(1,065 words, 6 min read)
Do you feel drained?
Like all your imagination and creative life-blood has been sucked right out of you?
It’s likely a familiar pit stop for everyone on a creative journey.
Whether you’re a writer, painter, musician, or any other type of artist or creator, these tips can help entice the muse to return to your side to whisper sweet nothings in your ear again, and breathe new life into you and your craft.
1. Have a Tea (or Coffee) Break With Someone
Have a discussion with a friend, bounce ideas off a colleague, or ask someone for their advice or opinion. You could even poll your community or audience if appropriate.
Engaging others in conversation will draw upon the perspectives and experiences of someone other than yourself, and inspire new ideas you may not have uncovered on your own.
2. Zen Out
Meditation can help calm and focus your mind, reduce stress, and increase self-awareness.
Combined with the suspension of judgement, these can help reveal new angles on old ideas, open your mind to new ideas, and improve imagination and creativity.
3. Catch Some Zzzs
Napping helps your brain assimilate information and formulate new and novel solutions to problems.
Set your mind a challenge right before you drift off, and you may well find an unexpected solution when you awaken.
Naps also improve mood and memory, lower blood pressure and provide stress relief, all of which are physiological effects that promote an open mind and enhance creativity.
4. Smell the Roses
Nature has been inspiring artists since the advent of cave paintings!
Besides providing us with visual, aural and textural inspiration, being around nature also increases self-esteem and productivity, improves mood and helps you think better.
Other benefits of spending time in nature include stress relief, improved healing and recovery, and reduced anxiety, depression, frustration, mental fatigue and distress.
5. Take a Hike
Walking has been proven to significantly boost creative inspiration.
This study showed that the act of walking itself, even without being outdoors, significantly improved creativity not only during the walk but afterwards as well.
While walking outdoors produced the best results, they weren’t much higher compared to walking indoors, and indoor walking still showed improvements over sitting outdoors.
So go on, take a nice long walk.
6. Have a Relaxing Bath
Or a rejuvenating shower. This is a classic for a reason. Taking care of our bodies refreshes our minds as well. It’s a fool-proof way to get new ideas and inspiration to strike.
You could even do this one right after #5 in consecutive order. And follow it right up with #7 and #8 for a relaxing morning or evening!
7. Bury Your Nose
… In a good book!
Fiction, non-fiction, fantasy, sci-fi, autobiography, history, commentary, nature… Whatever your jam, reading will inject new ideas and plant beautiful seeds of imagination into your brain.
You could even pick up a beloved old friend from your childhood. I recently revisited a compendium of Enid Blyton books I had loved as a child, and found myself as thoroughly enchanted as I remember my kid self being, with my desire to write reignited.
8. Rock Out
Tap into the evocative power of music.
Explore a stranger’s playlists. Seek out new music in a genre you don’t usually gravitate to, or revisit old favourites to stir up memories and emotions.
Use movie or video game scores and soundtracks to help you set a tone, or evoke a specific mood or atmosphere and ignite your imagination.
9. Make Sweet Music
Why not move beyond just listening to music, and learn how to play?
Learning a musical instrument has documented results on your brain structure and executive function.
This means it actually changes the anatomy of your brain, improving memory, information processing, decision-making and problem solving. It even improves dexterity and boosts energy.
So go ahead and pick up the guitar, piano, ukulele, violin, kalimba or drums… Or take some vocal lessons if that strikes more of a chord with you.
10. Clean It Up
Cleaning and organising exercises a different part of your brain, giving your creative mind a chance to rest and make some new connections behind the scenes.
Decluttering and refreshing a space also changes up the energy flow in a space, and can have a measured effect on your mental clarity and improve idea generation.
11. Try Something New
Learn a new skill or hobby, or get back into an old one you haven’t touched in a while.
Using your hands and playing with something in a different medium will break the monotony, get your brain thinking about things in a new way, and may help spark some unexpected ideas.
Some practical and fun crafts to try your hand at include knitting, crochet, weaving, sewing, embroidery, woodworking, polymer clay sculpting, and bookmaking.
Or if you’d prefer something more on the traditional and visual arts side of things: drawing, painting, calligraphy, photography, and screen printing are just a few of the many options you could try.
12. Be a Tourist in Your Hometown
How many of us never explore beyond the places we stop by along on our daily routines?
New experiences and perspectives are the quickest pathway to getting inspired.
So why not embark on a little adventure right at home? Explore a flea market on a lively street you’ve never stopped by, visit a museum, or check out a new activity or tourist attraction that you’ve never been to.
13. Broaden Your Horizons
When was the last time you visited a new country?
Travel exposes you to new and unfamiliar cultures, cuisines, ways of life, landscapes and even climates.
Meeting new people and exploring architecture, geography, history, and cuisines in an unknown environment takes you out of your comfort zone, and can help you rediscover forms of creativity and adaptability you may have forgotten you could tap into.
Being immersed in different scenery and surroundings can also stir inner reflection and generate feelings of wonder, connection, gratitude and appreciation.
I hope you found at least a couple of these tips helpful to reinvigorate and reinspire you on your creative journey.
And remember that, as it is in breathing, inspiration and expression is cyclical.
So if your creative tank seems to have run dry, it’s likely a good time to step away and go get a refill with one or more of these ideas.
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