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Week 5
A Year of Mindfulness: 52 Weeks of Focus
(Follow the link to join anytime. It’s never too late to be mindful.)
It’s hard to believe we are already five weeks into the year. Tomorrow is the last day of January! How is YOUR Year of Mindfulness going? I am thankful that I’ve taken on this project, because it is making me accountable to myself and all of you who’ve joined me. Last week I was in Vegas for work – (sorry for my absence around the net and on Twitter). Ironically, in our week of noticing breath, what I noticed the most was the smell of cigarette smoke – YUCK! I spent a bit of time in the casinos in the evening with co-workers and all I could smell upon returning to my room was that nasty smell. Mindful indeed and so grateful that I don’t have to live with that on a regular basis!
This week’s topic is creativity. Honestly, I will likely struggle. I’m not particularly artistic and my brain is much more analytical than anything else. However, I know that creativity is vitally important and I try to cultivate it as much as I can. Here are some things I like to do:
- Write – I strive to do creative writing whenever possible.
- Cook – I love to throw things together without the use of a recipe, and lately my newest venture (although not cooking- per se) is green smoothies (I’ll let you know when I come up with a home run!)
- Make jewelry – I used to do this a lot. Lately its taken a back seat to so many other things.
- Creative lettering – I don’t enjoy drawing, but I do like lettering and sometimes create quote cards and random acts of kindness cards to give away.
This week, as you continue in your Year of Mindfulness, think about your own creativity – or lack thereof. How can you cultivate it? Where is it lacking? What is stopping you? What are you running or hiding from in regard to creativity? Set a goal to explore your creativity fully during the next week. Determine the level at which you’d like to cultivate it throughout the year so creativity doesn’t escape you! I promise to do the same.
As always, synchronicities abound and as I was composing this post (with the topic predetermined in 2010), I read today’s prompt from A Year of Living Your Yoga by Judith Lasater.
Every asana is about opening.
Today when you practice, find a new part of your body that is opening in each asana, even during a forward bend that seems to be about closing.
Aha! Creativity! Yoga teaches us so much if we only listen to our bodies!
Have a blessed week as we enter the second month of the year!
I love this week’s mindful52, I have so much fun creating new recipes, and crocheting:-) I love artwork, and enjoy drawing:-) Enjoy week five!!!
Nameste:-)
Love it! I just bought a HUGE bag of spinach yesterday so I could make green smoothies. Love them with peaches
and was hoping that eating better would help lift this funk. I think it’s ok to admit where we feel like we’re not ‘talented’ and just give ourselves permission to play. ..sometimes the play time shows us that we’re more creative than we think we are!
I am working hard to write a blog every day and I’m finding this practice is really making it easier. Creativity breeds more creativity. I’m also seeing things to take pictures of everywhere as well. It’s been fantastic!
Hi Heather! I’ve been chewing on your post since it went up. I have given creativity a larger space in my life lately, as I am discovering again these days.
I used to believe I was not creative, but I remember drawing little women anywhere and everywhere, I remember journalling since I was 13 years old, I remember little things here and there. I shut down this part of me for a while but I’ve opened up again.
Creativity is not about having your paintings displayed in an art gallery, creativity comes in all shapes and forms. It can be doodling in the margins, come up with a new recipe and experimenting in the kitchen, it can be finding solutions to a problem, it can be in the sequencing of asanas, it can be found anywhere
All you have to do is open up and be willing to see
Never thought about it so openly, E, but your right! Thank you. NOT being very creative is only a lie my analytical brain tells me. Creativity is as much my birthright as anyone elses. Thank you for this insight! We are all beautiful creative beings!