Developing your creative skills can be a great way to “self-care”...

Creativity! A little imagination can be useful in any setting from thinking outside the box when solving a problem on your corporate job to artistic expression through your fashion designs.  Getting in touch with your creative side can be a great way to take an active role in protecting your well-being and happiness. However, being creative isn’t necessarily easy for all of us. I am definitely not the creative type. Some people just have a natural affinity to creating beautiful things. I on the other hand have to put in a lot of effort into stimulating my creativity. Passion and planning have helped me a lot in that department. 

Planning allows me to outline a process for researching ideas and through this research I find tons of inspiration. Through this process I’ve identified 4 ways to get in touch with my creative side:

Give yourself permission to fail.

Everything you create doesn’t have to be perfect. Give yourself permission to create something crappy. Sometimes creating something great and useful is buried in between all of the junk you create. 

Schedule a time just for creativity.

Set aside some time to nurture your creativity. Nothing polishes a skill like consistency. Sitting around thinking about how you want to write a book won’t get you a published best-seller. Schedule some time devoted solely to generating ideas and creating results.

Finish something.

After all of the researching, planning, and brainstorming, you need to look to walk away with something. There is only so much preparing you can do. Finish something, anything.

Don’t be so hard on yourself.

Stop judging yourself so harshly. Everything won't be perfect and that is okay. Reaching for perfection can be stifling. And this is coming from a perfection driven Virgo. Worry about perfection later; for now, just finish something.

Creative inspiration can come from anywhere. Don’t be afraid to randomly write down ideas when you're out in public or doing google searches for inspiration. How do you find your creative space?