Creativity Therapy Part 3

The Therapy

Have you explored your inner depths since my last post?  Have you found something that is uniquely you?

For me it's taking pictures, making art, the process of creativity.

Once I learned some basic techniques like composition, lighting, and seeing in two dimension, I was unstoppable.  In those days we had only film and manual operating cameras!  You had to have a pretty good idea what your image would look like before you shot off 36 frames and paid money to have them developed.  I of course wanted the whole experience, so I took a class and learned the darkroom techniques for black and white so I could develop and print my own work. 

This was addictive for me, I was definitely hooked.  Any challenge I was facing in my life would disappear in the darkroom.  Later this same experience would recreate itself in the post editing process on the computer.

I'm pretty sure this feeling of getting lost in your creativity has the same effect as meditating.  If you take your mind off your problems and immerse yourself in something you love, somehow things just work out.  Not to say that ignoring them is the answer either, but for me it's a way of letting the real answers come with greater clarity.

Recently I started an Instagram account and have challenged myself to an almost daily search for interesting things to photograph, the magic pill so to speak, that steers me to a healthier mindset.  There is great power in challenging yourself to new things too, don't underestimate that form of  therapy.

If you've ever lost yourself in anything, that's a clue to your inner being, the part of you that's trying to express itself, your soul perhaps, because it knows what you need to thrive.  Listen to that and that's all the therapy you'll ever need.

I welcome your comments about your own journey.

Creativity Therapy Part 2

Finding Ourselves

I don't know your story, only mine, and I'm not a certified therapist, so this won't be about me giving you advice.  Instead, I will share my own experience over the years.

I think it takes a long time for some of us to "find ourselves", to really know ourselves.  For me it was over 50 because all those years before that I was looking after other people, trying to keep up with societal demands, i.e.; working to keep food on the table, raising a son alone and trying to please an unhappy parent.  

Through it all, however, the creativity was always there.  It's been with me since birth.  I just saw things differently than others, I was pretty sure I was the weird one early on.

I was a sickly kid.  I had a congenital kidney stricture that was not diagnosed until I was 13 years old, so I was sick in bed, a lot.  I had to find things to do while laying in bed.  We didn't have a TV, so I read, learned macrame and wrote poetry, among other things.

Later I got a camera and began taking pictures as a way of expressing myself, frustrated at not being able to draw.  

Photography stayed with me over the years, and is still a driving creative force within me today.

So I think you have to look back over your life, evaluate where you were, what you did, and mostly what you loved doing.

I'd like to think that that thing we're here to do has been with us all along, maybe we just don't know it until we really dig deep inside ourselves.

Another key element in finding ourselves - and again, I express this from my own experience - is to not look at your outer environment, the outer world, for clues, because that's a trap.  The world sucks you in with shiny new things you should buy, expensive educations they sold us, and glamorous looking people they told you you should be.

Strip all that away and that's the real you, the one you are when nobody's looking.

Up next, Part 3, The Therapy.

Creativity Therapy Part 1

Introduction:  My Story

In reading articles and watching leading videos on self improvement I have gained priceless tools for working through my own challenges.

They all say "find the thing that is uniquely you and do that", or "follow your dream".  

Recently I enjoyed Anita Moorjani's video about who we would be if no one was watching.  This lead me into deep reflection of my life, emerging with a sense of gratitude that I am indeed being authentically me, without apology.

I believe this is where we have to start, by first finding ourselves, claiming it and then expressing it.  A tall order for most of us.

For me, creativity in general has been the therapeutic vehicle through anything challenging in my life.  When I am creating, I am not "thinking" about anything else because I'm in a zone, which is much deeper than a thought process.  If I do get stuck on something I stop, meditate, do nothing or just do something mindless until it eventually comes to me what to do next.

When I'm working on a project it is like therapy, taking my mind off any challenges I may be facing.

Resilience plays a huge roll too.  I think I am by nature, resilient.  Perhaps from a lifetime of uncontrollable circumstances.  However I got that way I'm grateful, because this is therapeutic in itself.  It's the way "through" anything.  To let go of the unknown, breathe and just allow things to unfold, is a gift.  Perhaps it's like faith.

So what I want to do in this little three part mini blog series, is to explore creativity as therapy.  To ask ourselves some honest questions about who we are now and who we really want to be.  

To find our own unique calling means to open up and let go of who we (or someone else) thought we should be, at any age.  To let go of the judgement and shame that may have been within us for a lifetime.

Some of this wisdom has come to me through reading and watching Brendon Burchard's material.  He puts such an authentic and meaningful spin on rediscovering ourselves.  My breakthrough was to fully embrace myself as a creative being.

I believe that any creative endeavor can help us through challenges and I hope you'll tune in for part 2 and 3, Finding Ourselves and applying The Therapy.