture and society, this is something that doesn’t always happen naturally. I think in generations past, it absolutely was children would go outside and play and make up games and create toys from sticks and pinecones and rocks, and it was naturally just part of our day. But because of how fast paced life tends to be right now, because of the speed of information, the speed of change, the speed of technology, we have lost some of that inherent creative time. And so, it’s crucial to build that back into our day.

Not only does creativity increase our energy and reduce our stress, but it opens ourselves up to becoming better critical thinkers. Creativity is at its core, problem solving. It’s being open to possibilities and ideas outside of what our first thought might be., and with everything happening right now in the world, people are going to need to think outside the box.

We’re going to need to be creative with our businesses, with our families, with our homeschooling, with our education, with the way that we are obtaining resources that we need. Even grocery shopping right now is a creative exercise because it’s not as easy to just pop to the store as it was even just a couple weeks ago.

So, there are so many reasons why exercising our creativity is important. The other thing that is especially, I’m especially mindful of right now is because of the state of the world are default emotions right now might be more closed off or stress, overwhelm, panic, those types of things that are constrictive emotions and creativity is an open emotion, creativity opens us up. It opens our mind, and it opens our heart, and as we do that, we become more readily available for inspiration, for ideas, for resources, even for genius, for love, for all those things to flow into our lives.

So, as you exercise your creativity, even though these simple daily creative practices, you will feel more open, you will feel more available to receive all the goodness that the universe has in store for you.

I want to share these four tips for creating your own daily creative exercise. If you haven’t done this before, then it’s going to take a little bit to get used to the idea and just try it out. Stick with me. Stick with it. Believe me when I say that after a week or even just a couple days of regular creative practices that you will feel better that you will feel how important it can be.

Tip 1: Keep It Short

The first tip is to keep it short. This is one thing that we can do to make it even more possible for a daily creative practice to happen in our lives. I think 10 to 15 minutes is a perfect amount of time to go through somewhat of a creative process but also not take up a whole day.

So even if you just set aside 10 before lunch, after lunch, first thing in the morning, right before bed. During that kind of weird, two to three o’clock, I feel is a weird, like siesta time almost when you’re your regular energy might be a little low. So just having a 10-minute set aside for a fun, creative process might be a great idea when you keep it short.

That also gives you an open and a close, so you know that. For 10 minutes, you’re going to be doing this creative practice, but as soon as the timer goes off or the 10 minutes is up, that you are done, and you don’t have to feel like there is a finish line in the project itself. The time can be the bookends of your creative practice.

This is helpful for people like me who like to finish projects. I don’t only like to start them I want to start it, do it all, and then be done. And if I give myself a timeframe of, I’m going to work on this creative exercise for 10 minutes, then I can feel like the 10-minute mark is my time for being done, even if the project itself doesn’t feel finished.

Tip 2: Process not Outcome

The second tip is similar. The idea behind a daily creative ritual or creative practice is the process, not the outcome. Therefore, stopping it 10 minutes is totally okay because I’m not concerned with what I’m making. I’m concerned with the process of making it the how I feel the different parts of my brain and heart that I exercise as I am going through the creative process.

The ideas that come to mind, the inspiration that strikes the beauty that I see. Those are the vital pieces of a daily creative exercise, not the outcome. In fact, in most cases, your daily creative practice will not lead to a significant outcome. It won’t lead to something that you hope that you’re going to, use and keep forever.

The reason to do a creative practice or a this, daily creative ritual is for doing the creation, for having the process of creation in your life. Try to go into this knowing that you’re releasing the outcome, that it doesn’t matter how good or bad, or you don’t go into it thinking what you think the outcome should be.

You start your creative practice with an openness to whatever happens. There is no expectation. There is no, I hope that it looks like this, or I want it to turn out like that. It’s just openness to see what happens. See if you can approach your daily creative practice with a measure of curiosity.

Curiosity about what will come forth from you when you give yourself a little space. What ideas or what words, or what colors, or what shapes, how can you tap into something greater than yourself and allow yourself to just flow.

Tip 3: Create a Creative Space

Tip number three is to create a space that is intentional for this purpose. If you live in a small house like I do or a small apartment, you may not have a space completely set aside for a daily creative ritual, like a desk or something that is used just for that. When you go to get started though, it can be helpful to prepare your space, even just clear a section of the table off or collect things and then put them down all in one area.

The hope is that as you prepare a space for your creative exercise that you will be able to stay there and stay present. That you don’t have to run around and get things during the creative exercise itself. Prepare yourself, prepare the space with everything that you think you’re going to need to get started.

With some quiet, maybe you want to light a candle sit next to a window, do some things for the space, or set yourself up where you feel like you will have a higher chance of being successful. I love natural light, and so doing my creative exercise like in a basement somewhere would not be as successful for me because I naturally won’t feel as great as I would sitting next to the window or even going outside and doing this on my front porch.

Try to see if you can find a space where you’re going to create, and it doesn’t have to be the same every day. I’ve seen some recommendations for creative ritual that you have one place that you go to every single day, and I could see if you were working on a novel or if you were doing something, where it was more outcomes driven, that would matter more.

In this case, the idea of a daily creative practice is just for the process. So, you can use your creativity anywhere. Just try to set yourself up for success. Just prepare so that you know that you have everything you need to get started when you are ready to get started.

Tip 4: Keep It Fun

And the fourth tip I have is to keep it fun. You want to enjoy the process. So, if you feel like you start doing a creative exercise and you get a little annoyed or frustrated by it, it’s okay to start over. It’s okay to try something different. It’s okay to move on. You don’t want to force yourself to continue in a creative practice that doesn’t feel good

And of course, we’re, we are the ones who, who choose how we feel. And so, we, that’s something that might be a whole other thing, but if you’re, feeling especially protective or perfectionist with one creative medium, it might be a good idea to switch it out and try something different.

Part of this is to create good feelings and to create some openness and some love and some peace. And so, if you feel like whatever you have started to tackle is doing the opposite, then it’s totally okay to stop and to try something different. I should also mention for those of you who have creative practices or who have creative jobs if you’re a graphic designer or a painter or a writer, my recommendation is that your daily creative ritual be something other than what you use as your regular creative medium.

So, if you are a photographer, maybe shooting extra creative photograph won’t be as impactful for you because you do it so often as maybe writing a poem or doing a one-line drawing, something that feels a little different to shake it up. I’ve noticed that when I do something that seems totally unrelated to my other work products, but that inspires me and just makes me think and makes me feel that those feelings are what influences my other creative work for good.

If you already have a regular creative practice for your job, it would be interesting for you to try something different just to see how it feels. I remember a couple years ago listening to Justina Blakeney of Jungalow. She’s an incredible creative, has an incredible business, and I was listening to her give a keynote talk where she, about her daily creative exercise, and she’s a pattern maker and illustrator. She said that she sits down at her desk and for 10 minutes before she starts working on her actual paintings or patterns, she has a set of blocks, and she has a ball of clay and she just said she has a couple little things that are on her desk that are meant for her creative practices.

And so, she’ll give herself 10 minutes to just mold the clay into a little unicorn or to stack the box in interesting ways. See how she can stack all her little blocks up or line them up or create kind of a pattern with the blocks using something other than what her typical medium is, which is mostly paint.

She finds that she’s inspired in new ways, so that’s a fun. Now I’m going to quickly review those four steps and then share some ideas for what your daily creative practice could be.

Recap of the 4 Tips for Daily Creative Practice

So, number one, remember you want to keep this short. 10 minutes, 10 to 15 minutes is a good amount of time. If you get into it and you are loving it and you have more time, then continue creating. But a lot of people would get overwhelmed with the idea of giving up a 30-minute block to who knows what, nothing with an outcome. So, if you start with just 10 minutes, it almost becomes like a little mini meditation.

Number two. You’re doing the creative exercise for the creative process itself, not for the outcome, so don’t worry about what your product looks like, sounds like, tastes like feels like you want to enjoy the process, and you can enjoy the process. It is worthwhile for the process itself, not just to have something at the end, so release the result and stay present in the process.

Number three is to be intentional about your space. Gather everything that you need. You sit down, maybe you have a light, a candle, and have a cup of tea. And just really get yourself in a state with the space that you can be most open.

Number four, make sure that you’re having fun. Don’t do it if it’s not fun. Switch to something else. Find something that you really enjoy and that you look forward to this daily creative practice.

Okay. For the rest of the episode, I just want to give you some ideas of what your daily creative practice could look like, because I know that sounds a little bit like nebulous. What, okay, I’m supposed to sit down and make something, but what am I making?

How do I do that? So, I just want to share 10 ideas that could jumpstart your creative practice.

Ten Ideas for Simple Creative Practices

The first one is a one-line drawing.

I’m sure you’ve heard of this, where you put your pencil on a page and you draw a figure or an animal or a shape, you could draw whatever you want, but you don’t lift the pencil from the page until you’re done. It feels, in some ways, a little bit like one of those what’s the thing with sand in it? The little shaker thing. An S sketch, I had to look it up., an S sketch just has one little, tiny ball inside that moves around. You move it with the dials, it’s similar except for with an actual pencil or pen and paper.

So put your pencil on the page. Put your pencil on a page. Okay, put your pencil on the page, and don’t lift it up until your creative process has ended. And then just evaluate, see how it feels, see how it flows.

I played a game with my son the other day where I would think of an animal. He told me about this game. I had never heard of it before, but he told me to think of an animal and close my eyes and draw the animal without looking and then he had to guess what it was, and we went back and forth a few times. It was so funny. So, this wasn’t the same thing because we didn’t leave our pencil on the page. We just didn’t look. But that was a fun, creative exercise too. So that’s a little bonus on number one. Okay.

Number two is a collection creation.

I just came up with this because it sounded so fun. Something I would do when I was a little kid. This is that I just made up, is go collect a few things from around your house.

It could be all stuff that’s like in your recycle bin or things you know, within your art supplies or even like in your closet. Collect five to 10 items. Bring them with you to wherever your creative ritual space is and see what you can make with them. Now, if you’re using actual art supplies, you could probably like glue and tape and build and paint and draw.

But if you’re using items of clothing from your closet, maybe you do a little cloth sculpture or maybe you see how you could put together a layered stack that looks like something different, I don’t know. But gather a collection together. So, five or ten items from around the house or around the wherever and bring them together and then make something with them. And it doesn’t matter what you make, the purpose is just to think outside the box and to be creative. That’s a collection creation number two.

Number three is to do a coloring page.

These are so popular right now; I think adult coloring hit the peak of Pinterest a couple years ago, and it continues to thrive up there. You can find so many free downloads for coloring pages online. I know a lot of people offer great, beautiful coloring books and, but even just sitting and coloring is so meditative and such a great creative practice just to use your hands and make something color it’s in. Such a simple one too, because really you could just have colored pencils or markers or crayons and a coloring page and spend 10 minutes coloring. Just give yourself that space to, to make something beautiful.

Number four is a free write poem.

This is something that my friend and author Camille Andros taught me at a writing retreat we went to last year, and I’ve loved it. What you do is do a word association first, so you think of one. It doesn’t matter what it is, and you write it down and then as quickly as you can, you write down five other words that go along with it.

So maybe you say bread and then you say toast, and then you say avocado, and then you say green, and then you say, recycling. I don’t know, and then you spend a couple minutes filling in the in between. So, you write the word in the center of a page and write each of the other associative words down below it, and then you fill each one in to be a sentence, and that becomes your poem.

Does that make sense? So basically, you end up with a stack of five semi-related words, and then you fill in words around them to create a five-line free write poem. It’s a fun exercise. You should try.

Number five is a rainbow nature walk.

This is so fun, especially in the spring summer, because it just tunes you into how many beautiful, colorful things there are naturally occurring in the outdoors.

The idea of this is to collect on a walk. Something red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple. It is wonderful if they’re natural things and you’re not like picking up pieces of garbage that are different colors., although it’s nice to pick up garbage if you’re out on a walk. I do this with my kids sometimes at the beach, and we find shells with all different colors or sea glass.

In my neighborhood, I can usually find flowers or leaves, or sticks or rocks. It’s a fun, simple, creative exercise that gets you outside, and it also creates some guidelines, so you’re not just looking for any cool thing, but you’re trying to fill things in each of those colors.

Number six is to try a new recipe.

Now in 10 minutes, you probably want to do a recipe that is very simple a sauce or a no bake cookie or a drink. Something that doesn’t take, longer than 10 or 15 minutes, but that gets you creating something and again. In this case you do want to hopefully enjoy it at least a little bit when you’re done, but it’s really freeing to create something that you aren’t that worried about how it turns out.

So, you’re not like baking dinner for the whole family. You’re just creating a simple recipe and seeing how you know what you think about it at the end.

Number seven is to draw your dinner.

This is a dumb one that I came up with, but I’m working on a meal planning course right now that should be available in a couple weeks, and this is part of the process of the course, so it’s fun. The idea, I just thought it’d be a fun, creative practice because again, it has some guidelines around it that either before dinner or after dinner, you draw what your dinner looked like or what you wanted it to look like, or what it should have looked like. And you can color it in, or you can just line draw it, but it gives you some framework.

You could do, you could draw your breakfast, you could draw your lunch. But the idea of just drawing something as simple as what’s on your plate, and you could do that a huge variety of ways, but it would be really a fun practice.

Number eight is to make and send a handmade card.

So, there’s so many ways to handmake a card, whether you’re making the paper itself, whether you’re doing a drawing on it, you could stamp, you could carve stamps, you could stitch with embroidery thread you could use glitter glue or puff paint.

There are so many ways to make a card, and I love the idea of taking this one step further and using the card that you make and writing a note in it, whether a thank you note or a thinking of you note and sending it to someone.

Number nine is to take 10 pictures.

Now, again, you could take this a lot of different ways. One of my favorite things to do when I just need some creative time is to go on a walk. I go on lots of walks. I love my neighborhood. I take my dog out, my kids and I go on a walk every day. But sometimes I go on a walk just by myself and I use my phone and I take pictures. The walk, and usually these are artistic style pictures.

I take pictures of the light, hitting a branch a certain way, or I really close on a flower, or I notice cracks in the sidewalk that look like different letters or pictures really opening your eyes and not. Resisting the urge to take the pictures and post them somewhere, but to just take them for the creative exercise of seeing the world through a lens, looking at things like really looking at them.

You could also do this inside; you could take pictures of different areas of your house closeups of little vignettes. You could take pictures of your kids, maybe take pictures of their hands or their feet or their ears. Something that Remind you of this stage or day in life, which is fun, weird, but fun.

Number 10 is to cross stitch or embroider or sew a quilt.

The thing that I love about this, now again, you must have some materials on hand and be a little bit interested in this type of craft. This way you could also knit, you could also their crochet.

There are so many things like physically handy craft that you could do. The things that I love specifically about embroidery or cross-stitch or working on a quilt is that they naturally take longer than 10 or 15 minutes and. , you could start something and work on it a little bit each day as your creative practice knowing full well that it’s going to be a while before it’s finished and not even needing it to be finished so that you can do something with it.

But just having a continuous project can be fun. So, I remember years ago, I received a gift, my great great-grandmother’s apron, and I loved the embroidery on it. It was Gingham Apron. I still have it in my kitchen, and it was hand embroidered with this beautiful but simple seeming design. I decided that I wanted to recreate one, just like it.

So, I made an apron of the same size of gingham, a little bit different color, and I started to embroider the pocket. And as I started to embroider, I was on an airplane, I think a two-hour plane ride, and I embroidered two-thirds of the pocket in two hours, and I thought, how did my great-grandmother embroider this entire apron?

It was the top two inches of a pocket and then the bottom two inches of the entire apron. I realized how much time that must have taken and what a creative process it was. Repeatedly, and that it wasn’t something that she sat down and thought, oh, I’m going to hurry and whip out this embroidery on this apron, but that it was a project that she went back and back to.

So, number 10 is my suggestion that you find a longer-term project and acknowledge that it’s going to take a while and just work on it for 10 minutes every day. Give yourself that creative time to just add a few more stitches to the embroidery or the cross-stitch pattern, or a few more stitches to that quilt.

Maybe make one quilt block and then you know, over. The weeks and months you’ll have something to put together. I love the idea of being patient with the process of understanding that even just 10 minutes will make a huge impact on your mindset, on your ability to feel open on your energy level.

And I notice that when I give myself 10 minutes to do something that other might not have made my to-do list because it doesn’t feel urgent that it makes me feel like the entire rest of my day has more time. Because as I give myself time to do things that I enjoy and that are just for my wellbeing, it creates space. Within my idea of my schedule, it allows me to feel like I have enough time to even do these creative practices.

I have enough time to go on a walk. I have enough time to work on something, not for the outcome, but just for the process. That in and of itself is so healing and so empowering, so I encourage you to create a daily creative practice for yourself

And if you want to choose one of those or choose your own. And then I have a little a little checklist for 30 days. Challenge or invitation is that you do a daily creative exercise every day for the next 30 days and see what an impact it makes on your life. I hope that you enjoyed this episode and this opportunity to think about doing something for the simple, creative joy of the process, allowing yourself the space to explore hobbies and to dive into creating rather than consuming, and to do that on a regular basis.

Hey there, thank you so much for tuning in today. I hope you’ve enjoyed this reminder. Of how fun it is to create for its own sake and all the benefits that can come to you because of it. Your invitation this week is to make some space to create something just for fun. I would love to see what you’re up to, what you make.

Tag me on Instagram @livefreemiranda.