Creative Pathways - How To Find And Follow The Creative Pathways Right For You
We all have a series of pathways running throughout our lives.
Each time we have a choice to make, whether it’s what to eat for breakfast, which house to live in or anything else, we’re in effect making a decision to take one pathway over another.
Sometimes when we’re in the midst of these kind of decision moments it’s difficult to keep everything in perspective and not get overwhelmed. OK so that’s not likely to happen so much at the breakfast table, we’re talking here about the larger decisions.
When we look back over our lives so far, we can see the pathways we’ve taken with much more clarity.
Choices we’ve made that may have surprised us at the time, turn out to lead to great opportunities we may not have come to otherwise. And choices you may have thought were easy options at the time turned out to be anything but.
So how does this relate to your creativity?
Well, the creative pathways you’ve taken have led you to where you are today as a creative person. If you’re not aware of the pathways you’ve taken, you can’t know which directions to head in from now on.
Use this simple exercise to find YOUR creative pathways.
- Take a large sheet of paper, preferably one that’s long but narrow. This is going to chart the story of your travels along your creative pathways.
- With the paper turned so it’s wider than it is high, mark a point on the far left to represent your birth, and write the date below.
- Let’s assume you’re going to live to a healthy 100+ years, so at the far right end of the paper, mark your 100th birthday. Then draw a horizontal line between these two points and mark every 5 years along the way.
- Now, mark on your creative pathway storyline the key landmarks and turning points in your creative life.
Here are some questions you might want to use to find these turning points:
When is the first time you remember creating?
When was the first time you knew you just had to create, it was an irrepressible urge within you?
When was the first time you were proud of something you’d created?
Think too about the crucial conversations and events that have opened a doorway and set you off down a completely new creative path.
Who have been the most influential people on your creative pathways, either those you’ve met or those whose work you’ve admired and been inspired by? Mark the first time you came across them on your storyline.
Take your time and return to your storyline as many times as you need to, it’s an ongoing work in progress.
What this exercise allows you to do is see the crucial turning points in your creative life, and also the themes that have run through it.
And there will probably be themes that influence your work and direction today that run way back to your early teens or younger.
We all have threads that run through our lives, these themes we keep getting drawn back to. Through doing this exercise you can find yours more clearly. As well as giving you more understanding about where you are today, it will also allow you to see the themes most important to you to carry on into the future.
Only you can determine where your creativity storyline will go next…
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Tags: creativity, creativity coach, creativity exercise, increase creativity, unleash your creativity
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