There is a difference between being an artist and being creative. Everyone is creative – that is how we are born. Not everyone is an artist. Often we get confused around this and put pressure on ourselves to be artistic, when all we need to do is express. Take away the expectations that you have to do something really artistic. You don’t!
All you need to do is follow your inner guidance and see what happens. Simple as that! It’s not about how clever you are at drawing or painting. It’s about you playing with colours and patterns, like you probably did when you were a child! You might think that you’re not creative, but that’s because you have confused creativity with art. And if you think you’re not creative you probably haven’t spent a lot of time doing creative stuff, have you? Your creativity might be hidden under layers of fear, but it’s still there and can start to blossom with the right encouragement and support.
You cannot wait for this to come to you as inspiration. You have to start doing and THEN your creative juices will start to flow. Think of it as simple doodling. Not art work. You can’t go wrong. Anything you do will be right. You have my blessing to make a mess, because that will catapult you out of your performance anxiety and into play!
No one expects you to be an artist unless that is actually what you do as your job, and neither should you! When you put so much pressure on yourself you take away the fun and being creative becomes like another chore on your to-do-list. Don’t make life only be about work. To have any energy to work we have to spend time playing and having fun without any expectations at all than just to enjoy ourselves.
There is no rule that says that you have to be good at art to be allowed to be creative. There is no tests or grades you have to pass, no contests you have to win to be allowed to express yourself. All you need to do is start doodling and see where it takes you. You don’t even need any fancy art supply – all you need is a pen and a sheet of paper and five minutes. You’ll be surprised at what you have inside of you, I promise.
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Very well put! I have found this a lot when teaching to beginners they get very put off and less motivated to try. As artist I have a different issue but still the same – expectations. I always feel I have to produce this amazing piece of artwork and it becomes a pursuit of perfection which is fruitless, in the end and you lose your passion, spontaneity and real expression of what you wanted to achieve in the first place. We need to lose our expectations of our creative outcomes.
Thanks for your comment, Sharron! I couldn’t agree more about the need to lose our expectations – as soon as we start to focus on the end result in any way, like thinking about what it will look like, how it will be perceived by other people or if it will be good enough, we lose our connection to our inner guidance and creative flow. The only way forward is to focus on what wants to be expressed in the moment. It doesn’t matter if you’re a well-established artist, author or actress or just an amateur wanting to enjoy creating something – it’s crucial that you keep your eyes off of the audience or writer’s block will hit you hard and without mercy!
But when we get in touch with our inner guidance and start to download whatever wants to be said from our Higher Self or our Inner Child (or the Universe, God, Source or whichever you prefer), then amazing things can start to happen. We get to communicate with a part of us that might have been dormant for a long time and we get to tap into this infinite source of creativity inside of us that knows nothing about writer’s block or about being judged!