Tips to Root, Grow and Flourish Your Creative Seeds

If you think you're born with all the creativity you'll ever have and you can't develop it further, think again—and in a different way. That's the essence of creativity as defined by renowned developmental psychologist Howard Gardner, who wrote that creativity is "the ability to create new things or do old things in new ways."

Seth Godin says being creative is pretty simple. “It’s to do something human, something generous, something that might not work. It has to be all 3 of those things. You will find creative accountants, politicians, housekeepers and engineers… Being creative is to solve interesting problems!”

You and I engage creativity every single day to solve problems and to connect seemingly unrelated information. Things happen to us now that would have been incomprehensible just a few years ago. As the pace of change increases and our world becomes more complex, what worked in the past is often ineffective. A more complex and paradoxical world requires greater flexibility and versatility to achieve the same or greater goals. It is fair to say, creativity is the lifeblood of innovation and progress.  

Creativity is not a passive process. Thinking this way is hard work. Creativity requires openness, a willingness to embrace new ideas and challenge existing patterns of thinking. It also requihres a dose of courage, the guts to take risks and overcome the fear of possible failure. Energy and passion for the subject also play a crucial role, as they foster motivation and perseverance to keep trying new creative solutions until something “works”. 

Creativity comes down to a combining inspiring “aha” moments with effort. Seth Godin explains “Creative skills are not something you’re born with, nobody is born with the ability to speak in a complete sentence or to show-up and solve problems in a way that we’re glad they showed up… we’re born naked and afraid… we learn skills because there is work to be done, and back in the day when people lifted heavy objects for a living it wasn’t seemly to whine about the fact that it’s hard to lift heavy objects- that was your job. Well, now our job is to show-up and solve interesting problems, and that requires practice.”

If you would like to cultivate your creativity and foster a fertile environment for your creative seeds to take root, grow and flourish you will find some tips below.

Tips for being more creative:

Embrace your unique voice: 

In a world filled with generic content your authenticity and originality is indispensable.

If you’re not sure what's original about you, start with your curiosity. Curiosity fuels your drive for knowledge and discovery. When you are passionately interested in something you will stay engaged even when challenged - long enough to develop, evaluate and validate your ideas fully. 

Give yourself permission to try something new, something that lights you up. Go to a restaurant you’ve never been to, and order something completely new and foreign. Go golfing or bowling for the first time ever, or go to the museum or the opera.

By stimulating your senses with brand new experiences, you are giving yourself the mental equivalent of a creative shot of adrenaline. Take time to deeply reflect on each activity and how it affects you.

As a naturally creative artist you may have been called out for your paradoxical personality. Instead of being one way or the other, creatives bring together and express the entire range of traits possible within the human experience. While this may mean we find ourselves misunderstood at times, it also means we benefit from rich insight and experiences.

Creatives are often portrayed as rebels, but we are usually people who have already learned the rules better than anyone else. Consistently creative people approach their work with a playful attitude but are able to innovate from a foundation of knowledge and shift gears when hardcore discipline is needed.

Collect Seeds - Encourage Messing Around - Play - childlike thinking. Encourage unconventional thinking: 

"Goethe has said that naiveté is the most important attribute of genius." 

Rick Rubin in his wonderful book, “The Creative Act: A Way of Being” says this, “All art is a work in progress. It’s helpful to see the piece we’re working on as an experiment. One in which we can’t predict the outcome. Whatever the result, we will receive useful information that will benefit the next experiment. If you start from the position that there is no right or wrong, no good or bad, and creativity is just free play with no rules, it’s easier to submerge yourself joyfully in the process of making things. We’re not playing to win, we’re playing to play. And ultimately, playing is fun. Perfectionism gets in the way of fun. A more skillful goal might be to find comfort in the process. To make and put out successive works with ease.” 

Give yourself permission to play. Make a collection of your ideas then take them out periodically to play with them, stretch, bend and twist them around. Your most original ideas will come after you play with your first 10 or 20 ideas. When you are really bored with the task at hand, creativity flows.

Create opportunities for daydreaming: 

Boredom encourages creative thinking because it tells the brain that the current situation or environment is lacking, which forces the brain to fill the void.

Screens of every variety prevent us from experiencing the discomfort of boredom. Go outside, sit under a tree and just stare at the clouds. Repeat the same task for a month. See what happens… let the deep intelligence of your own subconscious go to work.

Distraction is a tool: 

When you are stuck or out of creative fuel, take a break - change location - Go for a walk or take a shower - Step outside, stretch your legs, and enjoy the fresh air as you stroll around your neighborhood. Studies show that creative thinking improves while walking, even if you’re only pacing back and forth.

Play a game - sleep/exercise/rest - a creative person balances long periods of focused attention towards his or her work with longer than normal rest periods. They exhibit a high degree of self-awareness when it comes to their energy levels, turning themselves off to replenish their creative tanks. 

Give yourself an “artist date” (go by yourself to a park or museum). Travel and novel environments or experiences are wonderful sources of inspiration and renewal. 

Remember to return to your task - don’t allow pleasant distractions to keep you from your goal.

Dare!

Get out of your comfort zone - Fear and creativity - disruption and innovation, walk hand in hand. Practice challenging yourself - challenging the status quo. Challenge the rules and conventional norms. Every time you show up and allow yourself to be seen despite feeling fear, your nervous system learns, “I can survive this”. Each time you face discomfort or challenge and choose to push through you strengthen brain resilience circuits - just like building muscle.

Recognize that you will never have all the information at the beginning of a creative project. You will gather new information and learning as you go, and need to be able to react and adapt based on these new findings. Flexibility and versatility are key to building confidence.

Welcome Doubt:

Doubt is actually a good thing. Any time you are in doubt, you are actually making your project or idea better. By constantly pivoting and questioning it, it’s being strengthened. Without objectivity, we cannot be honest with ourselves which means we fail to detect our limitations and make the most of our strengths.

According to Seth Godin “imposter syndrome is a symptom that we are leading because leaders are doing something that’s never been done before and so of course you will feel like an imposter, because you are one! Who can guarantee something is going to work? Not you, not anyone. If you come with good intent, acknowledge that what you do has never been done before and acknowledge that you will try anyway? That’s a generous act.” Never stop doubting, because it means that the hunt for answers and solutions is always on.

Diversity:

Surround yourself with diversity - Create an enriched and stimulating environment:

Make your work area inviting. Take a class, Join a club or a critique group - Find three other people and meet regularly- once a week on Zoom. Hold each other to account. There is an organic fluidity to conversation that enables new ideas to emerge more easily. Your friend might say something that sparks your creative process, or something surprisingly brilliant might spontaneously come out of your mouth, and leave you baffled at your own genius.

Create restrictions - Re-conceptualize the problem: 

Take a step back to see your ideas from a different angle. Revisit the problem from the very beginning. Is there a different way to think about it? Is there something you missed?

Seth Godin puts it this way, “Creativity is about solving interesting problems, and problems are interesting because they have constraints. realise that you cannot think outside the box, but you can think along the edges of the box. The box is something to lever and learn against. Look for the edges of the box and don’t deny the boundaries! “

Let go of perfection: 

Seth Godin explains, “A lifetime of brainwashing has taught us that work is about measurable results, that failure is fatal, and that we should be sure that the recipe is proven before we begin.” He adds, “Saying you have writer’s block is like saying that unless you have a guarantee something will work, or that something will be good, you won’t even try. By speaking up, putting things forward, blogging every day, and engaging in your practice every day, that’s how you see the lie of writer’s block” 

Love your mistakes:

Embrace failure as a stepping stone - Persevere and continue to push the boundaries: 

Failure is learning on your way to mastery. Creative process by its nature involves figuring out all the things that don’t work on your way to figuring out the things that do. You can’t have it both ways… You can’t say, ‘I want to change things, I want to lead!’ and then say, ‘I never want to be wrong, and I never want to fail…’ Being able to detach yourself from your work, to critique or even tear it apart, is an essential skill.  

Practice, practice, practice: 

Emphasize process not product: 

It's just as important to know how to isolate and withdraw from the world as it is to get out into it, exchange ideas, and interact with others. To be creative and become an expert, you must spend many hours practicing and developing your skills, researching, and exploring ideas—largely in isolation from the happenings of the world.

Consistency and persistence pay off - I agree completely with Seth Godin’s assessment that “It’s insulting to call a professional talented. She’s skilled, first and foremost. Many people have talent, but only a few care enough to show up fully, to earn their skill. Skill is rarer than talent. Skill is earned. Skill is available to anyone who cares enough.” 

Time: 

Accept small chunks of time if that’s all you can manage. 

Since you can’t schedule a moment of inspiration or a brilliant idea, your daily work routine and approach might hold you back from coming up with a revolutionary solution that makes processes easier or gives you a much better result! Seth Godin says, “If you want to change your story, change your actions first. When we choose to act a certain way, our mind can’t help but rework our narrative to make those actions become coherent. We become what we do.”

Extend time for projects - Be patient. It is too easy to crush a delicate idea. Taking the time to let an idea grow from a little flower to a fruit might just be the thing the world needs at that moment.

Do 10% more - Brian Lucas, an associate professor of organizational behavior at Cornell University, teaches his students the value of sticking with something: He calls it the “10 Percent Rule.” Through his research, he has found that people tend to underestimate how creative they can be when they’re working on a task. They “leave ideas on the table because they feel like they’re done,” he said. But when study participants keep at a task past when they think they are finished, they come up with more surprising thoughts.

Generosity: 

A Mindset of Abundance - sharing ideas leads to more creativity, more value. Sharing ideas is key. Even if it is tempting to keep them locked up, it stunts their growth. And worst of all, the opportunity is missed to make them even better, more valuable. You never know if someone from a completely different background with different experiences can bring a whole new perspective to an idea. Creating is hard work. Vulnerably sharing your own experiences, successes and failures, gives others permission to keep confronting their own challenges.

Shift your focus from self-serving motives to making meaningful contributions: 



When you value connection over perfection you prioritize engagement and genuine relationships. Seth Godin says, “To Be of Service - Isn’t that what we’re here to do? To do work we’re proud of. To put ourselves on the hook. To find the contribution we’re capable of. The only way to be on this journey is to begin. But there isn’t a guarantee. In fact, most of what we seek to do will not work. But our intent—the intent of being of service, of making things better, of building something that matters—is an essential part of the pattern. Because most of us, most of the time, act without intent.” 

Prioritizing creativity makes you better equipped to adapt to any challenges you encounter without getting knocked down by an unfamiliar problem. A more complex and paradoxical world requires greater flexibility and versatility to achieve the same or greater goals. Creative practice builds confidence, skill and can be the cornerstone of sustainable creative success.  

Creativity requires openness, a willingness to embrace new ideas and challenge existing patterns of thinking. It also requires a dose of courage, the guts to take risks and overcome the fear of possible failure. Energy and passion for the subject also play a crucial role, as they foster motivation and perseverance to keep trying new creative solutions until something “works”. 

Whether you’re an established artist seeking new horizons or a budding creative looking to elevate your work, I hope I have inspired you with tips you can use to enhance your own creativity. When you paint with passion, you ignite your flames and inspire others to do the same.

Perhaps I can invite you to join my artistic “circle,” where I can generously share all I know to support your creative development. Don't hesitate to contact me if you want my mentorship, guidance, and advice in exploring your artistic path. It makes me happy to share my insights and my knowledge with you.

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 I welcome the opportunity for connection, conversation, cooperation, collaboration, and commissions. 

Live heARTfully,

Susan Convery

Sources:

https://www.perplexity.ai/search/10-creativity-tips-uHgoFU7UR72JG7avcp9UNQ?0=r

https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/ten-tips-for-cultivating-creativity/

https://www.verywellmind.com/the-most-unusual-psychological-tricks-to-boost-your-creativity-4022442

https://pakwired.com/10-tips-boost-creativity/

https://www.industriainnovations.com/post/10-creativity-tips-from-our-designers

https://jessielder.com/blog/10-ways-to-spark-creativity

https://sidlee.com/en/stories/2020/09/10-creative-tips

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/10-tips-simply-creative-kate-campbell/

https://www.domestika.org/en/blog/10193-10-tips-to-become-a-successful-creative

https://www.denverhealthmedicalplan.org/blog/10-psychological-tricks-boost-creativity

https://www.exactpi.nl/en/blog/10-tips-creativity-boosting/

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/well/creativity-work-ideas.html

https://www.thrive4lifewellbeingcentre.co.uk/blog/10-powerful-ways-to-boost-your-creativity/

https://www.nunamae.com/en/blogs/info/10-astuces-pour-developper-sa-creativite

https://www.makingsandmusings.com/post/10-tips-to-start-the-year-creatively

https://fs.blog/knowledge-project-podcast/seth-godin/

https://effectivemind.com/7-things-we-can-learn-from-seth-godin-about-creativity/

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Quote:

“Living life as an artist is a practice.

You are either engaging in the practice

or you’re not.

It makes no sense to say you’re not good at it.

It’s like saying, “I’m not good at being a monk.”

You are either living as a monk or you’re not.

We tend to think of the artist’s work as the output.

The real work of the artist

is a way of being in the world.”

 

― Rick Rubin, The Creative Act: A Way of Being

Sketchbook Prompt:



Take out a “seed” from your idea collection and play with it in your sketchbook. Try simplifying it to find the “essence” of the idea.  What is it about that idea that attracts you?  How could you make more out of it?

Title: Croatian Kerfluffle

Media: Watercolor

Size: 36"x 28"

Frame: Gold

Price:$1111

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