Spring Cleaning for Creative Flow
On tidying up our spaces and our minds.
I’m living in a bit of a construction zone at the moment while some home renovations are taking place around me. As someone who works from home, the noise and disruption is irritating, but the results have been surprisingly good for my creativity. A few simple changes and my space feels completely different, which got me thinking a lot about how we make space for our creativity. This can mean two things: Obviously it refers to our physical space and how effectively it allows us to create. It also applies to our minds and whether we are making space within ourselves to encourage creative flow.
It’s springtime, so most of us do a bit of spring cleaning with the intent of sprucing up our homes. And a lot of us will agree that tidying up a space does make us feel better, emotionally. So it’s really not a stretch to look at our space in terms of how it relates to our creative output. Ask yourself, do I create well here? How does it feel? What could I do to make this place a better creative space? Generally, a spring tidy will just be the usual cleaning up, getting rid of things no longer needed, and being more organized. This all seems logical, but next time you do this, pay attention to how you feel. Does the space feel different after these changes?
Sometimes removing furniture can make a space feel more airy and open, or adding soft cushions and throws can make an otherwise cold place more warm and cozy. Play with colours and light. Does a bright room feel better than a dark one? How would you create in a room painted red as opposed to one painted green? What energizing or cooling colours are you surrounded by? Interior designers know all of this already, as do brand and logo designers, as well as many business creators. (Think Apple’s colourful Mac computers versus Microsoft’s equivalent and how you view those two companies.) So shouldn’t we consider these influences when it comes to our own creative spaces?
Going further with this concept and the connection to mood and emotion, we also need to consider our mental tidiness. How do we ‘spring clean’ our minds to be better creatives? The answer here is a little trickier, but I think it boils down to the same basic concept: we make space. From a mental perspective, what does it mean to throw things out, to be better organized, and to change the surroundings to feel better? Obviously paying attention to what we feed our minds is important. Are we consuming too much negative news, getting involved in drama that isn’t our own, or relishing in negative information? It’s easy to get addicted to the drama, as they say. So what can we do about it? For starters, being more aware of what information we take in. This doesn’t mean to stop being aware of what’s going in in the world. It simply means to have some boundaries, that there’s no need to endlessly down in the sorrows of the world, and to find a counter balance. Perhaps we play more upbeat music, or are careful to only watch television shows that inspire or uplift. Tidying up here could mean no more numbing out in front of the television, and being more selective about what we consume. Not enjoying that book? Don’t finish it. That blockbuster movie franchise brings you down? Don’t watch it. It’s that simple but it makes a bit difference.
Another way to make space mentally is through the obvious methods of mindfulness and meditation, or even just a few simple breathing exercises here and there. However, there is another way to look at this space-making concept. I’ve know several writers who claim to work though blocks and come up with new ideas by walking, taking long drives, or hopping into the shower. There is something about backing off from the original problem by doing some gentle, mindless movement or task, that allows solutions to flow through. In other words, make space. I’ve recently heard this same concept in terms of intuition, as well. We are best able to access it when we aren’t entirely focused on it. Perhaps clinging too tightly to creative flow actually chokes it off. And so, when we think of spring cleaning the mind, can we look for ways to loosen our grip? What tension, anxieties, and frustration can we let go of? The key goal here is to allow. What can we tidy up to remove blockages and allow creativity in?
Often we think we’ve got to add more, try more, work more, but sometimes it’s actually all about scaling things back to reveal what we’re really looking for. Pay more attention to your surroundings and their influence. We often don’t realize when we’re harming our best interests. Spring cleaning is an old tradition, but perhaps this year we can share this new way of looking at it, and allow in that creative flow that’s always been there underneath it all.
