Creating space for creativity can help in multidimensional ways — in your business, personal life and help you develop a healthier relationship to the screen so you can switch off social media more often.
Creativity can be negatively affected by social media, due to your executive attention being impacted by all the multitasking you do when you are online. Research shows that over time, high device use impacts creativity and our ability to do deep thinking, so it’s important to create space to dream, imagine and develop your relationship with your artistry and creativity.
To access your creativity, you should decrease the use of your logical brain (which is very stimulated by social media) and increase the use of the imaginative part of your brain (stimulated by things like music, meditation, play, dancing, etc.) to enter what some call ‘the flow state’ — a great place for creativity to flourish.
Make creativity a requirement for your wellbeing, create a space in your life for this, otherwise, you are likely to get distracted by clients, emails, news, notifications … all the things. Much like going to the gym to keep fit requires time, routine, and accountability, so does creativity.
‘We have both fast creativity and slow creativity,’ says Daniel Kahneman, a well-known psychologist and Nobel peace prize winner.
Fast creativity is where you can think, write, or create quickly without needing to research; you can do it off the top of your head.
Slow creativity is where practice, research, or learning is required to support creativity.
You use fast thinking and creativity more when you create on your devices — responding to texts and comments, making content and posting on the fly. One of the benefits of creating space for slow creativity is that it helps over time to develop fast creativity. If you’re intentional with your creative time, if you operate less automatically and more consciously, you’ll help your ability to do deep thinking over time.
Winning!
I was invited to speak to a coaching group recently and what helps their community break through their blocks around social media for their businesses and marketing is creative time and play.
Creating sacred, creative time in their diaries for content, stepping away from the screen, playing with their ideas and dancing with their inner spark. Getting out the paints, meditating, dancing, writing poetry, music, and having fun.
This helps you get unstuck and access your creative spark. Stepping away from the screen and switch off social media by doing something that makes your soul happy, that helps you find the fun in life again, allowing your creativity to shine.
Here are some ways I create space to get creative:
- Writing poems and stories.
- Using oracle cards to tap into messages from the Universe.
- Finding a tree I like and meditating/ daydreaming under it.
- Going for long walks in nature, snoozing in the hammock.
- Turning up the music, dancing and drumming.
- Taking a salt bath with essential oils.
Anything that makes me feel recharged, reconnected in my body, and puts me back in touch with myself and gets me to switch off social.
How about you — how will you create space to play today?
By Katie Brockhurst
Katie is a social media consultant and digital wellbeing coach and author of the Social Media For A New Age books. An award winning content creator, with over twenty years’ experience in the field. She works with non-fiction authors to help them manage their online presence successfully, in a way that feels good. In 2020, she studied digital wellbeing (ICF/Dip) to answer growing concerns around our mental health and wellbeing when using social media. To find out more about Katie’s work subscribe to her free podcast and articles https://www.socialmediaforanewage.substack.com
