As a Creative, Your Daily Practice is your Strongest Tool

I’m working with a brilliant photographer who is redesigning her entire creative business vision. She’s moving towards offering pieces of art that reflect her inner voice, artistic purpose and personal aesthetic. This kind of career transition is more of an act of artistic reclamation, which takes an incredible amount of courage, a willingness to sit with our vulneability in order to build internal resilience in the face of our growth edges. To make this kind of transition and harness the required skills, she’s focusing on her daily practices.

The importance of maintaining daily practices for ones self (ex: routines and rituals like journaling, a morning/evening skincare routine, a morning/evening walk, connection with friends) lies in the truth that we are one whole being, moving forward in our life with a wholeness that is made up of our different parts.

As artists, our medium-specific technical craft or tools are not the only things we need to be practicing in order to stay sharp and on the cutting edge. In order to engage in true growth, we need to be in balance on a wholistic level in order to level up.

All of our life’s priorities must be in constant practice for us to truly feel a sense of fulfillment and authentic success. This is important because we ARE the tool, the channel if you will, for our creativity to flow through and reach the physical world. Our main job is to keep the tool sharp, keep the channel clear.

My client made an incredible discovery that she had been thinking of her photography as separate from her wholeness, a practice that was “for others” rather than for herself and for her creativity to flow. So now we’re in the artistic reclamation stage, and she wondered how to start developing her unique voice and artistic eye at this stage. The answer is simple: there's no right way to do it. The only thing you want to do is stay in movement.

We stay in movement (specifcally towards our vision) by focusing on our daily practices. Each day could look different from the last; for my brilliant photographer client, one day could be editing photos and working with light and color. The next day could be going out and getting a good shot. Another day could be designing her next shoot.

There are different stages of a creative process, and by simply exploring it (seeing what works, what doesn’t work) through small actions every day via your daily practice, you are inherently building the skills necessary for the long road.

If you’re like me and the thought of routine and discipline is suffocating for your free spirit and wild mind…. I hacked my way into my own daily practice by keeping my focus on the next goal that I’m disciplining myself for: once our routines are well oiled and working smoothly, it’s like riding a bike. It becomes familiar enough to return to without the worry of having completely fallen off the wagon, having completely ruined everything. It’s just what we do… and once it’s in our bones, we are free to innovate, revise, improvise. Now I can wander off my path for a bit and let my wild mind roam free, because my baseline routines are in place, tried and true. I can rely on them, and most importantly, rely on myself.

The only goal is to stay engaged with your path, continue to discover your voice and put it out in the world. Put that process on repeat, and there you have it: the blueprint to your unique creative process brought to you by your daily practices.

Learn more about my coaching programs, and how to create a collaborative support system that enables you to live your professional or artistic dream with ease and clarity! Click here to learn more.