Feed Your Creative Soul Daily

Once, you clasped her to your chest and took her everywhere: the bus, the bathroom, class, the park. She soothed you, engaged you, kept you busy, and filled you with joyful bubbles.

Then, gradually, you held her hand less, started leaving her at home, stopped returning her calls.

Replaced by responsibility, work, and “serious matters,” she withered with inattention.

Who is she? Many of us talk about her in the past tense:

“I used to love _______.”

“I don’t know why I stopped.”

“I think I want to start ______ again.”

She is our creative, expressive side. The ukulele player, artist, a cappella singer, tap dancer, poet, lyricist, writer.

And we need her to be happy. She doesn’t judge, limit, scold, rush, or say, “You can’t do that!”

Acknowledging our creative side is especially important for heavily left-brained jobs: banker, inspector, mathematician, researcher. Constantly thinking in terms of rules, limitations, and specifications can ossify the soul and fool us into believing the world is limited by what you can see, touch, and prove.

She encourages us to develop our skills at our own pace and to challenge ourselves.

But Creatives know, WE bring our art and expression into fruition from nothingness, or nothing outside of us anyway. Paint is the tool, not the idea or technique. Five different people with red paint will create five different pictures because they’re listening to their own muse.

People in service jobs whom society takes for granted—waiter, nurse, truck driver, janitor, stay-at-home mom—also need to find a way to feed their soul and feel unique, important. [From a purely work viewpoint, they are important because these jobs must be done competently.]