Is Your Heart Open For Business?

Seven Tips for Creative Self-expression

1. Engage in your creative work/play every day, even if it’s only for fifteen or twenty minutes.  Give yourself over to it. Have fun. Imagine, dare, and dream!

2. Create without an agenda. Do it for yourself. Ask not what your work can do for you; ask what you can do for your creative work/play.

3. Don’t argue with inner gremlins. These include any thoughts that deflate, discourage, or prevent you from acting on your creative impulses. If you write what your gremlins say in quotation marks and doodle pictures of them in your journal, you’ll release them (weakening their pull on you) and at the same time, you may also realize how off-course and ridiculous their fearful chatter is—which means you won’t identify with it or confuse what they say with the truth about who you are and what you’re capable of accomplishing.

4. Surround yourself with friends and mentors who support your creative work and life. Coaches are great—and I’m not saying that because I happen to be one. I work with a life coach and a writing coach, and their support, knowledge, and guidance has helped me accomplish more than I ever dreamed possible.

5. Appreciate and give thanks for what you’ve got here and now. Notice the love, wealth, beauty, and gifts that surround you.

6. Forget about what anybody else thinks of you or your work. Keep honing your craft. Become a master. Allow yourself to be transformed by your creative work. Open your heart as wide as you can—and then stretch it wider. Years ago I cut a heart out of red construction paper and on it, in bold letters, I wrote the words, “Open for Business.” Every day I went into my office to write, I’d see that heart and it gave me the courage I needed to sit my butt down in my chair and write.

7. Stay out of our own way. You are a channel. Let what needs to come through you do so with grace and ease. This requires faith and trust in the creative process—and in yourself. It is not your place to judge. It’s your “job” to create, which you do whether you are conscious of doing so or not. So why not create what your soul longs to bring into this world—for your good and for the good of everyone around you!

What is your soul longing to create? A book? A dance? A song? A poem? Whatever it is, I’d love to hear about it! Will you share your creative dream here? If not, write it down in a journal, on your laptop, or on a yellow legal pad. Putting your ideas into print helps you clarify and commit to them. Being clear about what you want to create, saying it out loud, and also sharing it with others is a powerful way to honor yourself and your dreams!