How To Fill Your Creative Life With The Joy Of Happy Accidents
Posted on | September 1, 2010 | 2 Comments
Have you heard of Happy Accidents?
If not, here’s a simple explanation: You know those times when you’re creating with a very specific aim with a project, and you can envision exactly how you want it to turn out?
Then something goes a little wrong, you make a mistake, you mess something up. At first it seems like a utter disaster. All that work up to this point gone to waste.
But, then you realise, that because of this unexpected shift in direction, it’s actually opened up a whole new pathway of creative possibility.
So you begin to explore, sensing that you’ve stumbled on to something pretty amazing and exciting here, and end up with an artwork – and an experience – far more satisfying and inspiring than the one you originally intended to create.
image: Emiko Hime
These are Happy Accidents, unintentional changes in how and what you were creating that led to an even better outcome and direction than you could have hoped for.
And they enable you to create in a way that otherwise you couldn’t have planned or mapped out.
Do you have them often? Have you ever experienced them?
Happy Accidents are one of the great joys of creating.
But you can’t forecast them, or contrive to have them, they just happen, hence why they’re an “accident”.
There are however, a few things you can do to allow these inspiring twists to happen more easily and more often.
Here are three of the best:
1. Kick out perfectionism.
When you create under the burden of perfectionism, there’s a great pressure for everything to be just so. Every word, or pencil mark ,or brush stroke, or musical note has to be exactly right, to make sure the whole composition is exactly right.
This stifles creativity and means you’re trying to create under such anxious conditions that it’s unlikely that a) you’ll actually be able to make it through to the end of the project and keep every last part exactly perfect, because you’re human and an artist after all, not a robot in a factory production line, and b) you’ll enjoy it all, because of the burden you’ve placed on yourself to be perfect.
As soon as you loosen your grip a little on this unrealistic expectation to create perfect art, you hugely increase the probability that you’ll stumble into a Happy Accident or two.
2. Define some limits, to set yourself free.
This seems to go against what first seems logical. You’re an artist, you must be completely free to create whatever and however you want surely? How can setting boundaries help you create more freely and have more Happy Accidents? Won’t it just strangle your creativity?
The opposite is true. Once your creativity has a few limits, it can REALLY set to work. For example, if you’re a painter, you might decide you’ll create a series of small 6 inch square canvases and use only shades of blue for each, no other colour. Already just thinking about this (whether you’re a painter or not) you’ll have some ideas come to mind, you’ll start to visualise what those little blue canvases might become.
You’ll also give the go ahead for Happy Accidents, as because you’ve challenged your creativity, it will try things it’s not tried before to be original and interesting with these limits. You’re more likely to discover ways of creating that you wouldn’t have if you’d given yourself completely free reign over the size and colour of your canvases.
3. Focus on the fun.
When we try to be very fixed in how we want our art to materialise, we suddenly get very serious. I’m sure you can imagine yourself hunched over your latest artwork with tense shoulders and a furrowed perspiring brow, that familiar knotting in your stomach and shortness of breath as the anxiety of trying to be perfect starts to take grip.
What kind of conditions are these to be at your most creative? The answer is they’re very non-conducive to being free and spontaneous and creating the best you can create. And maybe even more importantly, where’s the fun?? A huge part of creating and the reason why we create is because we enjoy it. It’s meant to enrich our lives, bring a smile to our faces and a sparkle in our eye, not be like a form of medieval torture!
Imagine you’re a six year old once in a while, and create as they would create, with a sense of playfulness, on instinct, purely following what delights and stimulates your senses. When you relax and create for fun like this, the Happy Accidents will come thick and fast.
Each of these three ways will open the gates to more Happy Accidents in your creative life, and you’ll unlock new ways of creating, and wonderful new ideas that you could never have come across otherwise.
You owe it to yourself, your own artistic evolution – and your enjoyment of creating – to try these and become far more Happy-Accident-Prone!
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How To Boost Your Creativity With Your Own Personal Cheerleader Team
Posted on | August 29, 2010 | No Comments
image: rickz
Traditionally, cheerleaders travel far and wide in their short pleated skirts and winning smiles, following their team’s every game with their encouraging chanting, energetic high kicking, and flamboyant yet perfectly synchronised pom pom waving. If your cheerleaders are working their magic at the edge of the court, their bouncing optimism can give the kind of boost to your morale and performance that’s almost like having an extra player on your team.
In your non-sporting life – and in your creative life in particular – being a cheerleader for someone simply means supporting and encouraging them in all their creative ventures, being there to listen when they need an sympathetic ear, to offer advice when they ask for it, to be everything from a comforting hug to a swift kick up the derriere, as and when it’s required.
Think for a moment of the sort of cheerleading you might have done yourself in the past. How have you helped and encouraged others you know in work life or your personal life?
(It doesn’t matter if you didn’t dress up and bring pom poms, but bonus points to you if you did. Especially if you’re a guy.)
Also, think about the people that have been there on the sidelines for you, ever present and supportive through your triumphs and your struggles.
In the past these sort of people in your life would have most likely been your immediately family, as well as your friends and close work colleagues.
The trouble is, sometimes the people most close to us in so many ways, just don’t “get” this “nice little hobby” we have which we call being an artist.
So however supportive they may be in some areas, when it comes to creativity, they don’t understand the need to create, or the desire to. Their support, however genuinely offered, somehow doesn’t quite help you as much as you’d like it to.
And because they maybe don’t create themselves in the way you do (if they create at all), those seemingly innocuous phrases like “Why don’t you get a proper steady job” and “Are you still playing around with that painting thing?” are far more damaging and dismissive than they realise.
Being creative, being an artist, to you and me is at the core of our being and personality. To criticise or mock our need to create is to criticise and mock our whole being.
Fortunately, these days with the hyper-connectivity of the age we live in, it’s easier than ever to find people who DO “get” this art thing that we do, and who do understand that creating is not an option or an occasional hobby for a wet weekend, but something we need to outpour daily, even hourly.
So, the opportunity for you to assemble your own personal amazing cheerleader team is very real, and very attainable.
The rewards can literally put you into a different orbit with your creativity.
Instead of fighting not only your own inner critic with its dozens of ways and reasons to try to convince you to not create, in the past you’ll have had the critical external voices of those around you to try to battle too. It’s exhausting.
Now, when you gather together a cheerleader team, you know that support is there whenever you need it, and together you can become far greater than the sum of your individual creative talents. Together you can become virtually invincible.
There are essentially two parts to building your cheerleader team, and each complements the other.
1. Your Fellow Artists.
First, the people who are creating just like you, and know the ups and downs. There are many creative communities these days where you can find artists of all different backgrounds and who create in a vast range of different media, with one common goal. To be as creative as they can be, and to help as many other people as they can along the way.
2. Your Mentors and Leaders.
Secondly, the people you look up to, the leaders in your field, those who rally you with their passionate words and inspire you with not only their art itself, but the way they consistently step up and create too. You don’t need to even meet these people personally, they’re more accessible and easy to follow than ever through the internet.
So, bringing this all together. Having people from both of these groups above gives you the most powerful combination to be as creative as you can be, and feel you have the pom poms a-waving and the high kicks a-kicking right by your side.
You can’t necessarily build your cheerleader team in a day, but I’m sure you already have in mind some people from both of these areas you can assemble. Go find them.
Dedicate a little time each day to interacting with them, and being ever inspired and motivated by them. And they will in turn be inspired and motivated by you.
Having your own amazing cheerleader team will take your creativity to new heights, and help you then in turn be a part of other people’s cheerleader teams.
This powerful support network spirals ever upwards, and you, me and the whole world gets to benefit from the wonderful creativity pouring forth.
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How To Prove You Actually Exist As An Artist
Posted on | August 26, 2010 | 2 Comments
Do you ever find there are times when you wonder whether your creativity has dried up like a riverbed in the longest hottest summer ever known, never to be revived, and you’ll never again taste even a single drop of that creative flow you so long for?
Sometimes too, do you question whether you still exist as an artist at all, as if there’s a minimal quota that you must produce each year, month, day or hour, to retain the validity of your membership to some unspoken authentic artists club?
Most of us at some point have thoughts like these, and feel like our right to claim the title of artist is sketchy at best, and laughable at worst.
But there is no exclusive artists club with special rules that tell you you must create for a certain length of time each day, or churn out a fixed number of poems or photos or paintings per month.
image: ehoyer
That is, there’s no EXTERNAL club.
You may however have gathered your own set of rules together over the years, and come up with a habit of unfavourably comparing yourself with other people who you consider are artists. You, know, “real” artists.
And you’ve probably made the rules rather sophisticated and ever evolving, so it makes it almost impossible for you to meet them. Meaning you can keep whacking yourself with that big old charlatan stick over and over again. Ouch.
The best way to get out of this kind of cycle is twofold.
First, realise that the only “rules” about what make you an artist come from your own thoughts.
If you think you’re an artist, you are. If you don’t think you are, you’re not. It’s a simple as that. You can decide exactly the same for anyone you know. You can make up your own criteria by which you measure whether these people qualify as artists or not.
But honestly, does any of this really matter? No. Do you create just so you can say to yourself you’re an artist? Or do you create because there’s stuff just burning inside you desperate to be brought to life, and when you do create at your fullest potential you enjoy it so much, you feel invincible, and like nothing else makes you feel?
My money would be on the latter. And I think it would be a safe bet.
The second way to help yourself out of this pattern of not feeling you’re an artist is to just look at all you create.
Have a mini review of the last three to six months and start writing down all the stuff you’ve done. Don’t just go over it in your head, actually write it down. And don’t just count the large, obvious artwork and creative projects. Think about all the ideas you’ve had, all the things bubbling in your mind. Think about all the conversations you’ve been a part of, the people you’ve engaged with.
Think about all the tiny daily things you don’t count as creative like preparing meals, or teaching or helping people, solving problems at work and home, and making people feel loved and valued.
You’re creative every moment of the day, even if you’re not writing and painting.
The only person you need to justify your existence as an artist to is yourself. Because you make up the rules about what that means, you’re free to see yourself as an artist 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. If you choose to.
And after all, that’s exactly who you are. You really don’t know how to be any other way.
You couldn’t stop having ideas and being creative if you wanted to. Your whole life is your art!
So, stop doubting, start acknowledging just how much you do, how much you create. You’ll amaze yourself at how much it is. Then you’ll have irrefutable proof that do exist not just as any old artist, but a genuine, passionate uniquely creative artist.
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- How To Fill Your Creative Life With The Joy Of Happy Accidents
- How To Boost Your Creativity With Your Own Personal Cheerleader Team
- How To Prove You Actually Exist As An Artist
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Hey, I'm Dan Goodwin. As a Creativity Coach I help people become as creative as they've always known they can be. I also write, dance, and eat a fair bit of chocolate... Thanks for visiting.
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