After 10 years running my own yoga business and teaching kids yoga, I have discovered a powerful way of keeping creativity flowing. I use it when I develop a new curriculum or write a blog post. Without stirring my imagination I can’t get excited about my business. Creativity and Imagination are essential for a successful business and also for my own happiness and satisfaction with life.
Yet, sometimes we feel stuck creatively. Whose fault is it? Those things, people, circumstances we believe are boxing us in? Or is it our fault for for letting them? The free tele-seminars I’ve been listening to with Tulshi Sen have revealed how to Raise Your Belief Level. He says, “You don’t get what you want, you get what you are.” We want to live a creative, meaningful, exciting life, but we don’t really believe certain things are possible. We don’t get what we want, we get what we believe.
Sometimes we don’t even know what we want even if we did believe. We’ve got to go back to basics and stir the Imagination to let us start dreaming again. Like the sign says in the picture – we want to JOIN THE FUN, and the tickets we need as adults are imagination and creativity.
Creativity is in every five year old. If we find the five year old in us, we’ll find the creativity. Can you remember what it was like to be five? Start by imagining this to Join the Fun. Can you see the world through the eyes of a child?
The kids I teach are excited about life. They like to get up in the morning. They’ve got a dream, they’ve got a rocketship to build, they’ve got a crocodile to track. They have passion for life that lets them smile easily and laugh often.
To stir creativity and give yourself something to get up for in the morning, think back on your favorite play activities as a child. Can you remember a favorite joke? Did you like puzzles, art, building, games, maybe pretending? Make a list of toys you loved and what you loved about them.
Today I was talking to a supervisor in her office at the daycare. Through the hallway and into the office travelled the sound of the xylophone, but this was no song I had ever heard. It went on and on without stop and continued on in a cacophony of notes. As I was leaving the music continued and I passed by the doorway to see a 5 year old girl absorbed in playing her instrument. All the kids were doing activities, and she sat alone on the carpet making music.
She looked up, smiled, then went right back to her personal symphony.
What engrosses you in this way?
I’m not saying you take up Tinker Toys, but these are the clues to your hearts passion.
Next, daydream a little. Daydream like a 5 year old who doesn’t understand “impossible.” Imagine you didn’t need to have a job and you could do whatever you wanted. What clues would you get from your childhood toys. Would you play the xylophone in an orchestra, on American Idol, or in a spaceship?
Think of all the things you could do and also how you would feel doing it. Do you feel brave, independent, strong, healthy, imaginative, romantic, playful?
All day long we work for security, but when do we take time for our happiness? What is the point of having security if we don’t have any of the feelings that we want to feel?
“Life is thinking and feeling.”
– Tulshi Sen author of Ancient Secrets of Success for Today’s World
Children usually don’t think of security, they think of what makes them happy. Then imagination flows and we start to see all kinds of possibilities for happiness. We notice opportunities and connections we may have overlooked before. We find possibilities for self-expression that we missed before, and we begin to dream of a creative life again.
Seeing life through the eyes of a child, the imagination is stirred and we Join the Fun even as an adult.
Do you have a way of stirring your imagination. What do you do when you feel stuck? Please leave your comments and ideas.
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© K. Humphrys
