Unlock Your Creative Potential: 7 Essential Habits for Thriving in the Now
When do you create the most? What are the best conditions for you to implement your creativity and put it into real, tangible goals? As a success coach, psychologist, and cognitive scientist, I've reflected deeply on these questions. I've noticed that there have been several periods in my life when I have been uncreative and distracted. During these times, my mind was overloaded with obligations, negative thoughts, stress, and preoccupation with worry about the future or the past. This led to a lot of irritation, self-accusation, and a strained flow of inspiration. So, what was missing? Why couldn’t I perform? Why was I feeling so “displaced” as if I was in the wrong place at the wrong time?
The Power of Now
After a long journey of self-awareness, I realized the root cause of this disturbance: I wasn’t present. My mind was constantly lingering between the past (fears, nostalgia, bad experiences) and the hypothetical future (expectations, projections, negative or wishful thinking) without ever considering the NOW moment! And it is in the NOW that we humans actually have the power to create. It is the only spatio-temporal frame that allows us to be efficient, artistic, and happy about our creativity. Realizing that, despite considering myself a creative person, I was actually adopting a lifestyle totally incompatible with my creativity, was a great shock.
7 Habits to Cultivate Creativity
It took a lot of effort and practice to implement new lifestyle habits to tune back to the NOW. Here are seven habits that have helped me exist in the NOW and grow my creative muscle:
Tune Your Senses to the Now
Feel, look, smell, hear, touch. Train these senses to observe and analyze only the elements of the present environment. Enhance your perceptions to stay conscious of the present moment and focus your actions on the NOW.
Practice Gratitude
Be grateful for everything you have or experience right NOW. Gratitude is a powerful, positive emotion that provides joy and energy, dispelling negativity, fear, stress, or anger.
Embrace Your Emotions
Cultivate your emotional intelligence. Welcome all emotions, learn to decode their messages, and accept them as indicators of your current state, guiding you towards necessary changes or affirmations.
Listen to Your Inner Voice
Trusting your gut feeling helps synchronize with the NOW, allowing your creative ideas to flow and flourish. It often provides the most reliable information about immediate choices.
Reorganize Your Daily Life
Addressing small daily tasks and stressors, like paying bills, decluttering, or resolving conflicts, helps focus on the present without the distraction of unresolved issues.
Introduce Happiness into Your Routine
Incorporate simple joys into your day, like using a colorful soap, wearing your favorite clothes, or treating yourself after a tough day. Acknowledging these happy occasions enhances your focus on the NOW.
Appreciate Beauty Around You
Surrounding yourself with beautiful environments uplifts your psychology and enhances creativity. As William James said, “Your reality goes where your eyes look.”
Conclusion
Through my personal and professional experience, I have noticed that we feel most creative when we are entirely focused on the present moment, NOW and HERE. Our full attention on what we want to create and our senses focused on the present environment are key. Remember, our minds should be used only for thinking about our creative process and nothing else.
