Do you know who owns your creativity?
Do you know who has control?
Here in the southwest, water rights are a big deal.
Who controls the water is our biggest land concern, because without water the land is worth little. Water rights here were grandfathered in before New Mexico became a state.
If you have water rights on your property, you are golden, the value of your property assured for that reason alone.
You own your water. You control your water. You can apply your water to what you determine is its best use.
The water is there for whatever you choose.
Creativity rights function the same way.
Recently, people have mentioned feeling badly that they haven’t been able to create much.
Some even worry that somehow, since they haven’t worked in their studio they’ve failed themselves, or lost their creative ability.
Commonly I hear this lament from people who’ve been through huge changes, have persevered and transformed, and now have a chance to reflect on what they’ve made happen lately.
They have been creative: but it may not look like what they had been accustomed to seeing.
Not a painting, but challenging holidays successfully navigated.
Not a pendant, but a family crisis calmed and reframed for the better.
Not a chapter finished, but a new lifestyle put in place after a health scare.
Creativity = your choice of actions in response to what happens in your life, to generate new elements in your life.
Creative energy streams through each of us.
Much like breathing and other innate functions, creativity is a process we participate in at every moment of our lives.
Like breathing, we can be aware of doing it, or not.
We can act on it effectively, or not. We can develop habits that use it healthily, or not.
And we can subconsciously limit it, or not.
What do you do with your creative energy? Do you allow it, like fresh water and air, to infuse all areas of your life?
Open to possibilities, then acting as your intuition points out an appropriate choice in this moment?
Or do you assume your creativity can only move in small, shallow breaths: a couple hours here, a morning workshop there, at a visit to your friend’s studio in a week?
Or that it can only take certain shapes: a beaded necklace here, a pair of earrings there, maybe an artists’ book next month when you take that class?
Your personal creativity is always flowing through you, like a deep artesian source, to which you have permanent water rights. You control and allocate where your creative energy flows, and you do this whether you are aware of doing it or not.
In breathing, the more conscious you are of how you breathe, how you hold your breath, how the rhythms of your breath work with your physical body’s need for oxygen, and work with your own system, the better you can use your breath to enhance everything you do.
Your job is to breathe air in and use it for physical processes.
Creativity operates the same way.
Your job is to open to this energy of innovation and generation, and use it for your life’s processes. All of them, not just the ones that happen in a workspace, or at a class.
The more aware you are that you have an endless sparkling abundance of creative energy flowing through you all the time, the easier it becomes to apply your creativity wherever it is needed: whether an art project, a family event, a personal goal, a shift in philosophy.
All of your life is made fertile by your creativity, and you have always owned your rights to this.
Do this: next time you have a few minutes alone, imagine your ability to make things happen – note the word ‘make’ – as a clean, abundant river, and your life as a broad, beautiful landscape.
See the river of your creativity sparkling and shimmering in the sun.
See all the places on your land, in your life, where your creative energy has made things happen.
Look at the things you’ve made, happen.
Creativity is in everything you’ve ever done.
You can’t not be creative.
You own the rights. Time to apply them to all of your life.