10 Ways to Cultivate a Creative Practice
10 Ways to Cultivate a Creative Practice
A great way to re-energise your creativity and get it flowing again is by cultivating a Creative Practice.
I like to think of a Creative Practice as a protective bubble that holds, supports and nourishes your creative process. A Creative Practice helps you…
Stay connected to your creativity
Nurture it regularly
Build momentum around your creative work
Provide structure to support your creative process
Establish a greater sense of ease and flow with your creativity
Immerse yourself more fully, more quickly and more effortlessly in your creative work
Stop wasting unnecessary energy tormenting yourself about whether or not you’ll achieve your creative goals today
Ultimately, cultivating a Creative Practice helps you do the creative work you most want to do and most importantly, finish it. Here are 10 Ways to help you cultivate your own Creative Practice.
1. Make it Matter
In my experience, often the number one reason people struggle to cultivate a Creative Practice is because they don’t believe their creativity, their creative ambition or their creative work matters enough. They don’t believe it’s important enough. Often because they don’t believe it’s good enough, or that they themselves, as the creator of that work, are good enough. This leads people to look outside of themselves, believing that if someone else thinks their work is good or is willing to pay for it, then, and only then, is there any real value in it. Only when it matters to someone else do they believe that their creativity has the right to matter at all.
Here’s the challenge.
Until your creative work matters to you, it will never matter to anyone else. Perhaps for no other reason than likely, it will never get made in the first place.
So, the first question to ask yourself is this: How much does your creativity (or creative project) matter to you?
If the answer is, ‘actually not that much’ that’s a perfectly good response and you probably don’t need to cultivate a Creative Practice. If, however, it matters a great deal, but you’re not treating it like it does, then it’s probably a source of great frustration to you, even pain. If your creative goals matter and your acting like they don’t, even telling yourself they don’t, then you’re abandoning a really important part of yourself. That’s never going to feel good.
The reality is, the more your creative work matters, the more you’ll prioritise it, the more you’ll find a way to sit down and do the work, and the more you will create! So, if deep down your creativity matters to you, make it matter. Say that it matters. Declare it. Own it. Allow it. Give yourself permission for it to matter and for it to matter deeply, then, above all, treat it like it does.
You do this, by cultivating a Creative Practice.
2. Make it Intentional
A Creative Practice is intentional. To cultivate your own, start by getting clear on your intention for creating one. What do you want to get out of your Creative Practice? What would be your purpose for creating one?
Try not to make your intention too goal orientated, instead try and think about your Creative Practice as being that protective bubble around your creativity or a container for your creativity to thrive, keep your intention roomy and spacious enough for you and your creativity to stretch, breathe and move freely within it.
3. Make it Frequent & Consistent
The whole idea of building a Creative Practice is for you to develop and maintain a strong connection to your creativity. Space and time for you to practice your creative work and strengthen your creative muscle, condition and stamina. For your Creative Practice to be effective you need to commit to it frequently and consistently. It’s a bit like getting in shape. If you want the best results for your body, you need to commit to working out regularly for a consistent period. It’s much better to do 15-minutes every day, than 3-hours once in a blue moon. If you can’t manage a daily commitment to your Creative Practice, think about whether every other day is possible. Try not to leave it any longer than three days as you’ll start to lose that connection, along with any momentum you might have gained around your creative work, and your creative practice won’t last long enough for you to see any tangible results. Just like when you leave it that little bit too long before putting your trainers on to go for a run, suddenly the excuses build and before you know it, you haven’t exercised in a month.
The key to cultivating a healthy Creative Practice is frequency and consistency.
Ask yourself: How much time will you / can you commit to your Creative Practice?
4. Make it Easy
For you to be able to honour your Creative Practice, in other words, stick to it, you need to make it easy. Really easy. I love big audacious goals, especially creative ones but as tempting as it might be to set yourself a really lofty one when it comes to your Creative Practice, try not to! For example, wake up two hours earlier every day and write a minimum of three-thousand words before breakfast, is going to feel really hard. When things feel hard, we find excuses to avoid doing them. This avoidance then becomes another source of guilt you’ll use to bash yourself around the head. We don’t want that. So instead, lower the expectation on yourself. Make your Creative Practice something that feels so easy and comfortable, just the idea of it feels inviting. Your creative practice can grow and evolve once you’ve built some solid consistency around it, until then, make it easy for you to commit.
5. Make it Work for You
The whole purpose of establishing a Creative Practice is to support your creative process, which means, your Creative Practice needs to work for you.
Ask yourself:
What do I already do (or know that I should do) that helps me achieve the best creative results?
What else might my creativity need to thrive?
What else can I do to get the most out of my creativity?
The goal here is to align your creative practice with what works best for you and your creativity. You want to move in the direction of your natural creative flow, not push against it.
6. Make it Real
Next, think about how you can make your Creative Practice a reality. It’s all well and good setting an intention but if, in reality, it won’t work because of the practicalities of your day-to-day life, then you’re not off to a very promising start. So, try and think about your current reality and how you might need to work with it, around it and in spite of it, to make your Creative Practice a new and very real part of it.
Think about…
What might stand in the way of your Creative Practice?
What needs to stop happening?
What needs to start happening?
What needs to change?
What support do you need?
Who do you need to tell/get on board with it?
One final thought here, you might want to tell someone about your plans to start a Creative Practice, especially if your Creative Practice effects or impacts them in any way, it might be that you need to get their support for it to become a reality. Sharing your intention also makes you more accountable. Once you’ve named your intention out loud, you’re far more likely to commit to it. Take some time to think about what you’ll need to do to make your Creative Practice a reality, and then, whatever that is, do that!
7. Make it a Ritual
One way to upgrade the status of your Creative Practice is to think about it more like a ritual than a routine. Rituals can provide a sanctuary from the stress of everyday life and offer a much-needed sense of renewal. A ritual can also help you immerse yourself more fully, quickly and effortlessly into a state of flow. So rather than treating your Creative Practice like another demanding item on your To-Do List, try and think about how you could transform your Creative Practice into a ritual.
What ritualistic acts could you bring to your Creative Practice to make it feel more sacred or special?
For example, I always begin my Creative Practice by lighting a candle. Bestselling author Steven Pressfield always begins his by reading a prayer to the Muse. One of my clients burns incense, another spends five minutes meditating before doing his creative work. Think about some rituals you could introduce to your Creative Practice that would support your creative process, transforming it from a routine task into a sacred experience.
8. Make a Space
Very often, people don’t give a great deal of thought to where they do their creative work, what their environment looks like, what it feels like and whether it’s even somewhere they want to spend their time, let alone feel inspired enough to create.
The invitation here is to get intentional about where you do your Creative Practice. If you have a creative space already, does it feel inviting? Is it comfortable? Does it inspire you? If not, what changes can you make to upgrade your space so that you want to create in it?
If you don’t currently have a space, can you create one? Can you get creative about creating one? Is there a space or corner somewhere that you can claim for your Creative Practice? It doesn’t need to be extravagant or fancy, it just needs to be yours. Glennon Doyle, best-selling author of Untamed, started her writing career buried in the depths of her closest, that was her creative sanctuary - it was also where she wrote her first book.
The invitation is to try and find somewhere that yours, somewhere that feels protected and somewhere you can return to. Your space wants to become your creativity sanctuary, so that every time you show up, your creativity is right there with you.
9. Make it a Non-Negotiable Contract
When your creative work matters, it’s much easier to make it a non-negotiable, which is exactly what you must do to create a sustainable Creative Practice. Make a non-negotiable contract to show up and honour your Creative Practice, no matter what.
Making it a non-negotiable contract, takes all the decision making, internal debating and agonising out of the equation. A Creative Practice simplifies the creative process by making it a non-negotiable act, that you keep showing up for. No matter what.
10. Finally, Make it Matter, Again and Again, and AGAIN!
Every single time you show up for your Creative Practice, you’re demonstrating that your creativity, your creative work and your creative ambitions matter. You are demonstrating that you, as the creator of that work, matter. Every single time you show up for your Creative Practice you are showing up for yourself, and in doing so, you are honouring yourself and your creativity. So, once you’ve established a Creative Practice, keep showing up and making it matter, again and again, and again!