Reigniting Your Creative Fire: No NASA Budget Required — Part I: The Creator in You

A cardboard box. A kid. And a creative fire that never actually went out. This one’s for anyone who forgot they were a creator.

 

Part 1: The Creator in You

Remembering: The Space of Imagination

When I was a young kid, I loved playing this simple game I invented. I would lay on the ground and scooch inside a big cardboard box (yes, a cardboard box ) then excitedly transform into an astronaut with my very own spaceship. The top of the box would become my control panel: screen, buttons, levers, switches. I would talk myself through lift off and launch myself into space. Imagining the sun, the planets, the stars and universes I would see.

I loved exploring my imagination in this way. Vibrant, sensory, creative, present and alive with just a simple box for inspiration. I loved feeling the rush of excitement and exploration as I ventured into the flow of possibility and limitless potential. No NASA budget required.

And that was who I was back then and how I experienced life: creatively, playfully, adventurously and a little bit mischievous, which blessedly got me through a difficult, tumultuous childhood. I saw potential and opportunities everywhere and if I had more tools then, the many things I would’ve created by now! Then time passed and I grew up.

And somewhere along the way, I lost that connection with that imaginative side of myself. The optimism. The possibilities. My sense of play. Evaporated. Disappeared. And trauma and wounding took its place and made me invisible, even to myself. Ironically, the box I used for play became the box I now felt stuck in.

The Loss

I think many of us experience this kind of disconnection. For many, it happens from deep wounding that tends to fragment the inner self. For others, it’s a lack of nurturing born from over-focusing on everything external — the needs of today: responsibilities, obligations, achievements, other people’s expectations, rather than inner nurturing and growth. And for others, it’s a bit of both.

And unfortunately it’s a loss we often accept unconsciously, not understanding the toll it takes on how we show up in the world. That’s what happened to me. Years of unhealed wounds from childhood, from my career and life wore down my connection to myself and my own creative light so much so, that I became invisible — even to myself.

That disconnection caused me to lose trust in myself and life. I no longer felt like the box (and really life) was like cardboard: malleable, pliable, workable. Now it felt like solid, rooted oak. Unmovable. Unbendable. And I no longer felt I had the freedom to create or move freely and instead felt like a victim of circumstances.

That loss caused a complete change in my persona. Anxiety eventually replaced trust, conformity replaced expression, perfectionism replaced play, and limitation replaced possibility. And the box I so enjoyed playing with became the prison I felt stuck within.

That’s the slow shift that happens to many when we lose connection with our inner creative fire. Our ability to tap into potential and possibilities. We eventually become rigid, inflexible, and hard. We stop believing we have the ability to create what we want. That opportunities and possibilities even exist for us. Or that we can flow with the creative current already moving through life.

And that causes our senses to become narrower. We go from an expanded, abundant view of possibilities to a smaller, narrower, contracted view. And with that, we box ourselves in and begin to see less. Fewer options. Fewer doors. And we begin to see ourselves as victims of life rather than its architects. Rather than its creators.

Life is Inherently Creative — You Are Creative

A creative life is an amplified life. It’s a bigger life, a happier life, an expanded life, and a hell of a lot more interesting life. Living in this manner—continually and stubbornly bringing forth the jewels that are hidden within you—is a fine art, in and of itself. – Elizabeth Gilbert, Big Magic

And that is a tragedy. Because life is inherently creative. In all its seasons and cycles, life is constantly churning, expanding and evolving. Constantly expanding into potential and possibilities through evolution, creativity, adaptation. Scientists have only discovered a fraction of Earth’s biodiversity which means nature is constantly creating. And so are you.

Creativity is not just reserved for artists, musicians, poets, actresses, inventors, problem-solvers or nature itself. It lives everywhere in all of us, even in the micro levels. This sentence you’re reading was created by me — the structure, the words, the rhythm. And the thoughts flowing through you now as you read this (or not lol) — those are yours. You created them.

Every thought. Every word. Every choice. All are acts of creation. Small, continuous, ever-present.

You never stop creating. Creativity is never separate from possibility. They move together. Where creativity exists, possibility exists. Where possibility exists, potential exists. They are intertwined.

So when we lose access to our creative fire, we lose access to all three. And that’s what we forget or stop noticing. That we have this power at all. And somewhere along the way, that’s what I forgot too.

To create is to bring something into existence that did not previously exist. And when you think of creativity in that way, it’s a constant activity. We are constantly given the ability to access new potentials, new possibilities, new information, new ingredients from which to create. From which to bring things into existence. But when we forget that. When we forget this constant, creative motion, life begins to feel muted, colorless and predictable, like we’re just making do with what we’ve been given rather than proactively creating what we want. And one is a more powerful truth than the other.

The key is to become conscious that we have this creative power. It already exists. We just need to reconnect with ourselves and learn how to access it again. And here’s where I find it again.

Part 2 coming soon! We go deeper into how to access your creative fire, the art of play, improv, and five reporters named Bob. To be continued. ⭐

Love, Carmen