How To Jump Start Your Energy and Sustain It
Feeling stuck? Are your creative juices not flowing? It happens to everyone at one point or another. We all get tired, stressed, overcommitted, and it takes its toll. On top of all this, add the excitement of being awarded the big project you really wanted to lead. How will you jump-start your energy and sustain it through the challenges? How can you kickstart innovative thinking and creativity?
You can read elsewhere about diet, sleep, and exercise. These three elements are important and fundamental. Don’t ignore them, because you can’t get out of your slump without them. They provide the energy you need, whether you are using them or not. While these are important, what else can you do?
Be Relative
Creativity is relative. If you ever meet me, I’m confident your first impression of me won’t include the word “creative.” I don’t have a single crazy outfit in my closet. All the walls in my house are beige. I’ve had the same haircut for almost 20 years. No one would ever nominate me for being a creative genius. However, I can be very creative. I develop solutions where none are obvious. I see opportunities that others don’t notice. This is my creativity, and we all have some form of it. Creativity manifests itself in many different ways.
Push Yourself
My best creativity happens when I am well rested, eating well, and have a consistent exercise program in place. But this in itself can be a means to creating a rut. Creativity springs when I force myself to do something different. It may be as simple as taking a different route to work or trying a new app on my phone. Or, it might be as big as taking on a new project with unfamiliar aspects, and trusting that I will find my way successfully through it.
Take a Risk
Creativity involves a certain amount of risk. You must be willing to set aside for a while your usual ways of doing things. Actively moving outside your comfort zone may not feel peaceful, but it will help you see the world from a different point of view. This gives you the perspective you need when a problem or issue comes up that you need to find a new solution to because the old ones just don’t work anymore.
So, every once in a while, step outside of your comfort zone. Try a new sport, put together an outfit you’ve never worn before, shop at a different store, try a new restaurant and go for the special, listen to a new radio station, take an unexpected trip, sit in a different seat in church, call an old friend… do something different and out of the ordinary. Shake things up a bit, and you will find that your new perspective will spill creativity into the rest of your life.
Guest writer: Cindy Webb