Have you ever felt unproductive or short of creativity? I guess this happens to all of us at some point in life even when we have a genius talent in what we do. There’s just this moment in your career or time of the day when you feel the ideas are not coming forth as easily as it should, right? This is the stage where you might dump everything and never continue again. Don’t give up! If you know how to manage this, you will keep striving for the best.
My creative origin and struggles
I won my first writing award at the age of 13. It was an essay I wrote about someone who was changing the community. At the time, I didn’t even know if I wanted to be like that person or not. Ten years later, I started doing similar work in the community. Travelling became my mantra. I had lost my introversion. At some point, I started feeling frustrated doing the same thing over and over again. I wanted to go back to my first love which was writing.
As 2018 began, I committed myself I would publish 12 articles, yet I found it so hard to be creative when I needed to. Most often I’d start a line, but then my mind would get stuck. I had become too busy with life, moving from place to place and dealing with all the distractions we have now that didn’t exist before, such as Facebook, WhatsApp etc.
How i revived the creativity from within
It was only when I started to search within myself that the ideas would come on the type of the theme I wanted to focus my articles on. That process of stilling my mind and observing every thought as it came was what gave me the creativity I needed to write a good article for the Peace Blog. Sometimes I would want to write as I planned to but the ideas didn’t come. Then, as soon as I decided to close my eyes and concentrate for about 15 minutes, all of a sudden the ideas started flowing like a river. That’s how I’ve been able to publish articles such as Why We Keep Failing At Love, The Universal Values behind Successful People and The Art of Improvisation, all of which mostly came from tapping into my life’s experiences, and I could only do that when I was genuinely quiet.
Meditation is that one tool I’ve discovered that helps me expand my imagination, observe my innermost thoughts and bring them to life. It’s a process that allows me to get in touch with my feelings, as well as learn patience and observation which are two vital keys in any creative process.
Does this work for everyone?
Mindfulness and meditation is a part of Eastern philosophy being proven today by modern science to be practical and adopted by people in different regions. Integrating it in one’s life as a non-religious tool depends on one’s belief system, cultural background or level of open-mindedness. I cannot guarantee this mental exercise will make you as creative as Steve Jobs or Chinua Achebe. Maybe things may fall apart depending on the method you use. But what I do know is, you will never know until you try.