Alive with Creativity

[This is a guest post from the radiant Jamie Ridler]

Creativity is how I know myself. It’s how I celebrate life. It’s my practice.

I’ve always been a creative bean – from a toddler dancing to a drama major to a Nia teacher to an entrepreneur creating Jamie Ridler Studios.  Instrumental in my creative life has been the discovery that my creativity is like my personality: both introverted and extroverted.

There’s the time when I’m quietly but completely absorbed in my creative life, when I’m sitting with a journal or a camera or a paintbrush, when I’m thinking and percolating and exploring, when I’m inspired and taking in the world around me, when I’m dancing. If I don’t have this creative time, I get all squirrelly and disconnected. I skim the surface of my life, getting caught up in the little details of today without connecting them to what matters beneath. But when I’m creating, I’m listening. When I’m creating, I’m grounded. Creativity shows me who I am.

Then there’s the time when I send my creative energy out into the world to play. This is the part of me that loves collaboration and creative conversations, the part of me that loves theatre and events. In the past, I’ve nourished this part of me through performing, directing and teaching. Currently I send my creativity out through blogging, podcasting, workshops and growing a business I love. When I’m not expressing my creativity out in the world, I feel explosive and frustrated and moody. It’s like filling and filling and filling the well but never pouring out anything at all! I find it painful and quite frankly, it makes me not very nice to be around.

My word for this year isn’t really a word but it expresses this creative duality through a symbol and a movement. Imagine the infinity symbol as an energy map, with one side belonging to me and the other belonging to the universe. On my side, I receive at the top, drawing in inspiration, energy, whatever the Universe is sending me in. Then I bring it down, grounding it in myself, in the present, in my circumstance. From there, I transform that energy into a creation and send it out into the world. On the other side of the symbol, the Universe receives it and does what it will, eventually sending more back to me. This is a living process, like something you documented in science class. This flow, this current, this is what keeps me creatively, vivaciously alive. This is my creative practice and it brings me to life.

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Jamie Ridler is a creative living coach and the director of Jamie Ridler Studios. She helps women find the confidence and courage to discover and express their creative spirit, whether that means exploring their artistic self or bringing more of their creative capacity to their life and business. Her new e-course, Sparkles: Bring Your Creativity to Life in 5 Minutes (or less!) a Day launches March 22nd – and Susannah’s one of the teachers!

[photos: top by Susannah; bottom by Jamie]