Your creativity is your imagination-at-play, and your Inner Artist is closely connected to your Inner Child. Your Inner Child and Inner Artist love and feel inspired by freedom, delight, fun, magic! They feel restrained by duty, routine and structure.
Although routine, structure and logic help us manage our adult life and responsibilities, they numb our emotions, senses and creativity.
Research on play tells us that unstructured and spontaneous play enhances these essential components of creativity:
- innovative thinking
- cognitive flexibility
- risk-taking
Play promotes neuroplasticity – the brain’s ability to re-organize and form new neural connections.
Reflect on this:
1) When was the last time you were engaged in a playful creative activity (a hobby, an interest, or a game?
2) List 10 things you enjoy doing (riding a bike, baking pies, roller-skating, singing, drawing, etc).
From the list above, write down 2 things that can be this week’s play activities for your Inner Child and Inner Artist.
3) What were your favourite playful activities in childhood?
Choose one of them that you can do this week by yourself or with your child, if you have children.
What type of creative play activities do you secretly dream about, but do not allow yourself to explore?
4) Finish this sentence: “If I had five other lives to live, I would be a …
Select one imaginary life and live it this week (if you imagined yourself as a musician, can you pick a guitar?”)
Don’t forget to have fun and play, and remember:
“We don’t stop playing because we grow old… we grow old because we stop playing.” ~ George Bernard Shaw