Written by: Jeanne Y. Savelle, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
This month, in Part 6 of Re-Awaken Your Creativity to Live a Better Life, I’ll share what I’ve learned about how setting intention helps re-awaken your creativity.
Creativity Is Intention
The infinite creativity of life is always available and ready for you. Life is waiting for you to wake up and participate. Don’t take this to mean you won’t make plans and have goals. Believe instead, that life has your back when you are ready.
The process starts with being open to what arises and being willing to jump in. You begin to play as ideas arise from your innate creative thought.
Choose an idea, test it, and see if it gels. Consider how the idea makes you feel. You’ll know if you want to continue exploring from the way you feel. If the idea intrigues you and draws you in, set your intention in that direction.
Once you make your intention clear, life’s creative energy will envelop you, and unexpected things will happen. Serendipity becomes your friend and the world opens up to support you in unusual ways.
If you stay open as you move along a path, you’ll know what the next step is. Keep going with curiosity instead of judgment and expectation. As you create, you get more active, and ideas take shape. Flow eventually takes over.
Rest and re-evaluate if you start to feel burdened. You can always change direction.
Setting A Direction
Harvard child psychologist Paul Harris published research on the difference between asking questions and searching for answers.
Children younger than five ask many more questions than adults. Unfortunately, by the time you reach adulthood, you’ve stopped being so curious about the world and asking questions for the simple joy of exploring what excites you.
As a result, you lose your connection to your innate curiosity and creativity. Then, you justify why you can’t accomplish what you really want to. Instead of living in the vast reaches of your creative imagination, your life gets smaller and smaller.
Humans are natural explorers and creators. All significant discoveries arise from the love of exploring the unknown through asking simple questions.
What do you really want? What ignites your creative power?
Point yourself in that direction and the path will roll out in front of you. When you abandon yourself to your creative power, you’ll notice new opportunities rising up to meet you.
Don’t choose what you think you should or what others expect of you. This will kill your spark. Instead, stay in the unknown until something strikes you. When your mind is open, you’ll channel what the universe has in store for you.
In creating from the deepest part of who you are, you’ll learn, make mistakes, change direction, and find your way.
My Journey
My journey into exploring creativity through setting intentions continues, and I am now in another unexpected place. Unexpected, but in a perfect culmination of my life.
With the intention of finding a way to bring to life my transformational coaching, I came across a travel organization focused on personal and societal transformation.
Through this organization, I made a new friend and together we are working on a wine, travel, and coaching project. I didn’t know I would find a way to combine my three passions: wine + travel + personal transformation.
By opening up to every possibility, then exploring and setting an intention, life responds. My experience shows how intention feeds life’s generous creative power.
Exploring Intention
Here are some steps for exploring with intention:
Start with a blank slate, having no direction or plan in mind. Don’t ignore this fundamental step.
Be curious about what you could explore at this moment. Jot down some ideas that come to mind.
How does each idea make you feel? Which one is calling to you? Which one excites your curiosity? Which one can’t you wait to explore further?
Start experimenting with an idea, staying open to every possibility and permutation of it. The path will be utterly unknown to you, but let it happen without pushing, judging, or self-criticizing. Not every idea will come to fruition, and you can always start again with another idea.
Set your intention to keep taking the next step, then the next one. Do not think about the future. Stay in the present with the idea. As long as it excites you, keep going. The path will become clear, and your project will take shape.
Eventually, you’ll get into the flow and gain momentum.
Be willing to set your intention on what life wants you to create. Don’t speculate about what the world needs because life already knows. Trust that when you are doing what makes you feel alive, what feeds your spirit, you are on the right path.
Follow me on LinkedIn for more info!
Jeanne Savelle, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
Jeanne is a Gentle Guide and Transformation Agent living in the Atlanta, GA, area. After 30 years as an international corporate finance executive, she chucked that life to reinvent herself. She is now a transformational coach guiding older adults to living life through their inner creativity. She is a writer and author, writing about transformation, creativity, retirement, and wine. She's earned certifications from The Retirement Coaches Association, The Life Coach School, and Modern Elder Academy. Her previous life included a Masters in International Management from The Thunderbird School of Global Management at Arizona State University.
