Day 5
Your Unique Map To A Deeply Fulfilling Creative Life
Hello Creative Heart!
Welcome to Day Five of The Art of Creative Living: 7 Day Introductory Course.
Today, we’re going to create a map that’s hand-tailored to suit you. A compass, if you will, to guide you in your next steps on your creative journey ahead.
That’s right, today is all about Phase Three of my approach, Creative Maps.
Creative Maps anchor us amidst the multitude of choices we face on a daily basis to craft a life aligned with our values. Having your own Creative Map helps you to embrace your natural rhythms and work with the different seasons of the creative process, while staying connected to your heart and what is calling you next.
Take my hand and let’s explore!
Once we have begun to play with our materials and gotten clearer on how to use them, it’s easy to lose momentum and wonder what’s next on this creative journey.
We are often alone in our studio or creative space. We may be trying to find the threads that will lead us deeper into our creative expression and help us to develop our skills, in ways that feel deeply resonant and meaningful, only to get stuck. We can find ourselves wondering what to paint, feel lost amidst the creative process, worry whether we are doing things ‘wrong’ and struggle trying to figure out how to develop a personal painting style.
When we have a picture of where we are now and where we want to go, it brings so much clarity and joy to our creative process.
Inspiration flows so much easier, we feel less anxious, let go of comparing our progress with others’ and have a compass to help us navigate obstacles such as negative feedback or criticism along the way.
Using mindful awareness to support our intentions and connecting with our values, our life overflows with meaning. You can walk your creative path, confident you’re following the direction of your heart.
The Creative Maps phase is a safe harbour for setting your intentions. A quiet bay for reflection, self inquiry and reclaiming what truly matters to you. It’s a workshop for navigating the creative process – including your decisions and feelings around inspiration, creative seasons, navigating feedback, and more.
Before we dive into crafting your Creative Map, I wholeheartedly encourage you to embrace fluidity here. Know and trust your answers to these questions will change over your lifetime. These maps will evolve, as you evolve and grow. Nothing is set in stone. Like the moon, tide and seasons, things will continue to shift in your world. But for each moment, beginning right now, the answers to these questions are an invaluable tool for navigating your creative life.
Now, let’s dive in!
The Three Terrains of Your Creative Map
I love to teach Creative Maps in three terrains. It’s a holistic approach that takes into account your personal preferences, timing and values. Let’s take a closer look:
Rhythms & Seasons. There’s a natural rhythm to creativity. Understanding the natural unfolding of the creative process fosters a deep trust in your timing and supports you in so many ways. What level of output feels supportive for you, right now? Are you planting seeds with playful experimentation during Creative Spring, enjoying the productive energy and effortless flow of Creative Summer, reflecting and editing during your Creative Autumn or resting, rejuvenating and visioning during your Creative Winter? It’s all welcome here.
Curiosity & Inspiration. What supports and feeds your creative energy and dreams? What makes you feel inspired? How can you bring more of that into your day to day life? What is true and current for you, not what you ‘think’ should inspire you, but what really does? Where does your curiosity lead?
Feedback & Criticism. What is your relationship to feedback and criticism at this point in your creative process? What do you need to feel safe and supported in this area? How do you invite feedback that supports you and your creative expression, and from whom? And how do you evaluate your own paintings or creative projects so you can deepen your work by understanding your preferences, strengths and areas you’d like to improve?
Please remember, your creative maps will continue to change and shift over the years ahead. What inspires you now, may not inspire you later. The level of energy you bring to your creative projects will ebb and flow like the tides as you move through different creative seasons.
This is an ongoing practice.
An opportunity to tune within and see what your values and priorities are, in this moment of your creative life.
Do you remember as a child how books like Wind in the Willows and Winnie the Pooh had a map, showing the story’s landscape and the environment? I would flip backwards and forwards to the map to find where the characters were in the story so I could see how everything fitted together. Similarly, we can create our own creative map, so we know where we are and where we are heading in our creative lives.
How to Create Your Creative Map
First, pick up a pen or open a new document and free journal your heart out about each of the Three Terrains. How do each of them feel and what do they mean, for you? This is about getting a heart-felt, deep sense of what is calling you and where you feel you are in your creative life, right now.
There’s no “one right way” to do this! As with everything creative, there are a multitude of wonderful ways forward. So, tune into your heart, be 100% honest and muster your courage as you explore each layer with authenticity, self-compassion and gentleness. Remember, there are no wrong answers here. Your responses will shift and change over your lifetime, so tune into what is true for you, right now.
Now, read back through your writing. Are there any action items you’ve unwittingly stumbled upon? Ways you can cultivate your curiosity and nurture your inspiration? People you can reach out to for supportive feedback? A personal date with your latest series of paintings to see where you may want to delve further? List any actions or practices that will anchor your intentions. Use a sketchbook, journal, computer, Pinterest board, ring binder or mind map, whatever works best for you. Keep returning to the process of free journaling to help you discern what is true and important for you.
If you choose, you could turn your discoveries into a visual map or collection of three maps for each terrain, with words, images, paintings or prompts to remind you of what you discover in the Three Terrains. These could be drawings, paintings, photo clippings or even screenshots. The idea is to collect your ideas so you can return to them again. For example, you could include reminders about embracing the season you are in with images of autumn leaves dropping to the ground or tulips emerging from the earth. You can include photos of what currently inspires you, list three words encapsulating your personal values, or reminders of where you’d like to fine-tune your paintings.
That’s it!
You now have a personal Creative Map to guide you forward through your creative adventures ahead.
You have done the self reflection, blended with mindful awareness AND broken it down into practical ways to support yourself moving forward. You’ve listened to your heart and drafted what is true for you in this season of your life.
This is cause to acknowledge yourself and celebrate!
What to Do With Your Three Terrains Creative Map
You can simply close the cover of your journal or tuck your map away in a safe place and rest in the knowledge that simply by creating your map, you will have gleaned insights which will naturally flow into your creative journey ahead.
You may like to put your Creative Map up in your studio space or creative area to remind you of where you are and actions you’d like to take moving forward. Ideas you’d like to explore. Painting materials you’d like to try. Styles you want to experiment with. And reminders about what is currently inspiring you.
Keep it handy. It will help provide clarity next time you want to express your creativity, but you aren’t sure what to focus on. You can refer back to it to help guide, inspire and support you in your creative adventures in the days and weeks ahead.
Whatever you decide to do with your Creative Map, please use this process to build a loving relationship with yourself; one that is open to change, fluidity, adjustment and exploration. You are sovereign in your creative life, and you get to define success, or progress, on your own terms, in alignment with your values.
Today’s Small Steps:
Go through the Three Terrains of Your Creative Map exercise in this session. If you don’t have time right now, make it a priority sometime this week (this is a great exercise for your next Creative Date!)
Set yourself up for success and give yourself support as you do this process. Make it fun! Play music you love. Light a candle. Make your space beautiful. Have a dance before you begin. Ask yourself what would make the process more beautiful, meaningful, comfortable and enjoyable. Be kind to yourself.
Bonus points for every Inquisitive Pause you do during this process!
That’s all for today, Creative-Heart.
You’ve made it through all three phases of my creative living approach.
Hooray!
Stay tuned for the next session, where I’ll share hand-selected ‘bonus’ lessons to support you in your creative life. In some ways, these have nothing to do with creativity, and at the same time, they have everything to do with it.
With my warmest wishes,