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Here are some classic strategies for ‘unblocking creativity’:

receive nurturance
respond
be wild
begin
protect your time
stay with it
protect your creative life
craft your real work
lay out nourishment for the creative life*

I used to hold hope in such strategies. It was great fun exploring them as I busily built a creative self. But now it’s different. I found out that there’s a screamingly simple way to open the door to creativity.

The two obstacles to creativity are thinking one knows what it is, and wanting it. Wanting to ‘be creative’ is the safest strategy I know to ensure you will never be creative. Just like wanting to be wideawake will ensure dreaminess.

Wild wideawakeness and creativity both lie beyond the reach of belief and believer.

My strategy is too simple to sell. It wouldn’t fill a ‘how-to’ book:

I simply stop, I sit down, and I shut up.

Great silence never fails to reset its own natural state:  radical creativity.

~

*From Clarissa Pinkola Estes wonderful book, Women who Run with the Wolves