Simple Ways To Live A Beautiful & Creative Life (No Matter Who You Are)

I am convinced that creativity and living a beautiful life go hand in hand.

I live a beautifully creative life but that hasn’t always been the case, and my day to day life is far from perfect. I gave up creativity as a young adult without thinking much of it. Maybe it was because my art teacher in college hinted I should take photography instead while I was drawing, maybe because I figured adults do serious essential things with their day, or maybe I was too in pain to risk connecting with my heart (you cannot create without delving deep into your heart space).

Here is how I started to paint my life with creativity again which naturally led to a life that is beautiful, even with longterm health struggles.

Every Kind of Beautiful, by Charlie Woolley

Slow down

In a fast paced culture, it is so hard to find the space to feel inspired. Remember boredom from your youth? That thing that was gobbled up by apple products and Netflix! Boredom was a birth place for fun ideas and dreamy projects. We have to make space to stop again. Whether its reading a good novel in a quiet room with a candle, taking a walk (while your phone stays in your pocket), spending time soaking up nature (a hugeeee one for me!) or playing scrabble (you have no idea how much poetry I write in between scrabble turns). I also find poetry books to be such a gift because it can only be enjoyed slowly.

Play

Buying a few cheap art supplies (even if you wouldn’t call yourself an artist), learning an instrument or getting in the garden with some flowers may just be what your soul needs! Creating space in your day, or even once a week, to play around with different art mediums does us the world of good (I actually don’t do this one enough believe it or not). Let yourself play. The end result can literally be thrown away never to be seen by another soul, if you wish. Remember how fun it was to just scribble and mark and paint and sing when you were younger, before you formed an idea of what was ‘good’.

Decorating a space of your home is such a beautiful form of creativity. Here is one of my brand new boho wall banners in my bedroom.

Be Intentional

One of my favourite things to do is decorate the table and mantle piece with candles and pretty trinkets and vases of flowers. You hold magic in your fingertips to make a simple mealtime or evening snuggled on the sofa into a dreamy memory. Or buy some flowers from your local market or even Aldi and arrange them all lovely in a vase. Arranging flowers is so fun and really creative! There are so many ways to present beautiful blooms!

One of our ‘Wild Posy’ mini dried flower bouquets that is perfect for gifting or a treat for your dining table or mantle piece.

Time To Laugh

The hallmark of a really effective brainstorming is an abundance of genuine and heartfelt laughter. (1) Aswell as laughter being a beautiful healing gift for our mental health, it also is super helpful for our creativity. I’m not even going to pretend I understand how or why but I know from experience that the more I’m laughing, the more I tend to create beautiful moments in my life. So gather your sunshine-like-people, watching your favourite belly-laugh-shows (US Office anyone?), spend time with your animals and play all the games you can get your hands on (my families current favourite: Unstable Unicorns).

I recently got chickens and had no idea how much laughter would enter my life along with these little feathered babies!

Talk Kindly To Yourself

Self hatred (in any measure at all) and creativity are not friends. We talk to yourselves without realising it all the time! Naturally most of us probably are quite mean to ourselves and beat ourselves up over the smallest of things. To live a creative, beautiful life we must all start to talk kindly to ourselves. A helpful practise is to have a photograph of yourself when you were a child somewhere close by, as we are naturally more gentle with children. Try talking to yourself like you would your child or yourself when you were a child, especially when doing something brave and new!! Creativity in all its forms requires a huge amount of courage and risk, and gentleness, kindness and unconditional love are vital for you to feel safe enough to try it.

Our brand new self kindness gift box perfect for a Summer birthday or a friend going through a tough time.

Even if you find yourself in unkind circumstances and life is feeling super tough, creativity enables us to still make the everyday beautiful even in small ways. I believe in you— you are creative! Honestly, if I (who shut creativity away for years) can rediscover my creative self and find life beautiful even though it is still tough, then I have hope that anyone can!

Creativity whispers: you can still make a beautiful life with the circumstances in your hands.

References

Psychology Today, The Power of Humor in Ideation and Creativity: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-tao-innovation/201406/the-power-humor-in-ideation-and-creativity