How ready are you to receive the inspiration for your creativity? What are the ways you sharpen your creative mindset?
One of the valuable ways to sharpen your creative mindset is to be alert and ready to listen and relate to your muse. The muse is the goddess (from Classical Mythology) or the power inspiring an artist in one’s creative work, be that poetry, painting, music, writing, etc. The muse, in collaboration with the artist, inspires the craft.
The Delicate Dance of Not Being in Control
This relationship is a delicate dance. You cannot control or make demands on your muse. You do, however, need to commit to be in connection with your inspiration as a creative artist through dedication and consistency.
Let’s face it; we cannot control when and where our muse will show up. The muse does not inspire us on our terms. We have to keep inviting, waiting, and listening with patience and relentless endurance.
What does consistency look like for you in your relationship with your muse? How often do you invite inspiration to your craft?
10 Ways to Sharpen Your Creative Mindset
A sense of readiness and awareness is required before you fully engage in your relationship with the muse. Here is a list of 10 ways to sharpen your creative mindset to help you be ready for your source of inspiration.
- Know what you want for your creative expression; what is your desire?
- Know when and where your muse shows up for you and be there ready to participate.
- Commit to the regular practice of being present to create.
- Understand that the muse will arrive when and where the muse feels like it.
- Recognize you are only in charge of yourself and your mindset.
- Your creative mindset in participating with the muse needs to be one of awareness, attentiveness, and readiness.
- Be open to being surprised by your muse in unexpected places. Like cats, muses operate on their terms, not yours. (I am a cat owner, and I fully resonate with this statement.)
- Understand that the muse may not engage every time, or you may only receive snippets of inspiration. Be alert and ready anyway.
- The muse is the conduit of your inspiration. You perform the creative work.
- Continue the work of deepening your craft. Your creative mindset becomes more focused through consistent practice.
Be Ready for the Muse
I am currently reading Elizabeth Gilbert’s book, Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear. In her chapter on Enchantment, she confirms the sense of readiness and openness in collaborating with the muse.
Most of all, be ready. Keep your eyes open. Listen. Follow your curiosity. Ask questions. Sniff around. Remain open. Trust in the miraculous truth that new and marvelous ideas are looking for human collaboration every single day. Ideas of every kind are constantly galloping toward us, constantly passing through us, constantly trying to get our attention.
Elizabeth Gilbert, Big Magic, p. 49
Creative Mindset with Inspiration
You are in a delicate dance with your muse who sparks the creativity within you. There are times when you show up, and there is no inspiration to be found within your intuitive sinews. The main thing is to keep being present. Even when you don’t experience a spark of creativity, trust in the process. Keep doing your part to be there, to be intentionally mindful and aware of your creative expression.
Creativity is a mutual relationship between you and the creative muse or energy that you experience. Inspiration will consistently visit. You have to be ready and readily show up. Be on time but more than that, be mindfully on time – mentally prepared to receive and noodle on the ideas.
I believe we are all capable at times of brushing up against a sense of mystery and inspiration in our lives.
Elizabeth Gilbert, Big Magic, p. 65
What works for you in sharpening your creative mindset? In what ways are you inspired and energized? How do you cultivate and release that inspiration with wild abandon in your creativity?
Comments welcome here.
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