Freedom or Chaos - There's a big difference

If you have ever found yourself in a hopeless swirl of procrastination and creative overwhelm, paralysed by a constant stream of imagery, ideas and inspiration supplied on a digital conveyor belt... You may relate to this!

Creative possibilities and ideas are often not what keep us stuck. In fact, if you are using any kind of social media, you are almost certainly supplied daily with enough incredible ideas, inspiration,' how to' videos, etc., etc. to keep you going for a lifetime, if you decided to pursue any one of them.

The problem is that this kind of digital exposure has, in many ways, deceived us about the reality of what it takes to produce creative work in the real material physical world (even if you are producing that work digitally!).

When we move from the world of thought, inspiration, and possibility into the material world of making, we find something beautiful and interesting: the material world has limits.

We encounter the limits of time, resources, our skills, and our physical capacity, alongside the limits of the material world we engage with to create. Materials have limits; we also have our limits in the material world, and this, I would like to propose, is a gift.

It is a gift because, if we are attentive to our material relationship with the world, these limits and constraints teach us on a more intimate level about both ourselves and the world. It is a specific encounter, and the specifics of its limits generate an entirely unique conversation.

If we can lean into our own reality and away from distraction, we have the possibility of creating a very specific container for a very specific conversation: a soulful conversation between ourselves and the world. This conversation gifts us a unique opportunity to bring our world of ideas into connection with the world of 'things' and to listen closely to what they might say.

We might hear something new, a message specifically and uniquely for us.

If you have been on the fence about engaging in a creative pursuit or distracted by the endless chaos of social media possibilities, I encourage you to consider giving yourself the gift of limits and see what that does to your sense of creative freedom.

If you are feeling at all creatively stuck or curious about what you might hear if you tuned down the noise of other people's conversations, here's a suggestion.

Step 1 - Give yourself the gift of 72 Hours away from social media

Step 2 - When you find yourself reaching for your phone, reach for a journal!

Step 3 - Fill out the one-page creative project planner and make a start

You can download the one-page planner here!