12 Days of Creativity 2012 – Day 1
Christmas is upon us.
So each day from now until December 25, drop by the Wheel of Creativity blog for a deep breath of spirit in the midst of the festive flurry.
Let’s be creative and connected this Christmas! It’s the best gift under the tree!
Lean back.
Take a deep breath.
Look up from the screen.
Relax.
Station 1 and the Wheel of Creativity gives me… a hunger for something more than this.
“Hunger comes to me on the road like a savage beast,
speaking the truth.
It calls to me from my innermost Self…”
Ever notice how food always tastes so much better when you’re really hungry? Contrary to popular opinion, the creative process does not begin with knowing what you want. It begins with the empty feeling of knowing what you don’t want.
Goal-setting, vision-boarding and positive thinking can be powerful motivators, but they do not inspire creative passion. Creative passion—the kind that keeps you going through the times when you’d really rather give up on that dream of yours—comes from deep inside you.
Whining’s not an option.
The problem is that most of us don’t see much value in knowing what we don’t want, and we certainly don’t like taking responsibility for it. We’d rather complain about what’s not working in our lives—the job that doesn’t fulfill us, the shape of our bodies, the partner who has still not shown up—than show up ourselves to create what’s missing. Most of us would rather just skip over our discomfort and move straight into the good stuff.
“I don’t know what I want, but this isn’t it.”
It might start with a vague sense of restlessness or a loud crashing bang of a “No more!” but that’s where it starts. And that’s the very first step to getting you up out of the chair of complacency and DOing something about your situation.
The key to knowing what you want—deep-down, quiet-in-the-storm, if-no-one-were-looking kind of longing—begins by being really honest with yourself about what you don’t want. Feel your longing. Connect with your discomfort. Let yourself get hungry. It’s that fire in your belly that ignites the entire journey of personal transformation.
That HUNGER is station 1 in The Wheel of Creativity.
Where in your life are you experiencing creative restlessness?
