Welcome to my clay pot! It’s the first clay pot I ever made- I love it!!!- and in the very long and meditative process of making this pot, I had so many flashes of insight.
It’s made of Earth. It’s shaped by hand. I emerges from a central place on a wheel. It’s part technique and part improv.
It’s pretty much the whole creative process all in one spinning ball of clay.
If you’re stuck in your own creativity, looking to play bigger and live with more engagement and excitement, but you’re not sure the steps to take, refining the basics of your own creative process can help you to soar…!
In fact, while I won’t bore you with the step-by-step procedure of pot-making, which is definitely not fun unless you’re a ceramics junkie, I’ll start by saying this: everything starts by throwing a ball of clay around. The more “air-tight” you pack your ball of clay, the better the chances that you’ll create a solid pot without air bubbles in its walls.
Same goes for your ideas. The more developed an idea is, the more solid shape it can take.
Refine your ideas.
While there are ideas you can freestyle and play with as you go, if you’re looking to next level your life, sharpen those ideas until they are so magnetically exciting that you can’t wait to create them.
Really honing ideas before you get going can help you to fly with creativity.
Recently, I started brainstorming in a group. A group of people- or even a single harmonizing person- can be a mastermind for your ideas.
A “pilot project” or a small batch or a “Beta” group can help to refine ideas. When I started doing online consultations in 2008, I offered them free to people on Tumblr until I knew that my idea would work. With each free consult I knew what I needed, what I lacked, what was missing…and my process became really clear. In the brilliant creativity book Creative Confidence, Tom & David Kelly stress the vital importance of field testing and refining ideas.
Refine just one idea you’ve been thinking about and see just how much your attention to detail can set your product apart and help it to shine!
This is the funnest part (and hardest) of pot-making. Centering. Centering clay is a full-body process. You have a wheel spinning wildly, you’re using your body to engage the clay and move it toward the center, you’re staying still and learning to control your movement, and the objective is to get the clay to a place where it’s “centered” on the wheel and no longer wobbles.
You can’t make a pot if it’s not centered on the wheel. Nothing will develop. It will all be lopsided.
People spend hours and weeks and even months learning to center a ball of clay.
Without being centered, you’re subject to all kinds of flailing around.
Get centered within yourself.
Great organization can make for a more smooth-running creative project. Disorder may seem artistic, but it’s often super-sabotaging. This is a basic idea, but a big one.
The bigger idea that has been most life changing for me is to stay in my own center as much of the time as possible, and always before I create every day. I noticed that when I try to push my spiritual practice, meditative exercises and stretching beyond first thing in the morning and attempt to write, crate or otherwise work on anything before that time is done, it never works. Everything I make in that state sucks. Everything is off. I have to do my morning first and then… it’s all easy.
Do what centers you first, then show up to create. Make sure you’re centered within yourself as well as well-organized, and you’ll have a much better read on your own creative flow.
Do housekeeping as you go!
See that wheel, the clay everywhere and the clay all over me?
It was ten times worse as we went along, but we were encouraged to clean up the wheel with a sponge frequently, to clean up the pot with many tools, to rinse our hands to have better control of the clay, and to wash down everything when we were done.
If you keep cleaning and clearing space as you see obstacles emerge, you’ll hit a next level in your creative flow.
For example, if you’re cruising along and get overcome by memories of a heartbreak, you know now that this is something to work on, to possibly get help with, to unfold and to heal. It’s in the process of removing blocks from your life that you hit magic streaks where locked-up abilities and energies emerge.
You may think you’re “over” parts of the past, but then they show up, hitting you like a ton of bricks or blanketing days in dull clouds of haze. Keep doing the housecleaning. It will revolutionize your life.
Same goes for actual housecleaning! Keeping things clear and clean and beautified isn’t a once-a-week endeavor. A little polishing every day yields consistently shining results!!!
Don’t judge yourself for being stuck or not quite creating at the level you’re aiming for. Instead, refine your process so you can lift yourself to that level organically, clearing so much room to grow every day as you go!!!
xoxo Dana
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Welcome to Creating Genius!
I spent the last year creating this e-guide to balancing and unblocking life by pulling together the best of a decade of space-changing and life-shifting feng shui! It’s 50 days and 50 ways to use feng shui to shift your space and your routines to move from “stuck” to creatively inspired and alive.
Start Creating Genius right HERE!
Gather up your magic & make gorgeous dreams come true!
xoxo Dana
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