Every once in a while we all find ourselves falling into creative slumber. Nothing seems exiting enough and it feels like you have nothing else to offer to this world. This is exactly the time when you need to take a step back and think about your priorities and things that make your life happier. You can be positively creative only when you’re happy and to reach that level of joy and happiness you don’t need to dwell on the negative things that you cannot change, you have to live one day at a time, finding happiness in small things and dismissing the upsetting ones. Below we’ve collected over 20 ways to help you with unlocking your creativity and waking up from creative slumber.
- Take a risk
As Helen Keller once said: «Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all». Even if the idea you’re considering seems to be wild and unconventional – try to make it happen. It may turn out to be the greatest thing in your life and even if you fail – you won’t have any regrets that you haven’t tried it. You’ll have closure.
- Make small bets
If you have a large project, for example a platform to develop and design – it may seem like an unmanageable task and you’ll feel like throwing in the towel on this one. Take a few moments to think it over and divide the task in multiple sub tasks. Thus, you’ll be attacking one problem at a time and the inspiration will come once you see that at least some trivial tasks are accomplished.
- Question everything
Don’t ever take anyone’s word for something. You’re a unique human being, you’re entitled to a personal opinion on every subject. Use facts and your own vision to form an opinion on something. Don’t be afraid if your idea differs from all the others. It’s possible that your idea and opinion is the best and the most valid one and if you keep it to yourself you’ll deprive everyone else from the benefit of using it. In the worst case scenario people will simply hear you out and move on, but at the very least it will give you inspiration to learn more and broaden your horizon.
- Sometimes it’s worth to be a copycat
If you’re stuck and in desperate need of inspiration – always use the help of classics. Shakespeare’s poem or van Gogh painting may awaken creative genius in you. Who knows, maybe the inspiration gained from a “Starry Night” will help you design a website of an exceptional beauty.
- Ask people to provide feedback
Sometimes your ideas may seem irrelevant and obsolete to you, especially if you are under the pressure to come up with something before a deadline. Ask several people for their feedback on your ideas. It may very well be that one of your ideas if truly brilliant and you may not know it because everything seems grey for your exhausted mind.
- Get inspiration from geniuses
Despite the fact that many of us vigorously deny it – we all have people, who inspire us. We may admire their bravery, their mind or their kind heart. If you find yourself in a creative block and in dire need of motivation, think about the person you admire the most – what will he or she do in your shoes?
- Write it down
Our mind is a beautiful mechanism that is in perpetual process of ideas’ generation. Make a habit of writing your ideas down. Maybe a magnificent idea will come to you in your sleep and you will not lose it if you write it down immediately after you’ve woken up.
- Practice more
Remember that no man is born a professional in his domain – everyone tries hard and trains a lot to become one. It’s all about the practice, really. The more you practice and work on your skills – the more ideas will come to you and the more inspiration you’ll find for your work.
- Focus on something
No one can be a professional in everything, which is why it’s much more useful to concentrate your attention on one sphere and become an expert in it. If you dedicate all of your attention to a certain sphere, people will be coming to you for advice on it and you’ll quickly become inspired by the attention and your own success.
- Be open to opportunities
Never say never, you never know in what situation you may find yourself tomorrow. Maybe something that you’ve denied for a long period of time may be the answer to a new circumstances. Let yourself free and open to new things and possibilities. It will bring verdure in your life and will help you feel inspired again.
- Take time to daydream
Our imagination is our shelter and a magnificent place to escape when we’re feeling down. Maybe you will find new ideas to awaken your creativity in your happy place. Imagine yourself on a beach sunbathing and a new gorgeous outlook for designing a home page of the travel agency may pop into your mind just like that.
- Rest
Stress of our daily lives, overloaded with bad news, unpleasant people and quickly approaching deadlines may take its toll on our creativity. In order to get rid of all that – turn off your phone, take a relaxing shower and take a nice long sleep. You’ll feel refreshed and full of new ideas, especially if the sun will be up and smiling at you.
- Tap into the unknown
Always remember that each one of us is unique. Find inspiration in people of various occupations. What seems to be boring for you may turn out to be a great life journey for someone. Happy people find pleasure in small things and sometimes a story from an unassuming granny may push your thought on a thought train of imagining an entire life. Draw inspiration for your creativity from other people – it will broaden your horizon and will help you relate more to your audience.
- Talk to your friends
No man is an island, which is why hanging out with your friends may have a positive effect on your creativity. You’ll be able to share your fears and problems and find consolation and joy in kind words of your pals. Perhaps, they may even offer you some advice on lifting the block off of your creative genius.
- Take a walk outside
Walking and running helps cleaning your mind of all the unpleasant thoughts. Take a walk in the park or run a mile or two to get inspired. Autumn is a beautiful time of the year, colors alone will push you into creating something breathtakingly stunning.
- Learn to say yes to yourself and no to others
We all have friends and acquaintances that often ask us to do things for them that we don’t want to do. We feel ourselves in a situation when we want to say no, but cannot do it because we’ll feel even more uncomfortable talking to these people afterwards. Don’t be afraid to say no, because if you say yes every time they will be coming to you even more often and you feel yourself even more unhappy. Think about yourself for once and do what makes you happy, not what others try to dictate you.
- Achieve tranquility
It’s understandable that at this point of our societal development we are all under tremendous pressure to perform, accomplish and do everything at once and with a great speed. This may be the root problem of your creativity slumber. Take a day off, go to the park or country, have a picnic, stay silent and try to reconcile you your inner world. Unbeknownst to you, it may awaken you from within and give a fresh start to create.
- Stop being a perfectionist
Life is not perfect. You are not perfect. No one is. This is the reason we are different and beautiful, this is the reason we’re original and interesting for each other. We don’t live in an utopian world. We live in real one, where ugly is entwined with beautiful in amazingly unexpected ways. You will never reach satisfaction and pleasure in your work if you will try to make it perfect. Take a second to think that your work may be perfect to everyone else and you don’t see it just because you’re overthinking it and obsessing about things that matter to no one.
- Imagine your project as a timeline
Any project will be easier to accomplish if you distance yourself from it and start perceiving it as a download bar. Step by step your progress will be reflecting on the bar in your mind, which will provide hope and feeling of the accomplishment with the work that has already been done, even if it’s not considerable in comparison with the scale of the entire task.
- Prioritize
It’s very difficult, but has to be done. Sometimes, when you create something you consider every detail the important part of the project. However, it’s far from the truth. If you find it in you to look at the tasks objectively and dismiss the tasks of secondary importance – you will have less tasks left, but they will be more important and well defined. When you see the exact direction you need to go, you’ll find it easier to activate your creative genius.
- Start anew
If you think that you’ve done everything that can possibly be done and got the same feedback from other people. It’s time to start anew. Forget everything you’ve done or didn’t do up until now and try to find a completely different way to attack the problem. The thing is – your creativity slumber may be caused by the sheer amount of time, spent on dwelling on the obsolete concept that couldn’t be expanded. Starting from scratch will provide more options to use a creative and unknown approach to the issue, which may ultimately turn out to be the right one.
