Category: Creative Thinking

Creativity Is In Your Life

1/29/2020

NURTURE YOUR CREATIVITY & INSPIRATION HERE!

by Jenny Leigh Hodgins

Sometimes we even doubt our ability to be creative at all. In those moments, if you have my inspiring 2020 Nature Calendar, you’ll get a friendly, warm, gentle reminder that you’ve got this.

Creativity is in your life just as it’s in mine.

My calendar designs are based on my personal creative process of finding time for self-care, especially through experiencing nature. There's scientific research proving that experiencing awe improves your optimism and lowers stress.

Nature is a constant source of awe. Research shows wellness improves even if you’re looking at pictures of nature instead of being outdoors physically!

Release Your Stress To The Air

I want you to see how incredible you are. How easy it can be to release your stress to the air and relish the vibrance and wonder that nature brings to your senses. Exploring the profundity of nature’s compassionate force can put you back in rhythm with your own inherent creative flow.

That’s why I made my 2020 calendars.

And yeah, they aren’t mass distributed. These are limited editions (and almost sold out!) that I personally designed as a resource for nurturing your creativity and inspiration.

I used decent quality materials so you could write your personal events and notes on them easily. I left plenty of white space so you can set and track your personal goals in the same place where you’ll see a joyful or peaceful moment in nature.

The same place where a positive affirmation will be to encourage you about your infinite creative potential.

You can feel how I incorporate authenticity, an open heart and sincere determined effort in the creative process from these calendars. You can see why this visual and written format is important to me.

If I can make something out of the simplicity of an ordinary moment within my day, so can you. These calendars were made to empower you and me toward manifesting our beautiful relationship with the unceasing compassionate power of the universe.

That’s why I made these calendars.

The cart has closed on YourCreativeChord's 2020 Inspiring Calendar. Stay tuned for 2021 Calendars in October 2020!

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How To Find Creativity In Your Life

1/24/2020

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last chance to save 20% on YourCreativeChord.com's beautiful 2020 nature calendars!

by Jenny Leigh Hodgins

If you’ve read any of my blogs on inspiration or creativity, or listened to any of my new podcasts this year, you’ll know exactly what my personal values are about.

My brand name, YourCreativeChord, is symbolic of the importance I place on empowering myself and you with the tools to nurture creative energy and inspired daily life.

If you’ve been reading my photo essays under the Creativity menu on my website, you’ll see more closely, behind the scenes, under the hood, of my personal creative process.

That’s partly why I created my 2020 Nature Calendars, too. My calendars feature my own photos, taken on my iPhone with a simple one-button push. My photos are a reminder of how I find ways in the midst of my daily life, to notice, discover, and explore nature’s incredible beauty within an ordinary moment.

I created these calendars as a representation of my brand. Immersion in nature is a huge part of healthy self-care. I added written monthly themes to remind you to be mindful of each moment. My calendar's monthly themes help you remember how your mindset matters toward reaching goals each day, month, and for the year.

I value finding ways for nurturing creativity and inspiration. If you’re reading this, obviously, so do you.

My calendars are a tangible example of how I approach the creative process. Each time you look at a monthly photo in my calendar, or read my written positive affirmation, you’re receiving my message about the importance of being true to yourself—and of how expressing that authenticity is to tapping inspiration. When you allow yourself to be real, genuine, vulnerable, open—the creative muse will come to you naturally.

I made these calendars for you as a reminder to seize your day, create an experience of gratitude and joyful awareness through nature’s beauty and healing force. Every time you look at my calendar on your wall, you’re reminded to refresh your creative energy.

We All Go Through Creative Blocks

Sometimes we even doubt our ability to be creative at all. In those moments, if you have my calendar, you’ll get a friendly, warm, gentle reminder that you’ve got this. Creativity is in your life just as it’s in mine.

And if I’m not a professional photographer who uses fancy camera gear, or knows all the advanced technical stuff, so what?

I stand in my truth. I look at the world from where I stand, with whatever tools are in my hand, and I shoot. Er, push the button.

The point is that my calendars are based on my creative process of finding time for self-care, especially through experiencing nature. There's scientific research proving that experiencing awe improves your optimism and lowers stress. Nature is a constantly changing source of awe that is constantly there.

See How You Are Incredible

I want you to see how incredible you are. How easy it can be to release your stress to the air and relish the vibrance and wonder that nature brings to your senses. Exploring the profundity of nature’s compassionate force can put you back in rhythm with your own inherent creative flow.

That’s why I made my 2020 calendars.

And yeah, they aren’t mass distributed. I used decent quality materials so you could write your personal goals, events and notes on them easily.

I left plenty of white space so you can set and track your personal goals in the same place where you’ll see a joyful or peaceful moment in nature.

The same place where a positive affirmation will be to encourage you about your infinite creative potential.

You can feel how I incorporate authenticity, an open heart and sincere determined effort in the creative process from these calendars. You can see why this visual and written format is important to me.

If I can make something out of the simplicity of a moment within my day, so can you. These calendars were made to empower you and me toward manifesting our beautiful relationship with the unceasing compassionate power of the universe.

That’s why I made these calendars.

The cart has closed on YourCreativeChord's 2020 Inspiring Calendar. Stay tuned for 2021 Calendars in October 2020!

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LEARNING TO BE CREATIVE

10/25/2019

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IF YOU LIKED THIS, YOU'LL LOVE MY INTERVIEWS WITH CREATORS, & INSPIRING STORIES! CLICK HERE FOR MORE!

Creative exploration of Van Gogh's Starry Night, painting by Jenny Leigh Hodgins

by Jenny Leigh Hodgins

Listen to the Podcast version here.

Plenty of adult music students have told me that they were not creative. I’ve always responded, ‘Nonsense!' Everyone is creative. Some of us have learned to tap it more naturally than others.

Anyone who knows me uses the word creative to describe me. I blog, podcast, write, compose, play piano, improvise, sing, garden, take photos, make videos, design my website layout, present, facilitate. As a former music and piano educator, I've been known to tweak a lesson in mid-stream to make learning accommodations for my students, lead drum circles on the beach, and more.

The point is that I know how to be creative. Ideas, thoughts, patterns, melodies, rhythm, words, drama, and humor burst forth from me as an unstoppable fountain. Creative expression is more natural to me than breathing. Immersed in creative projects, I sometimes forget to breathe!

Incidentally, I’ve never met a child who was not able to be creative. Young people are fully tapped into the creative dimension. They need no map to get there.

Adults, however, are a different story. We sometimes lose our way to creative freedom, due to stress and pressure from our daily responsibilities. We grow out of touch with ourselves, and forget how to listen to our intuitive voice. We pay too much attention to the harsh judgments from society, and shrink our creative energy in response. We foolishly compare ourselves and our creativity to others, with standards that aren't fair or realistic.

There will always be art that's better or worse than ours. There will always be someone whose creative skills are more honed than ours. There will always be people whose creative output surpasses our own. None of this matters.

What matters is that we allow our authentic creative expression to flow sincerely and honestly. If you’ve lost your way or simply need some help getting connected to your creative side, here are some things I’ve learned about how to be imaginative:

Give up caring about the result. You can think about that later. To get your creative juices flowing, let go of your expectations. Once you can loosen up on that, the real source of originality will become accessible.

Take off your head. Don’t think about structure, the rules, or what you know. If you start thinking or judging your ideas, throw the judgement into an imaginary balloon and send it off into the vast sky. Goodbye.

Tap into your heart, your soul–what you believe in and care about. Let everything come from that inner compass. Once you can channel directly from your core, your purpose, your spirituality–your unique truth will freely spill out.

The more you connect with your inner voice or faith–the more readily your pure, yet wiser self will lead the way. Just follow your intuition and let your journey take you where you’re going. You don’t have to know where you’ll end up for now. Be confident it will be someplace cool.

Open up your courage. Address your creativity as an adventure into your deeper existence. Go forward with humility to learn and to be true to yourself. Go forth willingly to be taught and led.

If you lose focus and begin to feel limits due to ego, shake it off. Reconnect to the primary purpose; communicating with your creative life. Communicating through your creativity to reach a connection with others.

Setting aside time to explore creative adventure is not only healthy and enriching for you, it will lead to your creative development. The more you give your creative life, the greater energy it will ignite.

Enjoy your process and Viva La Vie Boheme!

Let me know if these suggestions are helpful or if you have more tips for tapping creativity by leaving a comment below!

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GET MORE INSPIRATION HERE!

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Belief In Your Own Creative Vision

10/8/2019

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GET INSPIRED HERE!

Sunset Photo at Siesta Key Beach, Sarasota by Jenny Leigh Hodgins

IF YOU LIKED THIS, YOU'LL LOVE MY INTERVIEWS WITH CREATORS, & INSPIRING STORIES! CLICK HERE FOR MORE!

Photo Essay Series
By Jenny Leigh Hodgins

This is the first of my photo essay series featuring images from my newly designed 2020 nature photo calendars. The calendars include monthly self-care themes highlighting strategies for nurturing your creativity and inspiration.

I enjoy taking nature photos because each captured image represents my excitement, joy and appreciation for the wondrous beauty available within an ordinary moment. My pictures are symbolic of my personal dreams and inner prayers for experiencing life to its maximum potential.

It helps that I live in beautiful Lexington, Kentucky, surrounded by agricultural and horse farms, near enough to the Kentucky Horse Park that I can ride my bike there. I also lived in sunny Florida for half my life, enjoying the gorgeous beaches of Venice, Fort Myers, Sarasota, Clearwater and Dunedin.

I snapped the photo above at Siesta Key Beach, Sarasota, during a sunset walk with a friend, determined to capture the serenity of the sun’s gentle departure beyond the horizon. This memory reminds me of my sincere friend, who graciously spent the weekend with me there to literally force me to enjoy some relaxation in between my whirlwind of events surrounding that time period.

The kindness of my friend’s compassionate gesture, the therapeutic nature of the deep, pulsing waves of the water, the setting of the sun as it sprayed its pastel wash of colors across the sky, and my deep love for Sarasota, as the place my Buddhist practice began (the starting point of hope in my life), exist within this momentary pause. Just as an entire lifetime of memories, personality, knowledge and emotion are represented within a person’s name, a single photo is full of kaleidoscopic meaning.

My photos are about slowing down enough to take one, solitary second out of a busy life to celebrate myself, my progress, this chapter, and the hope of the next one. It’s about letting my creative heart lead in my daily life, not my head.

I don’t compare my nature photography to other great photographers. Though I admire and deeply respect the works of others who’ve dedicated their lives to mastering technique and skill, that is not what inspires me.

I began taking photos because I was deeply moved by Daisaku Ikeda’s photography and underlying philosophy. He doesn’t claim to be a professional photographer. He began taking photos to commemorate experiences with others and leave something behind to encourage them.

I bring my photos to YourCreativeChord with a similar hope and intent; to inspire us to continually expand our lives by letting our true authenticity be the ultimate authority of our creative process. My photos are about seeing the world through the lens of my Greater Self (not my lesser self, ego).

I share my nature photography as a way of recognizing and celebrating our universal yet vulnerable point of human connection, and to experience the rejuvenating power of nature’s beauty within my images.

My photography is meant as an example of courageous creative exploration, as that is a prime point for me as a creator. I blog and podcast about the importance of allowing creative adventures, setting aside the theoretical mind, to allow one’s heart to express itself, unhindered by any limitation.

I’m a writer, poet and composer, but I venture into photography without my thinking hat. Instead, I bring childlike wonder and profound appreciation for nature’s astonishing allure.

I want to share this with you as a way of encouraging you to see your world as the artist within you knows it to be. When you see my photos, my hope is that it sparks your belief in your own creative vision. Enjoy the view.

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Why Should You Embrace Failure & Do Only One Thing?

7/23/2019

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GET YOUR FREE CHECKLIST: HOW TO PRIORITIZE FOR BEST RESULTS!

Yuko-En Garden, Georgetown, KY. Photo by Jenny Leigh Hodgins

by Jenny Leigh Hodgins

Prioritize Your One Thing For Greatest Impact
Gary Keller’s #1 Wall Street Journal Bestseller, The One Thing The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results offers powerfully effective advice on working toward goals. Keller suggests the power in prioritizing boils down to choosing only ONE thing to focus on at a time.

But Keller’s real gem of wisdom is his strategy behind how to select that one thing. Keller’s guidance is to choose the one task that has the most powerfully direct effect on reaching your specific goal. Plan your day, week, month, quarterly actions around this one prioritized goal.

Goodbye multi-tasking. Close out all other programs, postpone meetings, let your people know not to disturb you, shut the door, and do that one thing without interruption. That one thing has to be something that will make the greatest impact or momentum toward reaching your desired goal.

Do Things That Matter Most To You And Let The Flies Go
Once you choose one thing to focus on, know that you will have to let other things slide to complete that one thing. That’s the art of prioritizing; you don’t do every little thing, or take every call, or answer every email, like swatting flies as they appear at a picnic lunch.

Really. How much good does all your arm-waving do, anyway? Flies will always be there. Or they’ll come back. They know where to find you.

It takes adjustment to let go of tasks you’ve habitually maintained, despite how little impact they make on what’s important to you. We’re so used to being busy. But not necessarily productive on the things that matter.

Get in the habit of concentrating solely on that one thing that moves you closer to your ultimate goal. Keep your attention on that one job each hour/day/week until you complete it. Then move to the next most effective thing.

Sacrifice The Lesser Things On Your To-Do List
I love this strategy. I must confess I fall off the one-thing-wagon at times. But when I make the effort toward my most important daily task in this way, and stay the course on that one thing in front of me, I accomplish what is necessary for my success. And it makes me feel great.

I struggle with letting go of juggling an endless supply of other tasks to attend to my mission of prime concern. But I find those other things are far less meaningful or enjoyable, and definitely don’t have as much impact on my big goal as my top assignment.

Failure And Your Problems Are A Powerful Catalyst To Your Success
I recently spoke with University of Kentucky Associate Professor Ryan Hargrove, of the Department of Design and Agriculture on the creative process. Hargrove teaches metacognition and creative thinking through his class, ‘Living On The Right Side of the Brain.’

[Listen to the podcast of my interview with Hargrove on the creative process.]

Hargrove shared that creative thinking leads to successful outcomes, whether it’s a problem to solve or an inspiration for a new creative project. Through his work with students, and collaborations with creative professionals, Hargrove has found that a key aspect to creative flow is allowing for and valuing failure as part of the process.

Getting Comfortable With Being Uncomfortable
When failure is used to reflect on your way of thinking, to consider what went wrong, it often functions as the catalyst for a new approach. Hargrove says it’s important to be willing to endure the discomfort of a problem state, or a failure, as that area of awkward ambiguity or angst is where a creative solution or inspiration springs forth. Instead of being a reason to quit, failure can lead to extraordinary success.

This is due to the significant mental effort of reflection on your previous approach to the problem. Analyzing a failure results in learned lessons and knowledge, allowing fresh perspectives to emerge.

How To Use Failure As A Springboard To Success
Sticking with this process takes you past your comfort zone, to think differently than you have until this moment. Working through a problem or failure is a critical and powerful means to creativity and solutions.

So don’t worry about failures or new obstacles that arise on the way toward your goals. These allow you to expand your creative vista and reach beyond your current condition. This is the kind of energetic momentum necessary to reach your bigger goal.

It Ain’t Over Until You Decide It’s Over
Don’t get too comfortable with your success, either. Each time you reach a goal, you’ll have to start the process again from the top. For every victory gained, you’ll have the next level’s box of new, perceived restrictions to surpass.

But continuing to extend and multiply your goals will open your path to a new sense of accomplishment. Each new measure of success provides yet another shot for you to further expand yourself. You’ll only feel a plateau until you reset your goals outside that box.

The sky is the limit.

Oh, wait!

Not anymore!

Share your thoughts in the comments below about this approach to reaching your goals!

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How To Live A Life of Joyful Creativity

6/11/2019

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GET YOUR FREE DOWNLOAD: TOP 10 THINGS TO HELP YOU REACH YOUR GOALS!

University of Kentucky department of landscape architecture Associate Professor Ryan Hargrove, creative thinking, creative process, living on the right side of the brain,

University of Kentucky Associate Professor Ryan Hargrove

By Jenny Leigh Hodgins

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO PART 1 of my 2-part podcast, featuring my interview with University of Kentucky educator Ryan Hargrove, on tapping the creative process. See below for details.

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO PART 2 of my 2-part podcast, featuring my interview with University of Kentucky educator Ryan Hargrove, on nurturing creativity. See below blog for more details.

I had an insightful conversation about the creative process with Associate Professor Ryan Hargrove, of the University of Kentucky’s Department of Landscape Architecture. Hargrove teaches metacognition and creative thinking through a variety of projects, trips, interviews with creative professionals, and a class called “Living on the Right Side of the Brain.”

Hargrove’s future goals are to provide more active learning opportunities through creative reflection and association deep dives for all University of Kentucky students, including electives, co-curricular activities, trips, and long-term masters projects.

Viewing People & Creative Ideas Holistically
Hargrove’s teaching methods and views on creative thinking both educated and inspired me. His strength as a teacher of creative thinking is his prime focus on understanding the individual person. He looks at how each person learns best, digging into discovering how they think. This undertaking guides his teaching and mentoring strategies.

His inclination toward empathetic listening is refreshingly disarming. When teaching students, he takes into consideration that each person has arrived from a different path, with a unique learning speed, baggage, and skills.

Hargrove instructs with less of the theoretical, knowledge-pouring traditional manner, and more of a holistic process aimed at bringing all aspects of each individual’s strengths and weaknesses to navigate problems.

This resonates with the creative process itself, as it functions in connection with all aspects of the whole being, too.

His responses to my questions delving into best practices for tapping creativity were encouraging to me as an entrepreneur, writer, poet, composer, pianist, vocalist, and hobbyist photographer.

His viewpoint is valuable to any creative professional or anyone interested in tapping or improving creative flow. Here are some of the points from my dialogue with Hargrove that stood out as most useful to those interested in nurturing creativity.

Is Your Creativity Divinely Struck Or Consistently Disciplined?
Although inspiration can and does strike sometimes from seemingly divine intervention, the reality is that most brilliantly creative people consistently work hard at their craft. By continuously doing this disciplined work, the creative person is more able to capture ideas readily and link diverse pieces of information together in a new way.

Commit To A Way Of Seeing Life
Hargrove made the point that creativity is not an “on or off switch,” but rather a commitment to a way of seeing the world. Creative professionals typically are always open to receiving ideas for inspiration. They constantly seek out new ways of looking at life, new or different perspectives, techniques, styles and experiences.

Learn To Think Creatively Versus Knowledge Is Power
Gaining knowledge is important but is not the end all. Especially as we have access to knowledge at our fingertips with electronic gadgets, learning to think creatively is a more valuable asset. This skill leads to transformative ways to solve problems and open new creative ideas.

Adjust Yourself To The Moving Target
Successful creatives don’t have the creative process figured out. They know creativity is fluid, always changing, and that their creative flow is also morphing over time. They accept this and adjust themselves to the moving target of inspiration.

Mindset Is Your Best Skill
Successful creative people know themselves well. They know that listening to yourself, and being in alignment with your creative process is instrumental toward creative production.

Divergence Is Enlightening
Immerse yourself in new perspectives to grow. From exploring podcasts, blogs, books, doing new things like painting, dancing, cooking, new music, trying a new sport, traveling to new places, to meeting new people. Engaging in conversations, working on problems with others, or trying new experiences or things are valuable in two ways:

First, it opens you to new concepts, systems, means, and perspectives, which lead you to inspiration and being able to incorporate new interconnections of thought. This heightens your senses, and forces you out of your default, to notice new things.

Secondly, it offers the chance to ask others how they think or approach creativity or a problem, which gives you a fresh angle or fills in missing pieces. It broadens your perspective and offers new energy into a whole new network of things. Seeing something differently triggers your inspiration.

Be Open To Inspiration
Be open to the idea that a eureka! moment can come from anywhere. Creatives know that being open to inspiration means it can come from unlikely or unexpected places.

A four-year old child. An elderly man at the park. While shampooing in the shower or during a bike ride. While taking the trash out. Or from a completely unrelated conversation with a friend. Anywhere and anyone is acceptable and welcome as inspiration!

Reflection Is Where Creative Force Ignites
Taking time to reflect on the problem or time away from a creative project or daily responsibilities is a crucial form of nourishment for the creative mind. There are two kinds of downtime that are helpful to sparking inspiration:

Restful. Moments of quiet where you allow your mind to wander, or completely rest, away from stimulus. Naps, a walk in nature, reading a book, watching a movie, playing with a pet, listening to music, meditation, yoga, prayer, massage, daydreaming, or relaxing in a bath.

These are moments when you are not actively pursuing creative tasks or solutions to a problem.

Thoughtful Reflection. Taking time in nature, exercising, journaling, while actively thinking about your thinking about a problem or a creative idea. Making yourself aware of how you are approaching a problem or creative idea.

Reflection is evaluating what’s going well and what you could change to improve.

Skill of Association
The skill of association is a critical aspect of creative flow. This is the ability to absorb disparate pieces of information in an organized manner within your mind. And later, combine that information to create something new or to address a problem with a fresh approach using the incorporated new information.

Having a way to organize new ideas or perspectives is key to the skill of association. This happens when you take time to sort through your experiences and become aware of interconnections with the new information before storing it in your brain.

Asking how to organize the new idea in your head, why it’s interesting, or how it could connect to other things leads to an organizing system within your mind.

This assimilation supports your ability to feel inspired by these new and interconnected things.

Craft, Skill, Experience
Creativity requires you develop your craft or technical skills, and develop a repertoire of both life and creative experiences. The more proficient you become at your craft, the more readily you can incorporate new ideas. The more you live your life, the more ideas and experiences you’ll have to draw forth creatively.

Self-Care Habits
There is power in practicing healthy choices. But the creative life can also lead to imbalance or unhealthy habits because it can be all-consuming. When an idea strikes, other aspects of your life may easily be neglected (eating, exercise, relationships, sleep).

However, when you place top priority on consistent self-care, other aspects of your life will generally flow better. If you feel good physically, you can usually do better work.

Surround Yourself With People Who Are Better Than You
Connect with people whose skills and character you admire and who bring out your best by challenging you to grow and improve yourself. Ask people who will be brutally honest to assess your creative work.

Get Comfortable Being Uncomfortable
Seek out new challenges. Push yourself beyond your comfort zone and learn to live with ambiguity versus certainty. The discomfort of ambiguity leads to generating solutions and creative inspiration because it forces you to change your thinking.

Putting yourself in a situation where you must endure a problem state forces you to grow beyond your norm which leads you to new levels of inspiration.

Embrace Failure
Mistakes and failures are part of the creative life and are good if used to reflect on and adjust how you’re thinking about the problem or creative project.

Use failure as a learning tool to improve your creative process. Failures provide incredible growth opportunity when used to assess your approach and try new angles of thought.

The creative journey joins all aspects of your whole being, from the physical, emotional, mental to the spiritual. All your experiences are interconnected and have the potential to influence inspiration.

LISTEN TO MY Podcast Featuring
Educator Ryan Hargrove!
The podcast posts in two parts: