Boost Your Creative Flow
Photo by Tim Mossholder
Creative flow is the feeling of being “in the zone.” This is a magical place where your skill is at its full potential and you cannot be stopped. That sense of balance between mind and body, present, past and future all working in perfect harmony of creation. You feel fully in the present moment, motivated, in full focus and enjoying ever moment of it. I know you know the feeling.
The only problem with this flow is that it comes and goes. Just like money. So, I went out to explore if there was a way to harness this feeling. Turns out, there is a whole body of research on the subject and it’s coming from, at a first glance an unlikely source, neuroscience. Neuroscientists are able to observe this state of creative flow and analyze the slew of chemical reactions that are happening within our bodies during this heightened state of mind. To make long story short – yes, you can actually harness this feeling.
Yup, you heard it correctly – the best way to build your creative mind and harness the feeling of being in the flow is to practice it daily. So, start rewiring your brain and bottle-up that unstoppable feeling with these habits starting today.
Look Around
Slow down and pay attention. Being aware and being in the moment helps us absorb everything around us and notice things we didn’t see there before. It’s easy to become distracted but try and pay attention and find beauty in everything. See tiny details, focus on the pattern, look how seemingly disparate things connect to one another and how it is all connected.
Get Moving
Get up – go for a walk and get your body moving and your blood flowing. Numerous studies have shown that getting blood-flow to your brain boosts creativity. Fresh air brings fresh inspiration. There are also 7 minute workouts, all backed-up by science, that you can incorporate into your day, every day to great results – no excuses.
Let It Go
Let go of perfection and your need to control the outcome. Perfection is the enemy. Embrace the unknown, be open to opportunities and unexpected inspiration. Sometimes when we let our intuition drive – ideas evolve spontaneously and magic things happen.
Mix It Up
Change your environment, play music, or work in complete silence. Fill your working space with things that inspire you, things that are interesting, or beautiful. Change materials, pick a different or unconventional tool, paint with your non-dominant hand.
Constraints vs Freedom
The best inventions and creative ideas can come from both ends of the spectrum: liberation and restraint. If you’ve been extremely reserved with your brush strokes or are in a comfortable place of doing the same thing over and over again – give yourself permission to try something new, go wild with your brush strokes or color palette, pursue things that make you happy and try to please nobody but yourself.
On the other hand, sometimes living with constraints, even fictional ones – challenge our brains and our creativity. Numerous studies in both business and entrepreneurship prove that constraints can produce better results than no constraints. Try to put constraints on your work, limit yourself to using only one color palette, try painting with only one type of brush, put a time-limit to your creative session, choose a different canvas size…options are endless.
Meditate & Daydream
Daydreaming or mind wandering is the process where we allow our mind to go in a direction completely unrelated to your current problem and it has been proven to help with creativity. However, turns out that daydreaming helps ONLY after you put some hours on the current project.
Meditation is also a good way to boost your creativity and get in the flow. But not just any type of meditation will work. I don’t know about you but when I first tried traditional meditation where I was instructed to sit quietly for 20 minutes and try to empty my mind – my mind doubled the speed of thinking and would not shut up for 10 seconds. Extremely frustrating. Then I found out about ‘focused meditation’ and it worked. This type of meditation uses your active mind more productively while still getting you into that Alpha relaxed state. Think of this as attentive daydreaming or focused or open-monitoring meditation. With this type of meditation, you would allow yourself to simply observe your thoughts, emotions, body sensations and external stimuli like sights, sounds and smells. Then you would describe them without any judgment or conceptual analysis. According to studies, practicing this daily not only improves your working memory but also increases your cognitive flexibility and reduces your cognitive rigidity which is crucial in the creative process.
Here are few guided meditations that can help you try this out right now:
Pencil It In
What is different between highly successful people and the rest of us? Successful people have daily habits and they make schedules. They schedule time to read, time to learn, to work, to play, and to exercise. Or think of it a different way. Remember when you had to write papers in college and you would experience ‘creative block’ right until the night before it was due? Yes, I remember it too – nothing gets your creative juices flowing like an upcoming deadline. So, create your own deadlines.
You can’t count on motivation but when you schedule time to work on your art – you can count on continuous progress. Schedule time to do your art, schedule breaks, schedule time to read, schedule everything! Several people have tried running on the schedule and they found that it helped them in many ways – not only did it make them produce more work on a consistent basis but also helped relieve some of the pressure and guilt.
Here are few how-to articles to help you with this
And few books that just might change your life:
Be Grateful
Practice gratitude. And I am not only talking about listing all the things that you are grateful for. I am talking truly taking time to appreciate yourself. Take time and simply marvel at your own creativity and your ability to create something wonderful where only a moment ago nothing existed. Your art and your voice matters so just keep creating.
Let us know how these work for you and share your own creative flow boost hacks below.