How to Maintain Your Creative Spark
Inspiration can come at a whim. If you’re lucky, It can join you in the shower, at the gym, or on the beach. If you’re really lucky, it’ll find you when you need it.
Inspiration is always possible, although waiting for it can feel fickle and unpredictable. But if you want to conjure it on demand, hold onto that inspiration and stay motivated throughout your career and your life. THIS is where the real magic is.
Maintaining the spark of inspiration takes intention. It takes training and practice. The best way I know is to remember the energy we had as children when our play was a powerful tool. Armed with only our imagination, we could make up stories, new worlds, and even invisible friends. We can still have that—and even get paid for it—if we can cultivate the intentional habit of play.
Kids are play
Like many parents, I find inspiration in my children. I am curious about the constant level of freedom they allow themselves, and the freedom they take. Of course, at ages 4 and 6, their drawings, like all kids, are at a ‘Picasso’ level—but I particularly love their struggle to find vocabulary. For example, mine don’t fully understand the concept of time, so sometimes they say “last year” instead of “yesterday.” That kind of thinking and expression in the absence of full understanding helps me see the world in a different, brighter, and more colorful light.
I sit in constant amazement in kids’ ability to just ‘make shit up.’ They see unlimited possibilities of how machines work or why dogs bark. The simple truth about their constant flow of creative freedom is because, unlike you or me, they haven’t learnt the damn RULES.
Unlearning
As a society we have many rules. There are rules around every aspect of our lives: how we act, how we speak and dress—basically who we can be. Kids, on the other hand, make up their own rules. It’s how they learn where the boundaries are. They live in a constant world of play. Through repetition (if allowed) they develop the habit of play, this forms their sense of being and who they are and also gives them great joy.
But as kids begin the ‘schooling’ process and start to adapt to society, their sense of play is slowly taken out of them. They start learning all the rules that adults hold to. The structure and discipline they will “need” as adults is heaped upon them and their world of imaginative play is all but extinguished.
And THAT’S the problem: following the rules leads down a very narrow sphincter—not a creative path.
Rules are like barriers to maintain order so adults can ‘play nice.’ But, most of the rules are fairly arbitrary in nature and were quite frankly made up ages ago for situations and circumstances and conventions that no longer exist. Most rules are more like innocuous ‘suggestions’—until they begin to restrict our thinking and block our inspiration. This is when we begin to suffer.
My own gift of inspiration
Like all ‘adults’ I have duties and responsibilities and chores. I have to run a business, maintain my income, be a provider—and be a patient, giving father. This all adds a level of seriosity to my life and a degree of difficulty to my creativity. Play helps me balance that.
I am not special—I’m not more talented than you, or smarter, or born with gifts you don’t have. Like you, and my children, I was born weird and full of play. I acted out, told bad jokes, and I drew on everything. But now, I get paid for it. The reason my creativity has been celebrated and exhibited throughout my career is because I’ve never let go of that childlike freedom.
Like me, the spark YOU are looking for is inside of you—it always has been, Dorothy.
It’s the things that made you weird as a kid that make you great today. But we often forget this, so we follow the rules and give away our freedom too easily. We no longer make play a priority. We don’t understand its value, don’t fight for it, and don’t cherish it.
To maintain inspiration is to make play a daily practice until it becomes a habit, a part of who you are. When we allow that habit to build, we become a gushing fountain of creativity, and get back to the love of creating and expressing it in all parts of our lives.
