ASLU 007: Cultivating Inspiration In Your Creative Process
In Episode 7 of the And She Looked Up Creative Hour, we continue on with our April theme of Inspiration. Today we’re talking about how to cultivate inspiration so that it becomes an integral part of your daily creative process.
As working creatives, it’s really important that we keep our creative wells full so we can draw on them when we need them. But that takes a concentrated effort! It also means learning to trust and embrace creative rhythms.
We’ve got lots of tips to help you cultivate inspiration into your daily routine. Like world renowned choreographer Twyla Tharp claims, creativity is a habit we can all learn to practice. The more you practice it the more you can summon inspiration when you need it. And when your paycheque relies on you creating every day, cultivating daily inspiration is a necessary part of your business, just like doing your bookkeeping and your social media.
We’d love to hear some of your favourite ways to cultivate daily inspiration. Be sure to share them with us in the comments!
Listen To the Episode
Here’s a direct link to Episode 7 or you can listen via the player below:
We kicked off this episode with Melissa talking about how it took a really long, bad stretch of burnout for her to really appreciate and understand how important cultivating inspiration in your daily work is. It quite literally can be a matter of survival - especially if your income depends on you creating every day.
If you hit a wall or find yourself burned out, that can have a dramatic impact on your your ability to earn an income. One of the things that she learned from that whole episode was how important it is to make time to cultivate inspiration in her daily schedule, just like she would exercise or social media or any other task that's important to your physical and mental health or to the health of your business. It really is a big deal. Your business is only as strong as you are when you’re a solo working creative.
Understanding Your Creative Rhythm
Before we dive into how you can cultivate inspiration it’s important to understand that everyone has a creative rhythm and it can take some of us years to learn how our own rhythms work. But one thing that does become apparent the longer you do this is that there is no finite amount of “creativity” that we’re each assigned.
There will always be another idea or another project because that’s how creativity works - it’s an ebb and flow, a wave action. David duChemin speaks to it very eloquently in his article Know Your Rhythm which is one we go back to over and over again. But just like any wave action there are highs (where you’re at a creative peak) and lows (where you’ve ridden the wave and the project has come to an end.
It’s what you do in the lows that matters. If you learn to the trust that every low will be followed by another high, you can take the time during those low points to stop stressing that creativity has abandoned you and instead, find ways to cultivate it and fill your creative well. You need to put back what you’ve taken out. Your job, as a working creative, is to make sure you make way for that next wave to come in. And often, when you do that, the next wave comes faster than you ever expected and you learn to trust the process and, in fact, find it reassuring.
Energy, Purpose and Excitement
Writer Marta Rosco looks to three things that she looks to when she’s in a rut:
Energy - it’s hard to produce when you’re tired, stressed or not feeling well and your energy stores are low. This is often the case at the end of a large project. If you’re feeling flat, take some extra time to remedy that. Focus on your eating, your sleep and your fitness. Practice meditation or some kind of focused thought - this can also be an activity that’s repetitive but soothing, like knitting or doing dishes or running. Spend some time with a hobby that you don’t monetize.
Excitement - do you have excitement for the project? There will always be parts of any large project that are tedious but you should feel a level of overall excitement for the project before you embark on it.
Purpose - what’s the purpose behind what you’re doing. Keep in mind that purpose can have mean different things to different people but, you should feel like what you’re doing does move you forward in some way that’s meaningful to you. Your purpose might be to solve a problem for your customers or to channel some emotion you’re feeling. It may be as simple as doing a repetitive but simple task that allows your brain to process information in the background.
Lisa finds that when she’s struggling with inspiration, checking in on these 3 points can help her narrow in on what’s lacking for her and she can focus on fixing it.
Ways to Cultivate Inspiration For Working Creatives
Sitting Down and Doing The Work - Make it a habit
To get to the next wave you have to experience and ride out the wave you’re on. You have to sit down and do the work - even if it’s not the most exciting piece of the project.
There is a difference between burn out and being creatively blocked. Being blocked can often be cured by putting your butt down in the chair and starting - even if the work is crappy or you have to force it.
When you’re a creative for hire, you are being paid to show up and do the work. Your client isn’t going to tell you to take a spa day if the ideas aren’t rolling in.
This is where a daily challenge project can be so helpful - it forces you to produce, every day and to get out of your own way.
Stop Being Precious About Your Work
Sometimes, we’re our own worst enemy. When we get precious about our work it stops us from producing. But sitting down and doing the work - even if it’s crappy - forces us to get over ourselves.
And here’s food for thought: that crappy first draft or first attempt has to happen. The good stuff can’t get out until you’ve made some room by getting out the garbage first. It’s that crappy first attempt that will get your brain thinking. You might spot a tiny piece that can take you off in a direction you hadn’t considered before. Sometimes the best ideas are happy “accidents” that occur when you sit down and start.
Have a Way to Capture and Save Moments of Inspiration In Your Day
Whenever you spot something in your day that sparks interest in you, have a way to save it so that you can go back to it when you’re needing a dose of inspiration or a well of ideas. Here’s some ideas:
a spot on your phone - the same spot every time
notebooks - so many creatives always carry a notebook to jot down ideas as they spot them
Pat Flynn has mentioned he has an actual shoebox and he will jot down ideas that come to him on a piece of paper and put them right in the shoebox to look at later - it clears his head so he can focus on the current task at hand without losing the idea. It stops us from falling into the “shiny object” trap.
The ARtist’s Way
Melissa finds a couple of key tasks from Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way very helpful with working to keep her creative well full: Morning Pages and the Artist’s Date
Morning pages is a daily practice of writing out three pages (with a pen and paper) of free thought before you start your day. This practice can help get all the noise out of your head before you start work for the day. Nobody will ever see them and Cameron recommends not rereading them yourself until months later.
The Artist’s Date is where you take your inner artist, who Cameron compares to a small, petulant child, out on a date once a week. It’s purely time for free expression. It can be as simple as lying on the grass and looking at clouds in the sky, or blowing bubbles in the park to visiting an art gallery or allowing yourself time with your sketchbook. The important thing is there are no expectations and there doesn’t have to be any structure. You don’t have to produce anything and if you do, you don’t need to share it or sell it. What’s important here is the date itself - not the outcome of the date.
Remind yourself that this time is not a splurge or a treat. It’s an investment in your business - just as important as paying your taxes or going to the gym. It’s a necessary task that you should schedule into your calendar each week.
Look After Your Toolboox
When you create for a living you are the biggest asset your business has and you need to take care of your mental and physical health and fill your creative well. Your head and your heart have to be in top shape if you want to be a top performer.
Taking time to fill your creative well by going on an artist’s date or finding time to do something meditative or search out inspiration are, for you, the same as a professional athlete showing up for their massage therapy appointment or visiting a sports psychologist and practicing visualization exercises.
Pushing things like this off because they seem like a luxury will catch up with you down the road and affect your ability to perform and earn a living.
Do Something You’re Good At
If you’re struggling with a bit of self-doubt or self-confidence in your abilities, as happens to all of us, go back to something you’re really good at. Cook your best recipe, write a newsletter where you don’t have to worry about SEO, draw heart doodles…
Doing something you’re good at will give you a boost of self-confidence and remind you that you are good at what you do and you can create something that has value. And it can help calm your thought process down.
Intentional Consumption
Be intentional about the kind of content you consume both on and offline. As we’ve mentioned before, there is a fine line between feeling inspired and feeling defeated. Look to the work of people who make you feel better. Look for new ideas and new techniques you can try.
Is binge watching 10 hours of reality TV really the best way to consume content? Maybe. It could be just what your brain needs to relax after a big project. But if your goal is to cultivate creativity maybe you should watch something else. Or read something, or listen to something. Or only watch an hour a day of reality TV.
If Something’s Not Filling Your Creative Well, Get Rid of It
You don’t have to finish that book you started if it’s not doing it for you. You don’t have to watch that show everyone else is watching if it doesn’t speak to you. Unfollow Instagram accounts that don’t inspire you.
Don’t Wrap Your Self-Worth Up In Your Social Media Accounts
Wrapping up your self-worth in your number of followers or the number of likes or comments a post get does absolutely nothing to cultivate your creativity. In fact it might do the exact opposite.
Social media can, in some ways, inspire mediocrity and a similar aesthetic in niches. When you scroll without intention on sites like Pinterest or Instagram, you often see the same look and feel over and over again - your brain can’t help but absorb that and you’ll gravitate to creating something that fits that look. This is something you really want to avoid! So try to move away from social media for your inspiration unless you’re very intentionally searching for something specific.
Resources Mentioned In This Episode:
Editor's Note: This list contains affiliate links — full disclosure is at the end of the article.
- Know Your Rhythm - by David duChemin
- The Artist's Way - Julia Cameron
- The Creative Habit - Twyla Tharp
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