What Happens When We're Not Creative?
Express yourself or perish🖼️
“Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.”
―Albert Einstein
For Creative Highly Sensitive People, making art (whatever that might mean for you) is critical to our well-being.
This topic has been floating around in my mind as I’ve recently neglected my artistic practices (save for the collage shown above) and it’s beginning to show up in unexpected places:
A grumpy retort when it wasn’t warranted
General listlessness and insomnia
Coming up dry when considering ideas for a copywriting gig
A sense of loss while trying to find meaning in the world
One of the significant ways that we, as Creative HSPs, connect with the world and ourselves is through creativity. When we’re feeling heavy about the state of society, sad about a break-up, excited about a new love, or worried about a friend who’s going through a hard time, drawing, painting, singing, photography, or writing poetry brings us out of our heads and into another dimension.
And, when we’re not able to “turn pain into art” (as Monica wrote about recently)? We find ourselves at odds with most everything.
In my opinion, one of our gifts is expressing social justice concerns as well as our own complex and convoluted ideas through imagination and creativity. And, you know, sometimes the “weirder” the idea, the better. I’ve learned that, sometimes, I’ve got to trust the process and not overthink my ideas.
Without creativity, without art, without writing, without photography, without dance, without music? We’re just robots marching around the Earth performing our worldly duties.
It’s the ability to be creative — to make something new and different and poetic — that drives creative people (specifically Creative Highly Sensitives) to be more.
So, if you’re like me and you’ve put creativity on the back burner these days - this is your prompt to get out your notebook, your paints, your guitar, your pen - and start making something that speaks to your very soul - if for no other reason than because you can.
Until Next Time, HSP Creative — Stay Real.
Lisa
P.S. Interested in becoming a freelance copywriter? If so, Part #2 of my Spark🌿series “Build Your HSP-Friendly Copywriting Business” is now available. This 5-part series is free for paid subscribers. Soon, I will turn these lessons into a digital guide which will be available for purchase. Stay tuned for details.
I get really grouchy and impatient when I don't spend time doing creative stuff.
A resource I really like is the Zentangle method. It's easy to do and gives me a much-needed vacation into my image-oriented mind. If you do a search you'll find lots of resources.
Creativity is such an outlet for us! I know that I need time for it. Sometimes that means taking my camera out and capturing what I notice in nature, other times it's writing or trying a new food recipe. It's good to fully embrace this part of ourselves!