Spark Your Creativity & Find Clarity with These Three Powerful Tools
We all find ourselves stuck from time to time.
Stuckness plays an important role in providing us with vital information about our lives. It’s our body-mind-heart’s way of communicating with us that something in our life needs our attention.
In fact, while it’s a deeply uncomfortable and bewildering space to be in, it's an inevitable part of our development. It’s from our stuckness that we grow and evolve.
However, there is a difference between natural periods of lower energy that we all go through from time to time (after all, inspiration and motivation ebb and flow) and periods of prolonged stuckness. Prolonged stuckness, often serves as a warning sign that something in our life is off track.
Wherever you find yourself on the spectrum of stuckness, the following three tools can help you reignite and nurture your spark:
1) Start a Breadcrumbs Notebook. Stuckness is often a state of feeling off, knowing that there is something more, but not knowing what that is and what to do about it. One of my favourite tools I use with clients who are ready to embark on the journey of discovering their spark is starting what I call a Breadcrumbs Notebook. It’s a notebook in which I encourage them to collect ‘clues’ that say something about what lights them up, what they are yearning for and possible directions they are being called to explore. These can be quotes, a sentence or a word they came across and brought inspiration or clarity, a poem, an image, an article, a conversation they had with a friend that sparked something, something they heard on a podcast, etc.
2) Play the Hot and Cold Game. Do you remember the game you used to play as a child? The closer you get to the hidden object, the ‘hotter’ you are. The further you move away from the hidden object, the ‘colder’ you get. As you explore what lights you up, go through your day-to-day as if you’re playing the Hot and Cold game. Notice what feels exciting? Light? Joyous? Inspirational? What feels boring? Heavy? Dull? Notice what makes you feel closer to yourself and what makes you feel further away from yourself.
3) Small experiments. Act on your ideas. Everything begins as a subtle and intuitive flash in our minds. If we’re aware enough to notice it, this insight can yield useful energy and enthusiasm as we imagine its potential. The longer we delay acting on it (a tiny step, even just writing it down, to start with), the more likely it is to disappear. If you’re really invested in getting out of your stuckness and finding your path, it’s imperative that you take action in the real world. When you have an idea / an aha-moment write it down immediately. It’s in that fertile moment that a lot of information flows in, and it’s you don't want to miss out on this opportunity.
As the author, Elizabeth Gilbert writes in Big Magic: “Ideas are driven by a single impulse: to be made manifest. And the only way an idea can be made manifest in our world is through collaboration with a human partner. It is only through a human’s efforts that an idea can be escorted out of the ether and into the realm of the actual.” The only way to make something happen is to act on it, to collaborate with our ideas. To take a baby step in a direction. Otherwise, enthusiasm quickly wanes as other forces (the "noise") begin to take hold of us. These are the forces that contribute to stagnancy and stuckness.
If the three tools/practices above got you feeling excited, fabulous! Go put them into practice. But, if you feel too depleted and apathetic to use them, you need to look deeper.
Part of getting out of the stuckness is exploring it and understanding its roots. Sometimes our stuckness originates from an inaccurate meaning we assigned to an experience. Sometimes, getting out of the stuckness requires editing your beliefs and rewriting your story so you can expand beyond the limits you’ve created for yourself.
The stuckness you’re experiencing now may be the gift that points you towards your path. Your own unique path that is waiting just for you.
Love,
Naama
