It’s important to think about kindness in relationship to creativity because creativity thrives in a positive environment.
Already well into the New Year it’s time to insure the kindnesses surrounds your creativity. I’m not suggesting big resolutions, but making sweeping changes in the ways your kind to creativity. Imagine a year of kindness not another packed kind mess full of inner head monsters chipping away at sanity, inner critiques assessing work, saboteurs working to dissolve resolve. Myself, I don’t ever intend to be mean, but without the intention to not be mean, the vacuum that exists between the two polarities will fill, so this year I’ll fill it up before my nemesis’s get too busy.
This all sounds dreamy and easy, but I know it won’t be a breeze because changing a habit takes real commitment. My past experiences at habit rehab have sometime led me to believe I might benefit from being committed in another way. Things that sound simple usually are not.
There are these other darker parts of our beings that love the shadowy world of limbo. These are the bits that need taming. For the creative individual shadows echo creativity and therein exists the dance between making kindness or kind messes. In those cracks between what we believe we know and what we actually do is the spot we can mold something different with our behaviors.
Here are some examples of what I find works:
- Fill your mind with positive thoughts like “That was a great try!” “How can I do that to get different results next time?” “I bet I can get some great support from (name a good friend and call them).” “I am a great artist because I show up and work!” “If Renoir can die hoping to live long enough to paint a masterpiece, I’m most likely better than my inner critique thinks, too!”
- Recognize failure for what it is: a measurement of success. Count how many failures you actually had before each success. It’s not as many as you believe.
- Rather than focusing on failure, celebrate your successes because the things you did accomplish took a lot of effort, energy and sweat. Woohoo to your accomplishments!
- And remember that real change is tough to create.
Personally, this year I will still make more than a few messes, but I’ll view them with kindness.
Sandy Nelson is a contributing blogger for JenningsWire.
JenningsWire.com is created by National Publicity Firm, Annie Jennings PR that specializes in providing book marketing strategies to self-published and traditionally published authors. Annie Jennings PR books authors, speakers and experts on major top city radio talk shows that broadcast to the heart of the market, on local, regionally syndicated and national TV shows and on influential online media and in prestigious print magazines and newspapers.
