Harnessing Your Characteristics for Creativity

Posted on May 12, 2016 by Natalia

A little while ago, I wrote a blog called Discover the Magic Formula to Creativity about finding a key to filter which creative tips and tools are right for you.

It all boils down to one thing: YOU.

For example:

Are you a morning person or a night owl?
Do you like to work in big blocks of time or in short bursts?
Do you like to get ‘hands on’ when you’re thinking?
Or do you need to see things written up first?

The more you understand yourself, your nature, work patterns, priorities, and habits, the easier it is to harness these qualities to bring more creativity into your work and life.

We’re also more likely to be creative when we’re relaxed and being ourselves.

Great! You might say. I understand that I’m a morning person who likes to get hands on in my projects and prefer to work in short bursts of activity. How’s that going to help me be more creative?

Continue reading →

Discover the magic formula to creativity

Posted on March 15, 2016 by Natalia

People often ask me for the secret to being more creative, whether it’s for their life or in business. Unfortunately, there’s no one magic formula for creativity that’s going to work for everyone. However, there is a key we can use to filter out which creativity techniques are going to bring us each success.

Continue reading →

DIY – How to create your own colouring page

Posted on September 10, 2015 by Natalia

Want to create your own colouring page? Read on to find out how.

Continue reading →

Creativity tips – Facing your creative fears – Insight from Week 3 of the Mandala Play Adventure

Posted on July 3, 2015 by Natalia

Here we are at Week 3 of my mandala play adventure!

After having such an experimental and rewarding time in Week 2, I began to face some creative blocks in this week. I was starting to feel scared that I wasn’t going to be as innovative or as exciting as I was the previous week.

The big insight that I came across this week related to facing my creative fears, taking risks and allowing myself to be vulnerable.

When I started this play adventure, the reason that I decided to post my completed image on Facebook was to create some form of accountability for myself. I really wanted to make sure that I would create a new mandala each day. And it definitely worked as a motivator for me, especially when I was feeling less than enthused, or had left it as the last thing on my ‘to do’ list for the day. (Luckily I always ended up enjoying it once I started.) So it was a positive, knowing that there were people that would see what I had created at the end of the day.

But, it was also scary to think that there were going to be people who would see what I’d created at the end of the day. What if the mandala isn’t any good? What if people don’t like it? What if it gets boring? What if people dislike my mandalas so much that they ‘de-friend’ me? and so it goes… Continue reading →

Creativity tips – How limits can be good for your creativity – insights learnt from Week 2 of my Play Adventure

Posted on June 25, 2015 by Natalia

Wow! It’s hard to believe how fast I hit the week two mark of my mandala Play Adventure (you can see how it all started here). This week I really tested the limits of what I could do through this exercise in terms of ‘colouring in’ a mandala every day.

This week’s mandalas were very different from what I created in week 1. I purposely didn’t try to colour within the lines. But I also tried to remain respectful of the original mandala form within the mandala colouring page. Needless to say, it created an interesting tension and dynamic between following the rules and wanting to break out of them.

So my key insight from this week related to the value of self-imposed limits in sparking creativity.

At face value, one might think that the opposite was true – that rules and limits would be counterproductive to creativity. But I think that it relates to the nature of the task and its timing. Continue reading →