English translation by Kirsty 

We all know the world isn’t flat, even if the ancients believed it was. It took Magellan’s voyage to prove it was round. In much the same way, many people cultivate an extremely absurd (but far more harmful) notion than that of the world being flat: they believe they are not creative. But only by exploring themselves and sailing in the direction of their dreams will they discover the world is in fact round. In other words, we are all creative.

Broadly speaking, there are two ways to embark on a journey to recover our authentic creative nature; the first is to travel within and the second is to seek nourishment and creative stimulation outside.

1. The first tool, which I use as a warm up in my creative coaching sessions and classes, is the Morning Pages Journal. It is a powerful exercise, which I also talk about in my books, and I haven’t stopped using and advising others to use it since I first learned about it from Julia Cameron’s magnificent book «The Artist’s Way«.

The idea is to start every morning by filling three handwritten pages of a notebook with our thoughts, desires, memories and emotions. These disorganized and spontaneous reams of literature are entirely for our own benefit, they are absolutely private. It’s an exercise that helps us to get back in touch with what really matters and most importantly, it allows us to free the voice of our inner child or inner artist, giving us an insight to ideas and dreams, and any crazy thing we want to add to our lives to make them more enjoyable and productive. (How to apply this technique? I recommend reading «The Talisman of the Dancing Leader» ed.Kepler).

As we begin to pry ourselves loose from our old self-concepts, we find that our new, emerging self may enjoy all sorts of adventures. 

Julia Cameron

2. The second tool I call Filling the Spring. Every time we do something creative we draw inspiration from our inner spring. We all have a reserve of energy and imagination that we use to create. When we work, organize, decide, answer emails, drive and interact with others, we are using the energy from our inner spring; Although it may not always feel like we are creating. But if we don’t learn to replenish these reserves of energy and imagination, little by little we may end up believing we are not creative, because all we are doing is repeating the same old patterns. 

If this was the model that you had learned at home, that of repeating patterns, working and not evaluating the cycles of regeneration and art, you can easily fall into the error of thinking that you are not creative, while the real problem is that you have a dry dock! Any professional artist knows this danger well – if we take from the spring, by non-stop writing, painting, composing or producing, and we don’t refill the source, our work becomes more arduous and we start to ask ourselves «what has suddenly gone wrong». The balance has been upset, with too much energy going out and no energy going in.

The spring exercise is very enjoyable, but surprisingly produces unsuspected resistance because our society values ​​productivity but does not cultivate the value of times of inspiration or creative leisure. It is about writing 8 things that you would like to enjoy and that you feel could inspire you in your life (or rather they would inspire your inner artist child). When you have the list ready, schedule a time in the next 8 weeks to make these wishes come true (literally or symbolically). You can always find more ideas in my book: The Talisman of the Dancing Leader. ( Spanish only).

You will see that very soon, with just these two tools, the world will start to feel spherical again and you will see the treasure island of your creativity appear on the horizon. Word of who has been using them for a long time… 😉

If you would like to embark on a voyage of creative recovery, if you would love to dare to write that book, that script, and make that dream come true, step by step, you can count on my support – Get in touch!

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