Successful creatives stress less today!

Creatives are always on an adventure and in an ever-present place of wonder, constantly searching for new things to discover. On this journey, successful creatives stress less when they have strategies to manage their amazing and often scattered minds.

I was inspired to share some tips on a topic I deal with myself in the hope it helps other creatives.  It sent me down yet another rabbit warren but you know the story – it happens!

Learning can be overwhelming at times, especially if too much is taken in at once. But we don’t want to miss out either – do we?

New things are not only healthy for our creative brains but inspire enormous fun too!  Learning new things benefits our personal growth, can bring joy and improve our lives by leaps and bounds.  We simply need to learn how to harness our hunger for learning to use it to its full potential.  But what do we do with all we collect along the way?  It can become a maze and overwhelm at time.  Well, it does for me anyway.

As we discover all the wonderful inspiration or assets that cross our paths, the feeling of overwhelm can be crippling at times.  We can blame a lot on procrastination for the crippling feeling but procrastination can be a sign of an unsorted mind too full of new, valuable information.  It has to find a way to utilise and archive these magnificent gems.  How we do that is an experience that needs to be tailored to us individually.  As creatives, we have similar struggles and behaviours at times but are unique nonetheless.

If you are a hungry e-Learner like me,  you soak up a lot! We want the best of the best information and the fastest route to it too!

There can lay the problem.  In our zest for researching our passions, we can take in so many new things, lacking enough time or mind-space to implement.  To make matters more challenging, we may feel the fear of wasting invested time if we skip these wonderful new opportunities to progress and grow in our lives, business or persons.  We need to pace ourselves carefully.

Have you experienced the feeling of learning so much at once? Perhaps delt you’ve with an inner-voice of doubt questioning something like, “Hey, how are you going to do ALL of this!?” It is likely you can if you set boundaries that help you navigate everything well.

To combat this feeling of inadequacy, fear of missing out or overwhelm, these are a few tips that help me. Hopefully, they’ll help you too.

• Meditate on what is important to you and why.

• Know your maingoals and manage your mini-goals.

• Know how to document & archive ideas and tasks

• Creatively Pray

• Pace yourself enough to take in chunks you can handle.

• Play!

1. Meditate on what matters the most.

This can better determine your motivations and sometimes help you eliminate what is unnecessary. Successful creatives stress less when they know their plans well. Most of us forget to spend enough time in this area but it is most important.

2. Assess your goals

Know your main goals. If like me you have millions of mini-goals, you need to know your main goals FIRST!  I have to remind myself to manage almost EVERY hour, let alone in general.  Managing and organising your agenda in a way that works for you is important as a creative.  I find that without this it freezes my creativity. I keep a bullet journal as one of my main tools but have others that help me manage better. The journal is only effective when I use it consistently. It helps me to prioritize my focus especially when everything does not fit!

3. Know how to document & archive ideas and tasks

Get it all out of your head. Take organised notes. Watch out for random lists (I fall for this all the time). Slow down to make sure you are noting what you believe is important. Also go through this material regularly and purge that beast!

4. Creative Prayer

If you are a person of faith, you can pray for direction and peace over every situation.  I am a great believer in the effectiveness of prayer.  I don’t believe it is mind over matter.  I believe prayer is the vehicle to God’s hands moving on what matters.  It can be the miracle of peace when the overwhelm is overpowering and the answers and open doors where we thought there was no way.  Successful creatives stress less with God at their sides for sure.

In addition to the obvious, God love to dream with you.  He is the expert on creation – He IS the CREATOR!  Tell Him your dreams and He will multiply what you never thought possible.  Dreaming with God is the most exciting part of my journey as a creator.  All things are possible through Christ.

[bctt tweet=” #christianquotes Answered prayer isn’t mind over matter. It’s God’s hand on what matters! #ChristianFaith #faith” username=”artkayleenwest”]

5. Pace yourself enough to take in chunks you can handle.

You know yourself better than anyone.  You can feel it when you are going too fast or be putting pressure on yourself to go faster.  Either way, it is important to know what is reasonable to take onboard at any one time.  Life has its unpredictabilities and we can be stubborn in accepting that, especially if we are bursting to get on with the next thing.  Be kinder to yourself (preaching to the preacher here!) and know that multi-tasking can, in fact, slow you down.

6. Remember to PLAY!

Successful creatives stress less when they preserve the wonder of discovery and PLAY! When we get too serious about our craft we can lose sight of the joy that captured us at the beginning.  Be serious about playing and experimenting.  Creativity is a place where we can be most free unless we let our adultness get in the way.

Yes, above ALL master fun and PLAY!

[bctt tweet=”#QUOTE: Creatives succeed when #PLAY is the MASTER & organisation a servant #goodadvice #successful #artists  #arttips ” username=”artkayleenwest”]Stress management for Creative Minds

Kayleen