In a recent conversation with my husband, I admitted, “For a long time, I didn’t think I was pretty. I didn’t think I was strong or capable. And these low confidence thoughts affected my ability to create, to believe that I can create, even though I love it.”
Over the last few years, I’ve worked hard to find self love, to appreciate who I am, to see the beauty and talent within me. Yes, it’s an everyday journey. I don’t think I’ll ever be perfect at self love and recognizing my worth. But I work at it. And as I do, my creativity thrives a little more, and I become more accepting of my creativity, more ready to embrace what I have to offer the world, and more willing to put myself out there.
The Beginner’s Guide to Self Love for the Creative
I believe self love is important to creativity. When we take care of ourselves and recognize our worth and divine potential, we are more willing to put ourselves out there and embrace the creativity that lives inside us.
You have a creative passion. Or maybe you want to be more creative, but you’re still looking for that passion. Wherever you’re at on your creative journey, you’re ready to embrace a form of creativity. But maybe confidence is stopping you. Maybe you have a fear of failure. Maybe you feel you’re not good enough or strong enough. Maybe you worry about your lack of skill or knowledge in a particular field. Maybe you wonder what others will think. Will they call you an imposter? Will they label you a fraud?
Whatever your worry about your creativity, you need some motivation, encouragement, and love to help you work toward that creative dream.
Here is my guide to help you as you begin your journey of self love, to help you better embrace your creativity.
Recognize Your Beauty
As I’ve done more to embrace and recognize my own beauty, both inside and outside beauty, I have felt more confident in other areas of my life. This may seem unimportant to helping you embrace your creativity. But how we perceive our beauty can have a great impact on other areas of our lives, including our belief in our ability to create.
I’m not saying you need to fully embrace makeup and gussy up all the time, or become a fashionista and wear the most flattering clothes 24/7. If that’s your thing, great. If not, my advice: Don’t become something you’re not or don’t want to be. Instead, find what makes you feel your beauty and embrace it.
Embrace Your Sense of Style
Do you have a sense of style that you feel you can’t fully embrace? I do. I’ve always been afraid to dress a certain way or wear makeup a certain way because of what others might say. I look at magazines or those lovely images on Pinterest and think, “I would love to wear that,” but I don’t go for it, because who am I to dress like that, right?
Wrong. Why do we let what others might do or say affect us so much? Chances are more likely that no one will think ill of you for embracing your sense of style. On the contrary, I have found that as I wear what I want to wear and do my makeup the way I want to do it, I become more comfortable and happy with myself, and others recognize the confidence I have from embracing my likes, my beauty, and my love for how I look.
Take Care of Yourself
Eat well. Treat your skin. Take care of those muscle aches and pains. Sleep. Drink plenty of water. Move your body. Do the things. (Not all at once.) And if none of these are on your daily to-do list at the moment, start out small. Do one every day, and then add another. But do them. Take care of yourself and the things your body needs.
We take care of the things we value. If we have a prized guitar, for example, we might dust and polish it and tune it and do whatever else you do to ensure your guitar remains beautiful and in great working condition.
Why do we not do this for ourselves? We should. Our bodies and minds are our first creative vessels. We need to ensure that our bodies remain healthy and clean and polished and in great working condition. We do this through taking care of our skin, muscles, and bones. We do this through eating well and drinking water and moving our bodies. We do this through exercising our minds and getting enough rest and filling our brains with good things. All these things make us feel better anyway, so let’s do them and take care of ourselves.
Become Comfortable with You
Easier said than done, right? Especially if your confidence in yourself is super low. You may not like sitting with your thoughts. You may not talk nicely to yourself. You may struggle with liking yourself. This can be for many reasons, of course. I don’t know your history or what you have been through. But this I want you to know, you are amazing. You are who you’re supposed to be. You’re beautiful. You’re strong. You can be and do anything.
It’s possible that you may have some obstacles to overcome to become more comfortable with you. Maybe you need to make some changes. That is good. That’s what life is all about–changes, progression, becoming better. Embrace that. What a great opportunity you have. And as you take opportunities to change, tell yourself that you are beautiful, over and over and over again until you believe it. I hope you come to believe it. Because it’s true.
Recognize Your Strength
Strength comes in many forms. Maybe the form that comes to mind first is through muscles. But to really recognize your strength is to recognize more than just your strong arms and legs; it is to recognize your physical, mental, and spiritual strength. As you recognize your strength in these areas, you’ll come to better appreciate who you are and the strength you have to embrace your creativity.
Embrace Movement
It’s true that when you exercise, your body releases endorphins, which create that happy feeling or sense of wellbeing. And when your happiness levels are up, so are your levels of motivation and inspiration.
I’m not saying go practice for a marathon. If that’s not your thing, don’t do it. Find a form of creative movement that you enjoy. Maybe it’s dance or weightlifting or Zumba or playing Tennis. My favorite form of movement is yoga, so I do my best to get in a yoga practice at least five times a week. If you’d like to try a practice with me, check out one of my free videos. Or if you’re looking for something else, try searching YouTube, which has tons of great videos to help you move your body.
Increase in Learning
Strengthen your mind through more learning. No, you don’t need to go back to school, but do find something–a book, an online course, a podcast–to help expand your mind.
Just like our bodies, our brains need to be exercised, and you exercise your mind through gaining more knowledge and challenging your thinking skills. You don’t need to spend a million minutes a day on developing your brain strength. Just a few minutes a day are perfect to keep your brain reflexes in top shape. Figure out what ways of learning you like best and go for it. If you’re looking for suggestions, check out my favorite books, try a lesson from Skillshare, or download a brain exercise app like Impulse.
Become More in Touch with Your Spirit
Whatever you believe, there is something to be said about becoming more in touch with your inner self. As you look more inward and become more familiar with your divine self, you start to see your inner strength and your individual and divine worth.
I believe we are all divine beings, children of a God who loves us and wants us to see what He sees in us. One way I have come to be more in touch with my spirit is to become closer to God through prayer and studying His word.
You can become more in touch with your spirit in your own way through journaling, meditating, yoga, studying philosophy, studying your religious texts, etc. The goal of these exercises is to help you become more in tune with your inner self and recognize your inner strength.
Recognize Your Ability
You have amazing gifts, talents, and abilities that are uniquely your own because only you can do them in the way you do them. Sometimes we get so caught up in the game of comparison that we don’t recognize our own abilities because we don’t do them the same as so and so. But that’s good. We weren’t meant or built to be the same. We were built to be different, to think differently and to create differently.
Recognizing your unique and individual ability is important to your creativity so you can move past the game of comparison and enjoy the act of creating in your own way.
These are my three steps to helping you recognize your ability:
1. Embrace Your Creativity–Do It
Just do it. Create. Start creating. Let yourself get lost in it, without thinking about what others think or how others are doing it. Create for the sake of creating. Create without worry of anyone ever seeing your creation. Create in secret if you need. Just create.
We can’t recognize our ability if we don’t use that ability. So create.
2. See Your Good
Once you’ve created your creation, judge your work. BUT, no negative thoughts. Only good ones. What do you see (or hear or sense) that you like? What feels good about your creation? Why do you like it?
If the negative thoughts start arising, turn them into positive ones. For example:
Negative thought: It’s crooked.
New positive thought: It has unique, natural, and beautiful lines.
Negative thought: It sounds high-pitched.
New positive thought: It has a unique high sound that calls attention to the piece.
Maybe write these thoughts in a journal. There’s something magical about writing words on paper that makes them feel more concrete and meaningful. And writing positive thoughts on paper will stick more deeply in your mind.
3. Note Where You Can Do Better and Rejoice in Growth Opportunities
We don’t like to see where we have fallen short, but it helps in our creativity and growth. And as I mentioned above, life is about growth and progression.
Once you have created, take note of where you can do better. However, be careful of over judging. This exercise is not meant to bring you down with loads of negativity. That’s why we did the “see the good” exercise first. This exercise is about seeing a mistake and considering how you might fix it or do better next time.
Since I am a writer, I might write a chapter of my book as my creation. Once I’ve gone over my “see the good” exercise, I will then go through the chapter and fix punctuation errors, sentences that don’t flow, conversations that need tightening up, or words that need more or less pizzaz.
Conclusion
You are an amazing and beautiful creator, even if you can’t see it yet. But with these tips and exercises, my hope is that you’ll begin to recognize your beauty, strength, and ability so that you can better embrace your creativity with more confidence and self love.
Keep creating and keep working toward recognizing and embracing the beautiful and divine you. You have so much to offer yourself and the world through your creativity.