This immense desire to create, to express, to share what’s bubbling inside of you. It’s becoming more clear to me how creating is not a choice – it’s a need.
Creativity and arts are often considered as something reserved only for the chosen ones. For the privileged few, who were born with mad artistic talents. Yet, with every new creative endeavor, it becomes clearer to me how creativity can’t be tied only to the conservative definition of ‘that which you can be hanged on a gallery wall, performed in a theatre, or played in a music hall.’
The more I explore and understand my own creativity, the more I notice those same desires, qualities, and a need to create in others. However, with our beliefs about who has the rights to pursue creative expression, more often than not, we decide it’s not us. We decide we’re not talented and worthy of exploring our interests and passions. We decide it’s not us who has something of value to offer.
Creative process vs final result
We put way too much focus on the final result of creative processes. The real magic happens in the background. The true value of creativity is hidden in the process itself, not the final result.
Creativity is so powerful because of the interaction between the individual and the process at hand. It’s about the state a creative process puts you in. It’s about what it does to you, how it eliminates the perception of time, and alchemizes all your experiences and pain into fuel for your art, or they simply cease to be.
It’s about allowing the inner voice which is a sum of all your experiences, gifts, and intuition to come forward and manifest itself into something.
It’s about that deep sense of belonging that entangles your being. In those moments, everything makes sense. Pain somehow becomes comfortable. A broken heart somehow becomes the most wonderful thing you’ve ever experienced. A life of loneliness and misunderstanding becomes a means through which you can offer comfort and valuable insights to those in need.
Quality is found in You
We so often search for the ways to deepen our work and enrich it with quality by looking all around us. But as with everything, the key is always found within us.
The way we approach the process defines the quality of our finished work. When we create from a place of authentic expression, vulnerability, and honesty, the fruits of our creative work will inevitably be rich with quality.
That is the key to creating something that resonates with people. Skill and craft are only a tool with which we mould our message and insight. But the building material, the fundamentals of quality, is your authentic and unique voice.
We are all the same in our needs, desires, pains, and struggles. It’s never a question of whether or not you have something valuable to offer; it’s only about how much of the real you – your needs and struggles – is out there in your work. Do you create what you think you should, or do you create what so naturally comes to you?
You know how you feel so passionate to talk, write, or work with that specific thing? How you always feels a certain spark, different from all others, when you face that certain type of photography, music, light, emotion? That’s where you need to go. That’s what you need to explore. That’s the place that has something to offer to you. Otherwise, why would the universe waste all that energy to keep pulling you towards it?
You don’t have to search for your medium for creative expression – you are naturally gravitating towards it. We just need to get out of our own way, and see where the journey takes us. There lies the trick for creating good art – doing what you feel called to do, and not what trends dictate.
Creative expression can be directed into literally anything. Creative work is not defined by whether or not it can fit into an art gallery. It’s about feeling the passion for something, surrendering to it, and being open to see where it leads you.
The release of creative energy is vital for our health
It may seem like that, but the goal is not just to have a new book in front of you, a new photograph, or anything else. The real purpose is the impact creative endeavor has on you.
The release of creative energy accumulated inside of you is essential for your health like breathing. Just like any energy in this universe, it has to move and circulate, transforming from one physical manifestation into another. It needs to circulate in order to be healthy and nourishing. That is precisely why people who’ve been neglecting their own needs, including creative expression, are often seen aging too soon, have depleted vitality, or even develop diseases. If not used, creative energy becomes destructive.
Your voice needs to be out there
But it goes deeper than that. There is another dimension to it.
Creative expression is about allowing the voice of your essence to come through all the barriers of your skin and bones, language and achievements, of the known and certain. It’s about transforming your way of being from a clinical to emotional and purpose-driven state of living.
By allowing your voice to live somewhere else other than your head, you show it how it’s valuable, worthy, and powerful. You prove to yourself that you are valuable, worthy, and powerful. How there is a place and purpose for you in this world. And it’s a beautiful one, because there’s meaning in it.
Go beyond
Think outside the box, bend your reality, and find yourself discovering new worlds. Prove to yourself, again and again, of the trivialities and limitations of your mind, and the endless possibilities available all around us, at all times.
The road is not clear from where you stand right now. But there are signs all along it. The signs are all those things you see, read, and hear, people you meet, and opportunities you get, that make your heart beat faster, and your eyes open wider.
Look through your fear. See it for what it is. Bend your known reality and shape a new one. Even better, let the unknown mold you into whoever you need to become.
There is no greater liberation, but to choose to do what’s right for you. To let your heart guide you straight into free expression. An honest and vulnerable creative expression is nothing else but freedom in motion.
It’s not just a little photograph. It’s not just a silly litle blog post. It’s not just a quick little jam.
It’s the blueprint of your soul. It’s your magic. It’s you.
It’s a breath full of oxygen for your soul. An inhale of vitality poured straight into your spinal cord.
Truth breeds more truth. Create honestly and vulnerably, and you’ll see yourself come alive. You’ll find yourself on a path filled with those who search for and desire the same things.
So today, write your words how they want to flow. Capture and edit your photos how it pleases your own eyes. Play your strings with your fingers, not your mind. Mix your colors and lines how your canvas never felt before.
Go beyond your fear. Go beyond your mind.
‘Do not leave this world with you song still inside you.’
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