CPR for your Creative Being

My happy place is when I am photographing storms in Cape Town, and I apologise to those badly affected - because I am not trying to make light of it. I stood there in the pouring rain and a joy came over me as I experienced the power of nature, not just photographed it, heard the roar of the waves, tasted the salt, felt the wetness in the air, loved the dark brooding. I took the time to BE human, and I was deeply restored.

Question…

Can I cultivate a state of inner creativity that will enable me to become more mindful, become more curious about life; increase my creativity and problem-solving abilities, increase my sense of wellbeing and become a person that brims over with new and helpful ideas? How?

The answer is a clear yes.

What has all this to do with photography? (because I am writing to photographers)

It’s been bugging me for years, this thing about becoming more creative. Because I have known for a long time that this is the key to “seeing with new eyes” (my slogan for the PhotoCoach courses). 

And it came to me that the answer is in the word “Being.”  And being indicates a state and not an action, a way of thinking, a way of training the emotions to harness the power of creativity. We are human beings before we are human “doings” and this is important. We want to be both at once. We don’t take the time to be, and become, we have to “do” first in order to compete and prove ourselves. 

How do I become more of a Creative “Being” then?

I want to point to three possible ways of achieving an increased state of Creative Being.

1. Slowing down. This fast paced world is crazy at the moment in its hyperactivity, elections, new governments, change and noise. Banging of drums. Human “doings.” Politics and other failed methods of attempts for power and rule over others. People bombed for expediency, John Wayne masculinity,  riding our horses into the enemy camp to prove that action speaks louder than words. Madness and the error of compulsion to prove ourselves right; to prove ourselves better; to show that we have what it takes - and in the case of photographers, to prove that we see the best and are the bees’ knees. 

When in fact life should not be about that at all. It should be about the moments, the closeness to nature and of accepting that we are not about conquest but about living in an aura of peace and of creativity.

Slow down, you move too fast, you want to make the morning last now. You know that song? Sing it often. 
 

2 . Becoming more curious.  Many of us are shutting down a little. We’ve lost that love for life because survival has dominated our thinking. And our survival has to do with competing against others and no longer competing with others.

When we have a love for life, it can never last in this setting. The background is the shouting of human doings in our ears, it has to be in the sounds of silence where deep calls to deep. Where our senses are heightened and we begin to wonder, to adventure, to feel the call, that quiet inner voice that pulls us to look deeper.

Becoming more curious calls us to shed the fear, the guilt and the shame and walk a path that few have trodden, with our camera strapped to the side, to wander away and not into to the madding crowd of the drummers with worn out philosophies - but into a new world of discovery where “wonder” is childlike and and we return to our roots and a defining joy. 
 

3. Becoming mindful. I know, it’s a cliche and perhaps a little worn at the edges; the thing is, mindfulness is absolutely necessary if we are to increase our Creativity of Being.

At the moment many are driven to create and their agenda:  “Likes” on social media. What? Can this ridiculous state of affairs be true? I’m afraid so. Attention spans become increasingly short as we know we have one chance to be seen, because the average time a human spends on a social media photograph is a couple of measly seconds. And we are built-in people pleasers and give a “like” or even a “love” in the time it takes to sneeze before we move onto the next person and repeat the process: all the while knowing that this constant scrolling is doing bad things to the thought processes and depth of thought (and truthfulness) is no longer a thing to be valued in the least.

And so becoming mindful is the reverse. Writing a longer story is vital. Standing, staring and allowing the scene to enter the soul is now a therapy. Slowing down the madness, standing still and taking in the scene before the action as important as breathing is for the lungs.

Welcome to Creative Being.