This Is The Creative's Way
Get ready to gear up! We're knocking down that creatives to do list with a graceful mindset, new tools, a new form of beauty, and kick ass challenge.
Welcome to Create (Pop), a bi-weekly newsletter that provides fun, insightful, and useful tips to help you excel in your creative journey.
Grab your favorite snacks, bevs, and sword pens, and prepare to enjoy the journey!
Greetings everyone! I hope all is well :) We’re almost out of January and the New Year is officially underway. Can you believe it?!
I’m still working out the sticky parts of my life in 2024, but I’m also making leaps in my self and spiritual development. I’m committed to being more present, slowing down, and absorbing experiences. I’ve opened myself up to present opportunities and am through with letting toxic ways of thinking keep me from accessing the new gifts for me in this season.
It’s been a mindful practice that also has led me to open myself up to trying things that may not have worked in the past to assist me in my creative endeavors in the future.
One of these notions is allowing myself grace, and it’s been liberating.
Creative Mindshift: How Allowing Myself Grace Allowed Me To Find My Creative Groove
TAP, TAP! Excuse me while I turn up the mic and announce it’s okay to LOVE YOURSELF!
As creatives (and folks in general) we struggle with the notion of grace. We’ve heard it preached, shouted, hashtagged - all the things- but implementing it into our lives and using it to battle that negative thinking can feel useless.
Well, I’m here to say indeed, allowing yourself grace is liberating, and can be used as a battle axe to fight those vicious thoughts that tell you you aren’t going to make it, your work is not good enough inset toxic phrases about your work and self here.
My practicing grace has been like adding oil to the stuck gears in my mind that want me to feel like imposter syndrome, guilt, and anxiety will be my sole creative existence. Not so.
When you allow yourself grace you understand you accept every part of yourself and realize your messy parts aren’t curses against use, their rough spots that can be buffered out to make you better.
I’ve begun trusting myself more, confronting my perfectionism, and conserving my energy. *I recently took a creative challenge to assist me with this more and it was mind-blowing - but more on that below.
I understand there will be times when I excel at my to-do list and times when I don’t, and I trust that my desires will fall into place at the proper time.
I understand allowing yourself grace can take on many directions. It’s not an open-and-shut case. But as creatives, we must learn how to cut ourselves some slack.
Being able to forgive yourself, have acceptance and understanding of your faults, and route yourself back to what you know (and if you don’t know anything at the moment that’s okay too). You would be amazed at what flows from you, and the creative abundance you already carry. I’ll expand on this more in my blog but until then you can read more about giving yourself grace here.
On that topic, I don’t have a graceful new beauty tool to share because the beauty products I’ve recommended in newsletters back are working great. So I’m suggesting something new in this newsletter and I think you’ll like it!
It’s A Poetry Love Affair
Ahem, I have a confession to make. Poetry has sung its siren call to me and I have answered its beckoning call.
So instead of trying to write about a beauty product, I wanted to share a poem I came across by the late great poet William Stafford whose birthday was last week.
In essence, this piece is about ‘not overthinking it’, so rather you skim it, digest it, revel in it - however you receive it I hope it extends you the same clarity of mind it has me.
William Stafford “Thinking About Being Called Simple By A Critic”
“I wanted the plums, but I waited. The sun went down. The fire went out. With no lights on I waited. From the night again –– those words: How stupid I was. And I closed my eyes to listen. The words all sank down, deep and rich. I felt their truth and began to live them. They were mine to enjoy. Who but a friend could give so sternly what the sky feels for everyone but few learn to cherish? In the dark with the truth I began the sentence of my life and found it so simple there was no way back into qualifying my thoughts with irony or anything like that. I went to the fridge and opened it–– sure enough the light was on. I reached in and got the plums.” – William Stafford, ‘Thinking about being called simple by a critic’
FYI, this may be something I regularly adopt. If you enjoyed this, or have any poetic suggestions let me know!
For this issue’s strategy, I reached back in my bag with this one and it totally made way for something new.
Failed to render LaTeX expression — no expression found
The Pomodoro Technique I Use To Help Me Excel In Creativity
I’ve tried using the Pomodoro Technique multiple times in my creative career but to no avail.
If you're unfamiliar with the Pomodoro technique (named after a tomato…partially) you set a specific task to 25 minutes with 5-minute interval breaks.
Only knowing I had 25 minutes to complete my task felt like the stakes were raised against me. I was only aware of how fast the minutes were ticking against me. Instead of celebrating my 5-minute break, I felt irritable, rushed, and like I hadn’t gotten any credible work done.
I scrapped the entire idea feeling as if the Pomodoro Technique wasn’t for me. Then when I had a couple of short tasks I needed to complete quickly the idea occurred to me to try Pomodoro again.
I currently use ambiance videos when working, so when a Pomodoro ambience video was suggested to me I clicked it
Truly, I’ve been using the Pomodoro Technique for the entire month of January and am now a believer in its ability to help you get creative ish done!
It’s an incredible tool that will help you accomplish more but I had to learn how to make the Pomodoro Technique work for me.
Before I tried to cram every task of my day using the Pomodoro Technique and as some of my creative processes take longer than others it felt counterintuitive.
Now, that I understand the timing of my tasks I schedule which task will best work efficiently along with the technique, and work in creative blocks to help my creative processes flow efficiently to the technique.
This helps me organize my day efficiently, I know which tasks are best suited to what, and I accomplish more throughout my day.
I view the Pomodoro Technique as an asset and it has completely changed the game for me. If you are looking for something to help you focus a bit, even if it's just for 25 minutes I believe it can help you too. Linked is one of my favorite Pomodoro videos to use!
Speaking of techniques that helped me get creative ish done, I recently took a creative challenge that kicked my butt into gear. But, only in the best way!
I Took The Half-Ass Creative Challenge, It Changed My Life!
As I’m sure most of us have, I’ve taken a ton of free seminars, webinars, you name it all promising something. Instead, of receiving something productive, you get a long sales pitch about why you should sign up for their membership club, a bonus, and so on.
So when I saw Amber Petty’s Half Assed challenge I was intrigued. I was immediately bated by the words perfectionist and writing challenge and the tagline -
You write more, worry less, and tell that “it’s not GOOD ENOUGH!!!!” voice to F off for a second.
Uh…sign me up!
As we neared the date skepticism set in, but by the end of her challenge, I am proud to say I am a true believer!
The Half Ass challenge is a 3-day challenge - dare I say I wish it was longer - and makes you shed the perfectionism to get your creative project done. At the end of the three days, you walk away with the creative project you set out to complete.
The challenge is geared towards freelancing and pitching but I have also adopted the half-ass mindset to assist me in creative work including novel chapters, posts, content creation - you name it.
It’s effective and efficient because you focus on the heart of the creative instead of the need or expectation that it has to be perfect right out of the gate.
If you’re someone like me, who tries to edit rough drafts as I write them (yes I know better) the half-ass challenge was a God send. After the half-ass challenge, I create more enjoy more, and the finished product comes out 90% close to the ‘perfected’ version anyway.
And, you don’t have to stop at the half-assing part of your work. It can be a starting point or an endpoint. But that’s what so liberating - you get to choose.
Believe me, when I say, this half-ass challenge gave me a full-ass new way of being and thinking. While it has passed for this year, be sure to check out Amber’s site for the next session and everything else she has to offer. You won’t regret it!
Hope to see you there!
I hope you’ve enjoyed this newsletter and have walked away with a few things to help kick your creative in gear and complete that long to-do list of yours. Be sure to comment, like, share, and subscribe! See you next time :)
