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How to Unlock Creativity

Untold story of a Artist - A narration !!! 

I have always wanted to be an artist.

I deeply admired the lives of the painters, the writers, the firestarters, the life wranglers. I longed to be one of them.

I longed to fiercely create, to share my voice boldly, just like they did.

However, for most of my life, I never felt creative.

Authenticity is the daily practice of letting go of who we think we’re supposed to be and embracing who we are.~Brené Brown

I remained behind the scenes, insecure in my voice and expression, disempowered. I looked longingly at the ones who shared themselves freely — the ones that created art, who were improvisational, messily graceful and who loved wildly.

Over the years, I dabbled in painting, fashion design, culinary arts, sculpture, collage and writing.

Yet, I never felt like I had what others had. I never felt like I was living a creative life; I often felt like an imposter.

I studied; I took classes, watched webinars and read books. But no matter what I did, the light and energy that comes from being in the creative zone never seemed to come through as I saw it come out of others.

Being creative felt like work.  

Identifying as a Creator

However, for me, the one thing that didn’t feel like work was journaling.

It was the outlet I turned to in both my most joyful and darkest hours. One night when I had my journal out, I was reflecting on the longing for an artistic form that was my own — I realized I had one.

I was creating with words, even though I struggled to see it.

Yet I fought owning writing as my creative practice because all the other mediums seemed shinier.

There was part of me that knew if I did own being a writer, I would more concretely touch into the creative process.

This was exciting and scary. It felt vulnerable and alive.

Living a Creative Life

I kept writing more consciously. I made it a practice.

Through writing, I began to address what it meant to live a creative life.

For me it meant to see beauty, pattern, life-force, connectivity and spirit in the world around me.

It meant to live with an open heart — at our core we are love and abundantly creative.

The creative life is not about the art we physically create but about perspective.

I began to feel deeply that finding my creative voice and power was about shifting my energy and perspective.

The Power Within

It meant going inward and feeling the creative, alive energy that makes art shine, that makes the artist feel empowered and alive.

This was the piece I was originally missing — I had been looking externally to tap into a creative life. When in reality, it was inside me all along.

To live a creative life we have to recognize the power within.

I realize now the more we look inward, the more we see our innate beauty and creativity. When we see ourselves with love, curiosity and wonder, the more we begin to express that love and expression outwards.

We shine brighter.

We express ourselves authentically and vibrantly.

The more we find love in ourselves, the more we can bring art, beauty and inspiration to the world.

How to Express Yourself with Authenticity

• See yourself for what you are. Notice where you are creative in your life. Maybe you notice the amazing images that come spontaneously from your depths while you sleep. Or a doodle that you scribbled on a napkin. Or maybe it is a flowing letter that gives style to a simple to-do list.

• Honor your creative self. When you notice it, spend a little time in this witnessing place. Honor it with your attention, your love and allow it to be nurtured and grow.

• Improvise. Speak your truth, your beauty and light through whatever movement comes to you. Connect to your creative energy and allow that to direct how it should be expressed. Maybe you hum a song, maybe you write in your journal, maybe you create a beautiful meal or poem.  Allow it to come to form with ease.

• Find your constant. What is the form that you keep going back to and that feels natural to you? For me it was journaling. Maybe it is something you just know in your gut or something that you imagine doing but haven’t dabbled in it yet. I believe we are all given creative gifts. Love the one that is yours. Allow it to lovingly hold your voice.

The more we go inward and express ourselves from that internal, in the depth , the more we shine with confidence, creativity and light. Honor your innate creativity. It is already in you; the world needs exactly who you are.

APJ - short story

"When I was a kid, my Mom cooked food for us.
One night in particular when she had made dinner after a long hard day's work, Mom placed a plate of 'subzi' and extremely burnt roti in front of my Dad.

I was waiting to see if anyone noticed the burnt roti. But Dad just ate his roti and asked me how was my day at school.

I don't remember what I told him that night, but I do remember I heard Mom apologizing to Dad for the burnt roti.

And I'll never forget what he said: "Honey, I love burnt roti."

Later that night, I went to kiss Daddy, good night & I asked him if he really liked his roti burnt. He wrapped me in his arms & said:
"Your momma put in a long hard day at work today and she was really tired. And besides... A burnt roti never hurts anyone but HARSH WORDS DO!"
"You know beta - life is full of imperfect things... & imperfect people..."

I'M NOT THE BEST & AM HARDLY GOOD AT ANYTHING!
I forget birthdays & anniversaries just like everyone else.
What I've learnt over the years is: To Accept Each Others Faults & Choose To Celebrate Relationships"

Life Is Too Short To Wake Up With Regrets..

Love the people who treat you right & have compassion for the ones who don't

Time to live

Magic Account - Banking

Imagine there is a bank, which credits your account each morning with Rs. 86,400,
carries over no balance from day to day, allows you to keep no cash balance, and every evening cancels whatever part of the amount you had failed to use during the day.
What would you do? Draw out every pence, of course!
Well, everyone has such a bank. Its name is Time.

Every morning, it credits you with 86,400 seconds.
Every night it writes off, as lost, whatever of this you have failed to invest to good purpose.
It carries over no balance.
It allows no overdraft.
Each day it opens a new account for you.
Each night it burns the records of the day.
If you fail to use the day's deposits, the loss is yours.
There is no going back. There is no drawing against the "tomorrow."

Therefore, there is never not enough time or too much time.
Time management is decided by us alone and nobody else.
It is never the case of us not having enough time to do things, but the case of whether we want to do it.

Dealing with difficult people !!!

Can you recall the last time you had to deal with a negative or difficult person? Or the last time someone said something with the intention of hurting you? How did you handle it? What was the result? What can you do in the future to get through these situations with peace and grace?

No matter where we go, we will face people who are negative, people who oppose our ideas, people who piss us off or people who simply do not like us. There are 6.4 billion people out there and conflict is a fact of life. This fact isn’t the cause of conflict but it is the trigger to our emotions and our emotions are what drive us back to our most basic survival instinct; react and attack back to defend ourselves.

In these instinctual moments, we may lose track of our higher selves and become the human animal with an urge to protect ourselves when attacked. This too is natural. However, we are the only animal blessed with intelligence and having the ability to control our responses. So how can we do that?

I regularly get asked “How do you deal with the negative comments about your articles? They are brutal. I don’t think I could handle them.” My answer is simple, “I don’t let it bother me to begin with.” It wasn’t always this simple, and took me some time before overcoming this natural urgency to protect myself and attack back.

I know it’s not easy, if it was easy, there wouldn’t be difficult or negative people to begin with.

Why Bother Controlling Our Responses?

1. Hurting Ourselves

One of my favorite sayings is “Holding a grudge against someone is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.” The only person we hurt is ourselves. When we react to negativity, we are disturbing our inner space and mentally creating pain within ourselves.

2. It’s Not About You, It’s About Them

I’ve learned that when people initiate negativity, it is a reflection of their inner state expressed externally and you just happen to be in front of that expression. It’s not personal, so why do we take it personally? In short: Because our ego likes problems and conflict. People are often so bored and unhappy with their own lives that they want to take others down with them.

There have been many times when a random person has left a purposefully hurtful comment on TSN, and regularly checked back to see if anyone else responded to their comment, waiting eagerly to respond with more negativity.

3. Battle of the Ego

When we respond impulsively, it is a natural and honest response. However, is it the smart thing to do? What can be resolved by doing so? The answer: Nothing. It does however feed our ego’s need for conflict.

Have you noticed that when we fight back, it feels really satisfying in our heads? But it doesn’t feel very good in our soul? Our stomach becomes tight, and we start having violent thoughts?

When we do respond irrationally, it turns the conversation from a one-sided negative expression into a battle of two egos. It becomes an unnecessary and unproductive battle for Who is Right?

4. Anger Feeds Anger. Negativity Feeds Negativity.

Rarely can any good come out of reacting against someone who is in a negative state. It will only trigger anger and an additional reactive response from that person. If we do respond impulsively, we’ll have invested energy in the defending of ourselves and we’ll feel more psychologically compelled to defend ourselves going forward.

Have you noticed that the angrier our thoughts become, the angrier we become? It’s a negative downward spiral.

5. Waste of Energy

Where attention goes, energy flows. What we focus on tends to expand itself. Since we can only focus on one thing at a time, energy spent on negativity is energy that could have been spent on our personal wellbeing.

6. Negativity Spreads

I’ve found that once I allow negativity in one area of my life, it starts to subtly bleed into other areas as well. When we are in a negative state or holding a grudge against someone, we don’t feel very good. We carry that energy with us as we go about our day. When we don’t feel very good, we lose sight of clarity and may react unconsciously to matters in other areas of our lives, unnecessarily.

7. Freedom of Speech

People are as entitled to their opinions as you are. Allow them to express how they feel and let it be. Remember that it’s all relative and a matter of perspective. What we consider positive can be perceived by another as negative. When we react, it becomes me-versus-you, who is right?

Some people may have a less than eloquent way of expressing themselves – it may even be offensive, but they are still entitled to do so. They have the right to express their own opinions and we have the right and will power to choose our responses. We can choose peace or we can choose conflict.

15 Tips for Dealing with Difficult People

While I’ve had a lot of practice dealing with negativity, it is something I find myself having to actively work on. When I’m caught off guard and end up resorting to a defensive position, the result rarely turns out well.

The point is, we are humans after all, and we have emotions and egos. However, by keeping our egos in-check and inserting emotional intelligence, we’ll not only be doing a favor for our health and mental space, but we’ll also have intercepted a situation that would have gone bad, unnecessarily.

PHOTO BY KARA PECKNOLD

Here are some tips for dealing with a difficult person or negative message:

1. Forgive

What would the Dali Lama do if he was in the situation? He would most likely forgive. Remember that at our very core, we are good, but our judgment becomes clouded and we may say hurtful things. Ask yourself, “What is it about this situation or person that I can seek to understand and forgive?”

2. Wait it Out

Sometimes I feel compelled to instantly send an email defending myself. I’ve learned that emotionally charged emails never get us the result we want; they only add oil to the fire. What is helpful is inserting time to allow ourselves to cool off. You can write the emotionally charged email to the person, just don’t send it off. Wait until you’ve cooled off before responding, if you choose to respond at all.

3. “Does it really matter if I am right?“

Sometimes we respond with the intention of defending the side we took a position on. If you find yourself arguing for the sake of being right, ask “Does it matter if I am right?” If yes, then ask “Why do I need to be right? What will I gain?”

4. Don’t Respond

Many times when a person initiates a negative message or difficult attitude, they are trying to trigger a response from you. When we react, we are actually giving them what they want. Let’s stop the cycle of negative snowballing and sell them short on what they’re looking for; don’t bother responding.

5. Stop Talking About It

When you have a problem or a conflict in your life, don’t you find that people just love talking about it? We end up repeating the story to anyone who’ll listen. We express how much we hate the situation or person. What we fail to recognize in these moments is that the more we talk about something, the more of that thing we’ll notice.

Example, the more we talk about how much we dislike a person, the more hate we will feel towards them and the more we’ll notice things about them that we dislike. Stop giving it energy, stop thinking about it, and stop talking about it. Do your best to not repeat the story to others.

6. Be In Their Shoes

As cliché as this may sound, we tend to forget that we become blind-sided in the situation. Try putting yourself in their position and consider how you may have hurt their feelings. This understanding will give you a new perspective on becoming rational again, and may help you develop compassion for the other person.

7. Look for the Lessons

No situation is ever lost if we can take away from it some lessons that will help us grow and become a better person. Regardless of how negative a scenario may appear, there is always a hidden gift in the form of a lesson. Find the lesson(s).

8. Choose to Eliminate Negative People In Your Life

Negative people can be a source of energy drain. And deeply unhappy people will want to bring you down emotionally, so that they are not down there alone. Be aware of this. Unless you have a lot of time on your hands and do not mind the energy drain, I recommend that you cut them off from your life.

Cut them out by avoiding interactions with them as much as possible. Remember that you have the choice to commit to being surrounded by people who have the qualities you admire: optimistic, positive, peaceful and encouraging people. As Kathy Sierra said, “Be around the change you want to see in the world.”

9. Become the Observer

When we practice becoming the observer of our feelings, our thoughts and the situation, we separate ourselves away from the emotions. Instead of identifying with the emotions and letting them consume us, we observe them with clarity and detachment. When you find yourself identifying with emotions and thoughts, bring your focus on your breathe.

10. Go for a Run

… or a swim, or some other workout. Physical exercise can help to release the negative and excess energy in us. Use exercise as a tool to clear your mind and release built up negative energy.

11. Worst Case Scenario

Ask yourself two questions,

“If I do not respond, what is the worst thing that can result from it?““If I do respond, what is the worst thing that can result from it?“

Answering these questions often adds perspectives to the situation, and you’ll realize that nothing good will come out of reacting. Your energy will be wasted, and your inner space disturbed.

12. Avoid Heated Discussions

When we’re emotionally charged, we are so much in our heads that we argue out of an impulse to be right, to defend ourselves, for the sake of our egos. Rationality and resolution can rarely arise out of these discussions. If a discussion is necessary, wait until everyone has cooled off before diving into one.

13. Most Important

List out things in your life most important to you. Then ask yourself, “Will a reaction to this person contribute to the things that matter most to me?”

14. Pour Honey

This doesn’t always work, but sometimes catches people off guard when they’re trying to “Pour Poison” on you. Compliment the other person for something they did well, tell them you’ve learned something new through interacting with them, and maybe offer to become friends. Remember to be genuine. You might have to dig deep to find something that you appreciate about this person.

15. Express It

Take out some scrap paper and dump all the random and negative thoughts out of you by writing freely without editing. Continue to do so until you have nothing else to say. Now, roll the paper up into a ball, close your eyes and visualize that all the negative energy is now inside that paper ball. Toss the paper ball in the trash. Let it go!

** How do you deal with difficult people? What has worked well for you in the past? How do you cool down when you’re all fired up and angry? Share your thoughts in the comments. See you there!