Just over two years ago the company I work for brought in a outside vendor to run a workshop on creativity. I found it interesting because I don’t exactly work in a creative industry. At least not for my day job. The idea around it was if people practice creativity on a daily basis they will begin to look at everyday things differently. We worked in groups throughout the week, learning about ourselves as well as our coworkers and at the end of it all I have to say I really did start looking at things differently.
There are numerous studies around creativity and the human mind, and I am by no means a expert but I will share with you my experiences. We were all asked to pick one creative thing to do on a daily basis. They provided us a list of ideas and we could chose from them. These three stood out to me the most:
- Morning Pages, by Julia Cameron – The concept of morning pages has been around for a while now. I first learned about them at a writing conference a couple of years ago and for a while I was pretty consistent. The idea is to write something, anything really every morning. I used to do three handwritten pages a day and I found it really got things flowing for me.
- An Apple a Day- This isn’t the apple you eat. This is the apple you draw… every day. The idea around this one is that you draw a apply everyday for thirty days, then at the end you have a record of how it has evolved overtime.
- A Picture a Day – Similar to the apple concept but different. This was inspired by a artist who choses a color for a period of time and takes a picture every day of that color. So for instance if you chose green then you need to find one green item everyday for a month to photograph.
In the end I decided on the apple. It was a very neat experience. Not only did I see how my apple changed but my outlook each day was a little different. Some days I didn’t want to mess with the apple, others it was something I worked hard on trying to perfect it. (Spoiler alert, even after a month I couldn’t draw a decent apple) Many of us don’t have jobs that provide us the luxury of drawing each day, or writing for that matter. So it’s up to us to practice creativity. You never know how a little effort every day will change your outlook on life. With a little imagination, anything is possible.
Happy Reading.
-Nikki Rome