Source Needed

It’s hard to remember that we’re all in different places in our lives. Some of us have found the right path for ourselves and are doing everything we can to make it work. Others are still figuring things out. The important thing to remember is that we all have this infinite potential inside us and if we offer more encouragement than judgment we might help one another reach our destination sooner.

Think about it.

It’s one thing to know how to help yourself prioritize your creative whims or how to reach out to a friend to give her a hand. But how do we, as individuals, encourage members of the creative community? The task sounds daunting, especially when we open the definition of community up to include people we either don’t know so well or maybe we have never even met.

Still, supporting that larger community is an important part of our individual growth. Here are a few ideas to get you started:

Donate Cash: Let’s get this one out of the way first thing. Donating money is certainly a fine way (but not the only way!) to support creatives, especially larger groups. With sites like Kickstarter, it’s easy to help out a group in financial need. Also consider donating to local arts centers like libraries, museums, schools, and theatres.

Donate Goods/Materials: Before you throw something in the trash, be kind to the earth and the community by looking for someone who might be able to use those items. Some organizations, like St. Jude’s Ranch for Children, collect used greeting cards, which they then reuse and sell to fund their programs. Try listing items on your local Freecycle site and you’ll be surprised what other people may be looking for to finish a project.

Organize or Host a Creative Event: I’ve recently joined a writing group and it has been a great encouragement to me to realize that I’m not alone in my struggles. If you can’t find an existing event or group to join, consider starting your own! It could be a book club, quilting circle, cookie bake or just an opportunity to get together and chat about your projects.

Promote: Today, everyone seems to be online. A great way to show support is to help spread the word. Share the creative’s online presence with yours. Like their Facebook page, retweet a link to their blog, and recommend the Etsy shop to your friends. And don’t limit that support to online – tell your friends, recommend artists you appreciate to coworkers, or take a pal to an in-person event.

Purchase: If you can afford to, support the creative community when you shop. They need your support much more than the corner big box! If money is tight, consider bartering – if you sew and a friend crochets, trade one of your adorable bags for one of her cozy hats. By gifting items (or even services – what about giving a certificate for guitar lessons from a local musician?), you not only put a little money in the creator’s pocket but you also introduce their work to someone new. Not to mention the gift recipient will be delighted by the thought you put into choosing something unique for them.

Participate: Don’t underestimate the value of your participation as a contribution to the creative community. It doesn’t necessarily require a lot of time or money to offer support. By showing up, sharing ideas, or giving a little encouragement, you are adding to the community in an important way. Writers need readers. Thinkers need listeners. We all benefit from an extra set of eyes or ears. The addition of your voice may be exactly what keeps someone from giving up when they struggle or feeling alone in their celebrations.

These are just a few of the ways you can help the larger creative community. What other ideas do you have?

The last two weeks here at Girlyfight have been full of great tips on how to nurture creativity for yourself and your friends. Some of our amazing community members have offered helpful advice on ways they take care of their creative passions, as well as ways to cheer your friends on as they travel their own creative paths.

We hope you have found these suggestions and ideas useful, and hope you will continue to join us as we embark on our last week of CiT. This week’s theme focuses on ways we can nurture creativity within our respective communities. Are you part of a writing group or a crafting group that gets together occasionally to make pretty things? Maybe you are a part of a small online community such as Girlyfight where you are being connected to lots of other aspiring creatives like yourself who could use a boost from a friendly acquaintance.

Sometimes, what we all need most is just to know that we aren’t alone in this process, and to hear kind words and encouragement every now and again. We’ll take this week to explore ways we can help each other be and do better, offer a bit of inspiration, and give you a chance to share your creative projects with the other awesome women in the Girlyfight community. Not to mention, we’ll also be sharing an informative guest post written by the lovely Emily Suess.

We hope you’ll join us and make this final week of CiT the best yet!

Just one simple example of a Kindness Jar

Today, we wanted to share with you a really fun and simple idea that we found via Pinterest awhile back. We’ve adapted this project to fit the mission of CiT, and we’re sure you can further tweak it to fit your needs. So, as we have been doing research for ways to help nurture creativity for our friends and family, we have found that support and encouragement is at the tip-top of the list of ways we can help.

But, what if you can’t always be there to offer a kind word or lend a hand? The Answer: A Kindness Jar! A Kindness Jar is, very simply, a jar that is filled with pieces of paper that have encouraging words you’ve written down.

You can use a brand new mason jar or an empty jar you have at home and spruce it up with a good cleaning. If jars aren’t your thing, you can achieve the same results by using a nice box or even a pretty bowl. You can also use a cloth or paper bag of some sort and can decorate accordingly. The bag idea is a great option if you have to mail your kindness project to a friend.

You can also opt to tweak the paper you use. It can be as simple as ripped pieces of plain white paper or you can head over to your local craft store and find a few pieces of stationary that have a pattern your friend might really enjoy.

Kind words written out on decorative note cards - get creative!

As for the words, that is also up for interpretation; just be sure that they are encouraging words that will help your friend find the confidence or inspiration they need to get things done. You can write 20-25, or more, reasons why you love your friend. Examples for this idea could be something simple such as, “You are kind and thoughtful” or “You have a rich imagination that makes your work so interesting to read/see/watch.”  I had a friend make me something like a kindness box many, many years ago and she filled it with cards that said all the things she liked most about me – from my smile to my kind heart. It has been my go-to when I’m feeling not so great about myself.

Inspirational quotes typed out on card-stock. Just one possibility of hundreds!

If you don’t want to get quite so personal, you can find a handful or two of inspirational quotes (Pinterest is a great resource for this exercise) and write those down. If your friend has a favorite writer or artist, you could make them specific to that person. You can do a combination of quotes and personal thoughts. The combinations are endless, but the goal is just to inspire and show how much you care.

Lastly, you can keep your jar simple and just fill it up with pieces of paper, or you can opt to spruce it up a wee bit. You can add a pretty picture and glue or tape it inside the back of the jar as an added visual treat. It could be a sweet picture of you and your friend or a quote you love. You can paint on the jar or find tasteful stickers to use. You can fancy up the jar lid with a personalized cover you created on your computer. Again, plenty of opportunities to really make this idea yours.

We hope this to-do project has been as inspiring for you as it has been for us. We can’t wait to make loads of these for friends throughout the year.

If you choose to make one for someone you care about, we’d love to see it and hear how you personalized it for your friend or family member. Happy crafting!

We hope at least some of you have seen the Holstee Manifesto in poster form. We’ve even posted it right here as a POW! awhile back. Well, this is their manifesto brought to life and within these very brief couple of minutes, one can see the power of sharing your dream, your passion, your spark with others. We hope this offers a small bit of encouragement to seek connection or offer connection to someone you know who might need it.

Enjoy!

And, when you get a minute, go check out what the folks at HOLSTEE are all about.

Via Pinterest ~ Source needed

We all need a little help now and then, it’s just not always so easy to know when or how to ask for that help. As I was doing research for this post, I found that there were very few articles that discussed how adults can help their friends or family achieve their creative goals; most of what I found related to how parents and educators can help nurture creativity in young children (which is equally as important!).

Some of the articles I found did offer basic advice on how friends can help friends achieve general goals like going back to school or starting a business, but I wasn’t able to find much in the way of support for creative endeavors. So, we’re even more excited to be able to share with you some of the ideas we’ve come up with to help you either ask for help from friends or to help those you know that are ready to get serious about a project or path they’ve neglected for too long.

1. Be a sounding board.

Sometimes, the best thing we can do for each other is listen. Brainstorming and talking things out is an incredibly useful way to bring an idea to life. Talking allows you to break down the pros and cons and lets you mold and shape the initial concept into something manageable and concrete. Choose a friend who is willing and able to set aside an hour or two to sit with you and deconstruct your idea until you have the beginnings of a plan that lets you move forward. BE a friend who is willing and able to take an hour or two out of your schedule to listen to a friend who needs to brainstorm.

2. Support

Support comes in all shapes in sizes. A few of months ago, Stacia wrote a great post on what it feels like when you put your art out into the world and the people who should get it, don’t. The take-away from that post was that the people we care about may not get what we’re doing, but they can still be there for us by providing encouragement and an occasional “I believe in you!” to show they are standing by us.  You may also opt to offer support you that is more tangible in nature. If your friend has kids, you can offer to babysit once an awhile so she can take a class, or take an hour or two just to go somewhere and write or paint or think. You can look for a workshop that might complement the work they are doing and offer to tag along. If the project she is working on requires audience participation if you will, offer to lend a hand if you’re able.  Find a way to support that works best for both of you. The best way to figure out what works best is simply to reach out and ask.

3. Play

Creativity and fun go together pretty darn well. Maybe all you and your friend need is to get out and do something enjoyable for a change of pace. Plan something relaxing like an outdoor picnic, a girl’s night out complete with dinner and dancing, a fun night in with movies and a pot luck dinner, or a low-key crafting session where the goal is just to make fun stuff without all the pressure of perfection. The goal here is to distract the mind from all the must-do in order to revive the spirit and refocus on tasks with fresh perspective.

Have you ever helped a friend reconnect with their creative passions? Have you had the good fortune of having a friend or family member help you during your creative journey?

We’d love to hear more about your experiences and your ideas for other ways we can help nurture creativity for others.

We hope you’re enjoying CiT so far! Last week, Stacia shared some really fun and helpful tools we can use to focus on nurturing the creativity within us. With that in mind, we’re going to move one step further and work on helping the people we care most about embrace and reconnect with their creative side.

Just as we have discussed in a number of our posts over the last few months, choosing to find time for your creative passions is not easy. We know how often life gets in the way of doing the stuff our heart yearns to do, and we think that with a little help from our friends it is possible to set aside even the smallest amount of time to start doing more.

Sometimes, the hardest part is just knowing what to ask for and then, gulp, reaching out and asking for it. It would be great if the people we care about that care about us in return would just know when and how to offer us the things we need, but sometimes not even we know what we need or how we can get started towards something new and exciting and different.

That’s why this week we’ll share tips and ideas for how to help that friend or family member who is looking to connect with his/her creative side. We’ll have a fantastic guest post from the very talented Lauren Ramsey, as well as a really fun and affordable craft idea to help with encouragement.

We hope you’ll join us during Week 2 of Creatives in Training. We’d love to hear how you have helped a creative friend in need or how someone has helped you rekindle your spark. Enjoy!

To finish out this week, we thought it would be interesting to hear where others struggle. We asked a variety of creative women the following question:

What’s one thing you can change today that would help you nurture your creativity more consistently?

Melinda:
“One thing that I can change to nurture my creativity would be to set aside more time for myself. I have found that planning creative time doesn’t work for me because I don’t always feel that creative during those times. But if I set aside time for myself to do whatever moves me, I feel as though I end up using it to sew or plan new projects. I would like to set aside time after dinner every night to either read or sew or whatever. Keeping it open ended keeps the pressure off and is more inspiring.”

Patti:
“The one thing I could do to help nurture my creative process is to spend less time online. It should be simple – just don’t turn on the computer – but then I can’t write (I like to type; it’s faster and my hand doesn’t cramp as easily). When the computer is on, it’s so easy to get online ‘just for a second’. And sometimes, I’m actually doing it for the sake of story – I need to look up something that will help me better form an idea or jog my memory. But for me, if I fire up the internet it’s tempting to get sucked into random stuff – I’ve often got a stream-of-consciousness thought process, and one site leads to another and another and another. Before I realize it, I’m reading blogs about things that have nothing to do with my story and I’ve spent hours, sometimes, doing things that are not in any way productive.

If I stay away from the internet more, I get things done. If I’ve done my chores and I’ve spent time with my kids, there is no excuse for not writing (or doing other creative pursuits) while the kids do things like play with play doh or color. But when I’ve spent all my ‘free’ time surfing as though I literally have nothing better do, it’s harder to justify sitting down for a few hours to write. Especially when I should do the laundry…or the dishes…or play with the kids…or hop in the shower…or make dinner. You get the idea. It’s not even about procrastination or boredom, I just get easily enveloped by the insanity and minutia that is the World Wide Web. When I seriously want to create, I either avoid the computer altogether if it’s possible or I avoid the internet if the computer is required. If I did that on a daily basis, oh the things I could do…”

• Monday, 8:30am
• 30mins surfing the net end time 9:00am
• 1.5 hours sketching end time 10:20am
• 20 min break end time 10:40am
• 1.5 – 2 hours first stage design
• 1 hour lunch
• 20mins surfing the net…

And you get the idea. I was creating and producing like a machine! I was setting deadlines for myself and I was meeting them. I’ve found that I work best under pressure, when it comes to pretty much anything in my life. I never thought that something so boring as a “task manager” could actually help me. So now I’ve been at my job for a month and I’m still holding on to my task manager. The lesson here is, sometimes doing something that is unfamiliar to us and incorporating it into our work process can push you just a little further and help you create some wonderful things.”

On Tuesday, we talked a little bit about the importance of acknowledging our accomplishments as motivation to keep going. Let’s dig into that a little deeper.

Sometimes, I find myself frustrated, thinking I’ve never accomplished anything. Those little voices creep up and tell me that nothing I’ve ever written or done was worthwhile. That I’m still a total beginner and maybe I shouldn’t even bother trying. In my wiser moments, I know those things aren’t true. In those moments ruled by self-doubt and frustration, it’s nice to have a list handy to remind me of the awesome things I’ve already accomplished.

For today’s project, I want each of you to make a list of things you’re proud of, goals you’ve reached, projects you’ve completed, compliments you’ve received. It’s a great start to scribble these things down on a piece of paper. But let’s go a step further and put these accomplishments on display!

You can either create your own display or print the one I’ve created for you (PDF). This is the sheet I’ve customized and put on the wall at my desk where I can use it as a constant reminder of the great things I am capable of doing. Notice there are a lot of blanks in mine below – these lists should include room to for all of the great things we’re going to do in the future.

My List - click to enlarge

Depending on how your creative flow is going (or not) at the moment, your first reaction may be to say you don’t have anything to put on a list like this. I encourage you to take a few minutes to really think about it – I’m sure you can come up with at least a few things!

What will go on your list? We’d love for you to share a description or a photo.