& what to do when you're in it

It's finally Spring in the Northern Hemisphere, but is it Spring in your Creative Process? Anytime we begin something new like a creative project or like looking for a new career, home, or partner, there is a process. It's how nature creates anything. If we really study how creativity and how the natural world work, we notice that there is a method to it. We can fight this flow or we can allow it to be the natural and intuitive process that it is.  

Where have you been feeling stuck or a transition in your life or your art? It doesn't matter if it's big or small, this is where you can apply this process.

In my podcast Flow into Authenticity, and on my YouTube Channel, I talk about the four stages of the Creative Process. Sometimes I describe this Flow Method as the four seasons. Sometimes they correspond to the seasons outside, but many times they do not. Here is a little overview of my Flow Method of Creativity:

Finding Inspiration
This is the long Winter of your creative season when you will go inside of yourself to explore, daydream, and nurture your intuition and curiosity to find the seeds of what wants to be born in the next season of your life or art.

Letting Go of Assumptions
In the Spring, as you nurture the seeds you’ve planted and see new growth begin, you’ll also let go of the old season and challenge limiting beliefs about what is possible.

Open up to Possibilities
In the Summer, you begin to blossom and you are now open to all the possibilities that you haven’t seen before and begin putting the pieces together of all that you've learned in the past two seasons. 

Workin’ It!
In the Fall it’s time to harvest all the work that you’ve done and take the big and small steps to share your gifts with the world! You will be challenged to take big risks and step into the new season of your life or art.

I've been discussing the Winter season here and on the podcast a lot. I shared about letting go of what you've known before and about going inward to find the seed of your desire that wants to bloom in the next season. But what about the Spring Season? 

Once you've allowed yourself to let go inward and find the inspiration for what wants to come next, it's time to explore. Spring is exciting! It’s all about hope and the beginning of a new thing. Now is the time to begin slowly coming out of the dreaming and resting season and into exploration. But be easeful about it. What ideas have been generated in your inspiration season? Take those ideas and begin exploring them. Take a class, explore new materials, and find new combinations of ideas. Stay very open and don’t narrow your focus too fast or else you will miss all of the possibilities coming to you in the future that will add to the uniqueness of your end product. Although learning new things can take a lot of cognitive brain power, try to keep the logical mind at bay during this season and keep tapping into your intuition.

A huge part of this stage in the process is letting go of assumptions or expectations. Anytime we begin something new, the inner critic (which is our brain just trying to keep us safe) will tell us why we can’t do it. It will create thoughts like…”I can’t do that because_____” or “No one will buy that art because _____” . Or, our Inner Critic will tell us that we need to do things a certain way. “You should do something more practical like _____”.

Just like that little sprout has to break through that tough seed and reach towards the light during springtime, you need to hold fast to what your intuition is guiding you toward in order to break out of those old beliefs and create something new. What your life and art are becoming are unique and beautiful. You can foster its growth by believing in it and nurturing it.

What to do in your Creative Spring:

• Do a ton of exploration based on your inspiration! Take a class to learn new skills or explore materials and ideas on your own.

• Write down all of the assumptions that your brain is telling you about why you can’t create what you want to. Are those assumptions really true? 

• Find a role model who has done something similar or has created something unique and read about their history. What blocks came up for them and how did they get passed them?

This information is the intellectual property of Esther Loopstra ©2023 - If you share please tag or credit Esther Loopstra. Any commercial use in part or whole requires written permission by the creator.