Go for it – Dream big! No dream or aspiration is too crazy, as long as it rings true to you. However, you need to take some action to make it happen.
So here are 10 tips that you can use to start moving towards your dream, or when you need to pick yourself up if your motivation’s running a bit low. Once you get a little traction and begin to make some progress, then it’s easier to keep up the momentum.
In early April 2015, I went on a Play Adventure where each day for 30 days I ‘coloured in’ a mandala colouring page (that I had previously created).
Here are all thirty designs that I created out of that one mandala colouring page. I even surprised myself by how many different and unique results I could create out of such a seemingly simple outline.
This Play Adventure was rewarding in so many ways. I introduced more play and fun into my day. I got to express myself creatively. I learnt more about the creative process and what worked for me. It also got me thinking about creative inspiration, taking risks and how ideas can flow. I learnt so much! I captured my learning in the following blogs each week:
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Going on a mandala Play Adventure was rewarding in so many ways. I got to introduce more play and fun into my day. I got to express myself creatively. I learnt more about the creative process and what worked for me. But the biggest takeaway was learning about the importance of developing a creative habit or practice: doing something creative on a regular basis and making it a normal part of my everyday life.
In the first week of my mandala Play Adventure, I wrote about the practical tips that helped me make time to create my mandalas each day. In this blog, I want to share the secret behind making a creative habit.
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
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.
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.
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