How To Rediscover your Motivation to Create

Momentum is an important word in the life of a creative person. When you have momentum, when you create regularly and feel fully in the creative flow, then creating comes easily. There's no time to stop and think about the struggles and the blocks--you're too busy creating and having a great time!

Creating with momentum has a cumulative effect and once you're going, it's much easier to keep going.

The opposite state to this kind of momentum is inertia--when you can barely create a word, a stitch or a stroke, let alone a novel, tapestry or painting. And, like momentum, inertia breeds and builds. The longer you stay inert, and the longer you struggle to get creating, the harder that first step feels.

Creating freely again at first feels like an arduous trek up an unforgiving mountain. At worst, it feels like you're completely lost, with no map, no compass and no way home. What's the difference between that state of creative inertia and the state of creative momentum? How do you even begin to gather any momentum when you can't make that first step, let alone string successive steps together? The answer can be summed up in a single word: Motivation.

If you have the motivation to create, you'll always be able to return to creating freely, because you know the benefits, you know how it enhances your life.

So the secret to moving from creative inertia to creative momentum is to reconnect with your motivation to create. To rediscover the importance of creating. To remember what creating does for you that nothing else can.

Here then are the 5 key steps to rediscovering your motivation to create:

1. Take yourself back to a time when you created freely. Before you say you've never created freely, think again more carefully. All of us have had times - however fleeting - where we've created with great purpose and freedom, where hours have passed in what seemed like moments, and we're completely lost in creating. Go with the strongest memory that comes to you.
2. Picture yourself in this state of creativity. Observe from a distance, as if you're watching a movie of yourself being highly creative. Notice the tiny details. What's going on around that's helping you be so creative? How do you know this person you're watching (yourself) IS being highly creative?
3. Zoom into this movie and put yourself back into the lead role. Recall how it felt to be lost in this state of creative momentum. Think about what your state of mind is, what you're saying to yourself. Reconnect with what you're seeing around you, and how you're feeling. Focus on each of your senses--what are you experiencing in this heightened creative state?
4. Ask yourself what creating brings you that nothing else in the world can. What does it add to your life? What kind of needs does it meet, what kind of hole does it fill? What would a life without creativity be like? A life where you were not allowed or able to ever create again. What kind of life would that be?
5. Ask yourself what kind of person you become when you're highly creative. How does it affect your mood, how does it enhance your happiness, your sense of peace and well-being? What positive impact does being highly creative have on the people close to you in your life? When you're happier, calmer, more focused, how does that enhance the lives of those around you?

Follow these 5 steps and you're going to start to feel that little tingle of excitement about creating again. In fact, you're more likely to feel a whole rush!

With all this motivation to start creating again, the only question to ask is, "Why are we still talking??" Go and get creating!