Creativity/Preparation Triggers

So I've been writing a lot about Becoming a Life Change Artist:  Seven Creative Skills to Reinvent Yourself at Any Stage of Life by Fred Mandell, Ph.D. & Kathleen Jordan, Ph.D.  The book has exercises scattered throughout.  One of the "seven skills" is preparing the brain to undertake creative work and the authors have some interesting ideas about how preparation activities can trigger creativity and new ideas.  They believe that engaging regularly in a variety of preparation practices, "we create the new pathways in the brain that will lead to creative life changes."

My mandala, Monday morning

There is an entire appendix devoted to a list of these type of preparation activities, many of which appeal to me.  The exercise at the end of the preparation chapter involves choosing one practice to do every day for 21 days.  It is recommended that you share this commitment with someone who is a part of your living or working environment and that you take note of any feelings or thoughts that arise during this practice.   At the end of 14 days you choose a second activity (perhaps a very different kind from your first choice) to practice for another 21 days.  (The whole idea being that if you do something for 21 days it becomes a habit.)

As my first practice, I decided to commit to coloring every day for 21 days!  That may strike some as an odd choice for a creativity trigger, but just a few days before I finished this chapter I had been telling someone that I thought I should color every day -- that I thought it would be good therapy for me right now.  So I took this exercise as my prompt to do just that.

Fiona's mandala, Monday morning

Fiona's (2nd) mandala, Tuesday morning

My mandala, Tuesday morning

I have a friend who does amazing mandalas and birth pictures and who was kind (she's one of the most welcoming people I've ever met) enough to send me a few b & w mandalas via e-mail a month or so again.  When I chose coloring as my first practice, I decided that I would start with her mandalas.  I'd like to make this time as peaceful as possible and have it be a very slow process.  Fiona, my 6 1/2 year-old, has been working with me each morning this week.

Wednesday morning