There are two stages of creativity.

1. 1. Dreaming
2. 2. Doing

Dreaming –

“The truth lies in a man’s dreams.” Miguel de Celvantes

Like I mentioned at the start of this book, everything starts as a thought, a tiny pin-prick thought in someone’s imagination.  You have to give yourself time and ALLOW YOURSELF THE OPPORTUNITY TO DARE TO DREAM.

Your dreams are the doors and gateways to possibilities.

OPEN THE DOOR.

Don’t dismiss them.

Give them the space to flourish and open like a beautiful flower opening its delicate petals to the sun.

The dreaming stage is crucial.  This stage is about DREAMING BIG. In this stage anything is possible, there should be no limits.  NO restrictions.

DREAMS ARE EXTENSIONS OF HOPE.

If you have a dream, is it not worth giving it a chance to flourish?

We spoke earlier about human potential; I hope most of you believed that that we are capable of so much more.  If you agree, then you are also likely to believe that the power of your mind is virtually unlimited & largely untapped.

“I shut my eyes in order to see.”  Paul Gauguin

Give yourself space to dream.

We lose the art of dreaming because we are too quick to get realistic.

Your Dreams are precious

Give yourself permission to dream

Daydreaming is the soul food of creativity, even if you were told differently in school!

This stage is all about being as wild and crazy as you can possibly be.  There should be NO LIMITS.  EVERYTHING IS POSSIBLE.  YOU MUST DREAM BIG.

• Your plans at this stage do not, should not be evaluated, and certainly not picked apart or judged
• Give your inner-critic, that negative voice in your head the big heave ho

Are you listening?

You do not need to be realistic.

At this point do not even let it enter your head about how you are going to make your dreams happen.

This stage is all about getting a bit silly, a bit out there, a bit crazy.   Really letting go.

So here goes, more activities and exercises.   This means that you now need to stop reading, pick up your pen and paper and allow yourself the time and space to give the activity a go.   You can spare 15 minutes surely?

Remember, you only get out, what you put in!

• What one thing would you love to contribute to the world?  Be really honest with yourself.

Whether it is a book, a song, painting, arts, crafts, a story, a piece of music, it doesn’t matter.  Just write down, draw or doodle whatever it is that when you are in your eighties (hopefully?) and you can then look back with pride, and say I did that!

• What would you do if you couldn’t fail?

• What would you do if money was no object?

• Lastly, close your eyes.  Take the pen in your least dominant hand Write down 1 – 3 things you would love to create or do if time, money and ability were no object.

CREATIVE DREAM TASK

You will need some big sheets of paper, preferably A3 size or bigger.  Lots of coloured pencils, pens, paints, and crayons- whatever you would prefer to draw and doodle with.  Fix yourself a nice cup of tea/ coffee or wine if you fancy.  Ideally get down on the floor, spread out and make yourself comfy.  Set your stop watch on your mobile phone or a timer.  Allow yourself 30 minutes to draw, create and doodle.

YOU are now going to draw and doodle, You at your most uber amazing creative-ist.

Get silly. Get creative.  Have fun.  You could even invite a friend around to do the activity with you?

Do not think too hard, you are in the dream stage, so anything is possible. You can do or be who ever you want to be.

Imagine you at your most creative?  Imagine you are the Creative version of Wonder Women.

LIVING YOUR MOST CREATIVE LIFE

Where are you?

How do you look?  What colours? What is your style?

What are you wearing?

Who are you with?

How do you feel?

What does your life look like?

How do you spend your time?

What activities / past-times do you do?

What does you life look like?

How would you like your most creative life to be?

Here is an example of me at my most creative!  ….

One I did earlier…

CREATE A CREATIVE VISION BOARD

A great way to move towards and closer to your creative dreams is to create a “Creative Dream Vision Board.”

You will need lots of magazines, access to the internet, a big sheet of paper to stick all your images and words on, or a pin-board.  Pin-boards are very inexpensive and can be picked up for a few pounds from place like Pound Stretchers.

Search through all the magazines and tear out any images, pictures or words that you are drawn to.  Do not think too deeply about this.

Do a Google Search for images that represent your creative dreams, ideas or thoughts.  This could be things that you long to do.  Places you long to go.  Pictures of activities you would love to do, interest or just appeal.

Here is an example of mine;

As you can see I have included open fires and a stone cottage as my plan is to eventually own my own old stone cottage with an open fire and scenic views.  I have saved images of messy art and creativity, and at the time I didn’t even know I wanted to really create art!  There are pictures of places I would love to travel to, such as Venice and India.  I have included pictures of writing, workshops, books & animals.  There are images that are less than obvious and more symbolic of the values, dreams and aspirations, such as an image of birds been released from a cage and ..

Once you have completed your creative vision board you need to display it somewhere prominent, ideally in a place that you have to walk past every day.  Mine is in the hall and I must walk past it at least 10 times a day to get to the kitchen.

The idea is that the images and words will speak to your inner-creative subconscious.  Slowly but surely they will reawaken and ignite something in you, you will move towards the images and words without even realising.

• Without stopping to think write, doodle or draw list 20 things that you love to do or enjoy.

Do not stop to think, just write the first things that come into your head.  There are no wrongs or rights.  No pressure.   Just let go.   The aim here is not to think too hard or deeply.

So come on, without stopping make a list of twenty things you enjoy and like to do.  It doesn’t matter what they are, and you can include food and sex!

Interestingly, we probably had more of an idea of who we were, and what we wanted to do when we were very young.  A good starting point is to think back to when you were a child.  Think back to a time in your life when the everyday was more about play, having fun, been spontaneous, and doing what made you happy in the moment.

The older you get the more likely you are to over-thinking and over-analyze things.   I have a tendency to over think everything.  Unfortunately over-thinking  is a big killer of creativity!  Your aim is to get back in touch with your inner creative-child.

• Now, take 5 minutes to think back to when you were a younger.
• What did you love to do as a child?
• What did you love to do as a child?  What about when you were a teenager?

• If there was a fire in your house, what would be the four things you would save?   If you were to save one photograph, one book, one object and one idea what would it be?  What four things are at the core of your being?

• Imagine you are a human cat.  If you had nine lives to devote to nine very different careers, what would they be?

Now look at what you have written.  Can you see any links patterns or themes?  Are there any connections?  Show a close friend, your partner or someone you trust what you have written.  Ask them if they can see any patterns or ideas emerging.  Only do this with someone who you know will be positive and have your best interests at heart.  You do not need any Doubting Thomas’s or negative comments at this stage in the proceedings!

• Lastly, close your eyes.  Take the pen in your least dominant hand.  Write down 1 – 3 things you would love to create or do if time, money and ability were no object.

This place where you are right now
God circled on a map for you.

~ Hafiz

– By Douglas Malloch

Before you begin…the picture above is actually a queen painted on a tree.  Unfortunately you can’t see the crown, and I haven’t got the IT skills to resize!   You will just have to take my word for it.  The picture was took today whilst I was enjoying the sunshine in Hyde Park in my home town of Leeds.  It may only be March but it’s been bloody boiling. Bring on the sunshine, three cheers for summer!  :-)

This is a speech made by Oprah Winfrey….BE A QUEEN.  We are all queens, and I don’t mean that in the gay sense!

Be a queen. Dare to be different. Be a pioneer. Be a leader. Be the kind of woman who in the face of diversity will continue to embrace life and walk fearlessly toward challenge. Take it on! Be a truth seeker and rule your domain, whatever it is—your home, your office, your family—with a loving heart.

Be a queen. Be tender. Continue to give birth to ideas and rejoice in your womanhood… my prayer is that we will stop wasting time being mundane and mediocre… we are daughters of God—here to teach the world how to love…

It doesn’t matter what you’ve been through, where you come from, who your parents are—nor your social or economic status. None of that matters. What matters is how you choose to love, how you choose to express that love through your work, through your family, through what you have to give to the world…

Be a queen. Own your power and glory!

Oprah Winfrey. Chicken Soup for The Woman’s Soul.

Sylvia Plath

Writer & Poet

Born to middle class parents in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts, Sylvia Plath published her first poem when she was eight. Sensitive, intelligent, compelled toward perfection in everything she attempted, she was, on the surface, a model daughter, popular in school, earning straight A’s, winning the best prizes. By the time she entered Smith College on a scholarship in 1950 she already had an impressive list of publications, and while at Smith she wrote over four hundred poems.

Sylvia’s surface perfection was however underlain by grave personal discontinuities, some of which doubtless had their origin in the death of her father (he was a college professor and an expert on bees) when she was eight. During the summer following her junior year at Smith, having returned from a stay in New York City where she had been a student “guest editor” at Mademoiselle Magazine, Sylvia nearly succeeded in killing herself by swallowing sleeping pills. She later described this experience in an autobiographical novel, The Bell Jar, published in 1963. After a period of recovery involving electroshock and psychotherapy Sylvia resumed her pursuit of academic and literary success, graduating from Smith summa cum laude in 1955 and winning a Fulbright scholarship to study at Cambridge, England.

In 1956 she married the English poet Ted Hughes , and in 1960, when she was 28, her first book, The Colossus, was published in England. The poems in this book—formally precise, well wrought—show clearly the dedication with which Sylvia had served her apprenticeship; yet they give only glimpses of what was to come in the poems she would begin writing early in 1961. She and Ted Hughes settled for a while in an English country village in Devon, but less than two years after the birth of their first child the marriage broke apart.

The winter of 1962-63, one of the coldest in centuries, found Sylvia living in a small London flat, now with two children, ill with flu and low on money. The hardness of her life seemed to increase her need to write, and she often worked between four and eight in the morning, before the children woke, sometimes finishing a poem a day. In these last poems it is as if some deeper, powerful self has grabbed control; death is given a cruel physical allure and psychic pain becomes almost tactile.

On February 11, 1963, Sylvia Plath killed herself with cooking gas at the age of 30. Two years later Ariel, a collection of some of her last poems, was published; this was followed by Crossing the Water and Winter Trees in 1971, and, in 1981, The Collected Poems appeared, edited by Ted Hughes.

Another Poem.

This poem is partly my own handy-work, and part of a poem that I found on a toilet door.  Yes, you heard right!

YOU ARE GOOD ENOUGH…

Just as you are.   Happy Valentine’s Day X

THE ALCHEMY OF LOVE

You come to us
from another world

From beyond the stars
and void of space.
Transcendent, Pure,
Of unimaginable beauty,
Bringing with you
the essence of love

You transform all
who are touched by you.
Mundane concerns,
troubles, and sorrows
dissolve in your presence,
Bringing joy
to ruler and rule
To peasant and king

You bewilder us
with your grace.
All evils
transform into
goodness.

You are the master alchemist.

You light the fire of love
in earth and sky
in heart and soul
of every being.

Through your love
existence and nonexistence merge.
All opposites unite.
All that is profane
becomes sacred again.

Poet ~ Sumi

Here are some simple ways to start learning how to believe in you:

1) Try Even When You Still Think You Can’t Do It

Because you have pattern of not believing in yourself, this will take a little work. Make a vow to yourself today that you will try your best at any opportunity that comes your way. It does not matter if you have fallen on your face before or whether you think it’s even possible. The important thing is to pledge to yourself that you will try no matter what the outcome may be. The worst thing to do to yourself is to assume you can’t do it before even trying. Tell yourself right now that any effort to do better is not a waste of your precious time.

2) Establish Evidence For The Assumptions

Get some paper and start a list. List every one of those things you really believe about yourself and your abilities or the lack of them. List them whether they are large or small. Once you have that list go through each assumption and examine it. Ask yourself, “Is this true? What is the proof?” Then go and do whatever it is you feel you cannot. It does not matter if you do it better than anyone else. It only matters that you DO.

3) Recognize The Possibilities

A constant onslaught of self-defeating assumptions obviously puts you in the place of believing you cannot succeed. This goes back to the people in your life who have impressed their own beliefs on you. A silly bunch of girls in high school told you that you were fat and no one would ever want you. Guess what you have been doing since? Saying that same self-defeating comment to yourself. It is time to push beyond what you believe are your capabilities. This is a scary thought. It also will be a step in the direction of finding the belief in you. The assumptions you have about yourself may not be true. You have simply accepted these assumptions as truth without proof. Consider all the possibilities of each situation. Challenge the assumptions and have an open mind to the possibility that you could be wrong!

With every success, whether large or small, the belief in yourself will grow. That will be the push you need to keep stepping outside your comfort zone and attain the accomplishments you truly deserve.

Robin Skeen

“Only if one believe in something can one act purposefully.”

This is a poem that my friend Stacey wrote for our monthly creative night. The theme was Sunday.

I guess we can all associate with those Sunday night blues. The chances are, we’ve all felt that anxious, deflated dread that can descend when we know “work” is just around the corner. Often the dread and worry is far worse than the actual reality once we get back in to the swing of our day jobs.

Even if most days you actually enjoy your work/ business, you can still get those feeling of Sunday blues. Knowing that soon your time will be no longer your own.

I’ve got Ofsted in school this Monday/Tuesday, so I guess my Sunday evening blues will be far worse than the usual!!  Below is a picture I created a couple of years ago.  The girl in the red is me trudging through the snow.  If you look closely you will notice that there are two set of foot prints.

Defiantly stares back at me

Knowing my in escapable fate

a jinx, a fix, a hoax

My rigged destiny perplexes me

whilst the depths of my minds

are subdued and forgetting

Too anxious, too tired, too complex

I am a shadow of my former self

Even now as my words flow

I rattle like a pebble in a tin can

Ship wrecked and ruined.

My scrawlings of madness and melancholy may appear the work of a theatrical thespian

but for me simplicity is unobtainable

For I must dwell on every single minute detail

Too little and or too much knowledge

I am submerged in my own quick sand

Too little too late

Oh cruel harsh world

By Kay Holdsworth February 1996 – On a blue day