Authentic Creativity is Self-Love
6 Jul
Charlotte Rains-Dixon is in the house to share her creative wisdom!
Maybe this looks like you, most days:
–You schedule a time for your creativity and follow through with it.
–You get right to the page (or canvas), without pausing to surf the Internet or check email.
–You write in flow, not second-guessing yourself, not stopping to correct, just gloriously writing.
Or does this look more like you? 
–You write a time for your creativity session on the calendar, but somehow when the time comes mopping the kitchen floor becomes urgent.
–You force yourself to the page, but when you get there you do anything but write—you check email, Facebook, decide to research the origin of cement.
–Finally, with a few minutes left, you start writing. But that first sentence doesn’t look so good. So you go back and tinker with it. By the time your writing session is over, you’ve gotten no words on the page at all.
The first examples illustrate authentic creativity, which I believe is an expression of self-love.
The second examples illustrate procrastination, which shows us what a lack of self-love looks like.
Not allowing yourself the freedom to create authentically is a self-destructive act. If you have the deep desire to create but don’t act on it, you’re destroying—in advance—the contribution you could make to the world.
Think about the magnitude of that last sentence.
Now imagine the great works of art that are lost to the world every day because of a lack of confidence. Because of a lack of self-love.
But here’s the wonderful opposite to that tale: if you allow yourself the profound pleasure of creating, you fall in love with the world.
My great passion is writing novels, and sometimes, in the busyness of doing other writing projects, I let this passion lapse for a week or so. But I firmly guide myself back to it because I know what will happen: my whole worldview will change.
After a novel writing session, I’m suddenly in love with the world. Everything looks different—the trees look greener, the sky looks bluer, the people walking down the sidewalk make my heart burst with joy.
I’ve fallen in love with the world.
And that is because I’m in love with myself.
Because you can’t love the world until you love yourself.
And let me tell you, falling in love with the world is the best feeling in the world. And this is what expressing yourself creatively does—it leads you to more of both self-love and being in love with the world, a constant flow of it.
All you have to do is tap into it.
How?
The best way to do it is simply to begin.
Allow yourself to create fabulously bad work or even amazingly good work. Just do it. Beginning is the hardest part.
Start now.
Charlotte Rains-Dixon is a writer and writing coach whose first novel, Emma Jean’s Bad Behavior, will be published in February of 2013. Visit her website, www.charlotterinasdixon.com for hundreds of articles on writing, creativity, and inspiration. And be sure to check our her upcoming one-night teleclass on Authenticity + Creativity.
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