LEARNING TO BE CREATIVE

by Jenny Leigh Hodgins 

Listen to the Podcast 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 write, compose, play piano, improvise, sing, garden, decorate, take photos, present, tweak a lesson for my students in mid-stream, and more. The point is that I know how to be creative.  Ideas, thoughts, patterns, melodies, words, drama, and humor burst forth from me as an unstoppable fountain.

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 lose our way sometimes, due to pressure from our daily responsibilities.

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.

​Enjoy your process and Viva La Vie Boheme!

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