Pump up your creative muscles
In my life's motto "live, love, laugh everyday", I recognise the importance of laughing and smiling for my very own well-being and that it also has a ripple effect on those surrounding me. So to live true to my life's motto, it is worthwhile to explore what makes us smile and laugh.
The answers will be very different person by person. For some it’s dancing, for others it’s listening to music, for others playing with children, …. When looking at it closely, you will realise that many of the joyful activities are connected to creativity.
So to make our lives more joyful, it’s worthwhile investigating how we can integrate more creativity into our everyday lives. For me personally, being creative on an everyday basis is very important. I am not super-artistic, instead my creativity is really “everyday”.
For example, I enjoy re-decorating our living room area once in a while, changing colour themes with the help of “movable”, interchangeable items such as cushions, blankets, candles, flowers. Last spring a fresh green dominated, this autumn it was orange. At now at Christmas time I prefer dark red and dark green. I follow my intuition and also take seasonal events as inspiration like Halloween, Easter, Valentine.
I also like to sign up for museum workshops, putting in practice different creative techniques. For example, attending the “Carton City” workshop in Vienna with my then small children was an absolutely memorable day for all of us, building a city out of carton boxes, using scissors, glue and paint. And just recently, I attended a tile painting workshop at a porcelain manufacture with my friend Eva – so much fun and so exciting to see the end result. And we were not the only ones enjoying ourselves. A family celebrated their annual family get together with creating their own tile-memorabili, no matter how old or young, from girl to boy, to father and grand-father, mother and grand-mother. There was so much positive energy in the workshop room – a wonderful afternoon.
To give an example for everyday creativity in my professional life: I approach every presentation that I make as creative act, challenging myself to tell a captivating story in words and pictures and trying to make it interactive for the audience. Now, I find the story telling part in business matters sometimes really difficult, and it takes several reiterations including the feedback of team members to get the story flow right. Yet the process is a truly creative one and once it’s done, presenting is really fun as well as rewarding because many presenters do not go for the extra effort of storytelling in words and pictures and the effort is appreciated by the audience.
I could go on and on with everyday examples, and even thinking of the examples, makes me smile.
So I encourage you: pump up your creative muscles, dare to be creative in whatever way feels most natural and most intriguing to YOU .... and enjoy yourself wholeheartedly!
