Clearing a Path to Be Creative

You know how there are some days when you feel as if you are surrounded by muddle and chaos but you just can't summon up the strength to do anything about it and other days when you set to and get on with sorting it all out.

Today was one of the days I felt like sorting it all out. I felt I'd been given some bonus hours as I was meant to be going swimming with my son, but he didn't feel well enough to go. By that time, I'd made an excellent start of clearing out my In Tray and Pending Tray which had both been full to overflowing for months. In fact, I found some useful things in there which I didn't know I had.

I was delighted to see empty space there for a change, and now that I've bought several more box files, I actually have somewhere to put the things I need to keep.

I also managed to deal with most of our shredding mountain, another job that nobody seemed to want to tackle. Heartened by these two small victories, I feel better able to get back to sorting out my study, which has been my big holiday task. I'm starting to identify things I can get rid of to make way for the things I really do need to keep and want to keep.

All this might sound like a purely physical pursuit, but I happened to be listening to a CD by Sonia Choquette today which talked about the need to get rid of what you don't need or love or find beautiful to make way for all the new things that are going to come into your life, whether they be relationships or job opportunities or objects. Clearing out is also a spiritual activity and one that relates to our creativity.

We sometimes talk about being 'stifled'. We can be stifled creatively if we don't leave ourselves they physical and mental space in our lives to exercise our imagination and our creativity. Cramming every moment of our lives with work and activities, leaving no space or silence to listen to our inner voices stifles our self-expression. How can we express ourselves if we haven't ever listened to what it is we need to express?

So I am happy to persevere with my mission to clear a pathway to be creative. Perhaps you could take a step towards this too, whether it's deleting hundreds of e-mails from your in-box, getting rid of some old newspapers, or forging ten minutes to sit and be silent with your thoughts.