How does one stay creative? Feeling blaze and weary about your job, business or life in general is part of life. But then you see that neighbour with the biggest house on the street with that latest car every year, it can get you feeling down. And that begins your answer to this incredibly vexing problem you have. You come home and feel tired out of your mind every day. You always scream “thank god it’s Friday!” But that darn neighbour is just getting revved up and goes to those fancy out of town business meetings. What’s going on? You’re thinking by now you want to take whatever that guy’s on right? Well, short of taking a trip to visit one of China’s creative mountain resorts, you can. Here’s how you can stay creative all your life.
The Creative Fun Seeker
SanQing Shan. One of China's Most Revered contemplative places for creativity.
It’s not work. I’m having fun like a hobby! Deliberately seek out things to do that are fun. And I mean fun with the creative side of things. There’s something about creative fun that is exactly like a hobby of love. There is that child-like energy within all of us. One of the best ways to understand that is to observe a child who is engrossed in his hobby. His whole life is like a habit revolving around it.
Observe that child tending to his ant farm with all the love and care like he was the creator and the ants are the results of his love. He cares when a few die. He is elated when he sees the colony queen. In the weeks that go by, he feels proud when the colony gets bigger. He makes sure they have enough food. He makes sure they have enough building materials. He becomes their loving father. He constantly looks for more ways to enhance his colony. He reads, he meets with other collectors and becomes wiser and more creative.
Then one day, he creates several more colonies as they expand. Now, he even considers selling some of the colonies to get more capital to pay off his expenses and perhaps, one day, can he make a small business out of this? All this time, he was having so much fun Mum couldn’t get him to eat unless he fed them first. He felt like he’s leaving out his friends when he goes to the ball game with Dad because it was such wonderful place in the stadium.
OK, this is like a kid. But we all grow up. But just remember that the knowledge we love that we learn and take on as a child we grow up using it. As children, we have all done much creative thinking when anything can be a toy. It’s our imaginative creativity that makes a mundane rock to become the asteroid that might contain the special elements that gives us super-powers!
Stimulate Your Mind
What we think about life becomes an emotion and as it drags on, this emotion can become a powerful one that generates feelings. But which way are you using these natural powers? Are you doing the negative things you hate to have or are you dancing in joy every moment of the day?
Obviously some of us have already started on the journey of doing what we love best as a business. It’s easy to see that when we have so darn much fun. And yes, we’ll use up 24 hours of the day every day on the business if we can. But then there is family and that is fun too, so we come home to kiss and hug the misses or mister and swing the kids around for a minute or two. The opera or the ball game is always on the cards. That’s excellent quality time. But then they also know that there’s income generating which means some sort of ‘work’. The family understands and off you go on your merry way again.
Success is a given. You jump into the latest model limo and listen to your favourite but very worn cd about how you can make more money or become more effective in your company.
You decide to call a meeting for your mastermind group of magnificent minds because you feel pumped about a brand new idea. You know and fully trust that as you want, you’ll get the kind of feedback and expertise others pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to get. Now, that’s a mental high.
The results come in from your accountant and boy, you almost hit the roof! What better way to fulfil and spread that joy even further than to stir up more celebrations? You call your buddies and plan a weekend at your home for a party to celebrate. You call your honey to help to get the catering done and ask the children to expect the best weekend fun in a long time. Oh, and yes, you order in some quick lunch for the office personnel and tell them they did magnificently!
Then you come home again while planning what you might want to do for the next holiday and business project. Oh, and yes, of course you’ll wave and smile your best smile to that neighbour who’s been eyeing you lately like he’s about to have a coronary.
As you might start to understand it, remaining creative is a habit. It is being constantly stimulating and doing the things that are creative. All the while you are having fun while doing them all.
