For most of my life, I’ve embodied what I’ve come to call “creative resilience.”
Creative resilience is an ability to tap into my creative powers, come up with all kinds of fresh ideas, and use those resources to strengthen my resolve and my approach to life’s challenges.
Sounds kind of lofty, right? I bet some people look at that sentence and think it’s simply unattainable.
I’m here to teach you that it IS possible to learn creative resilience. Whether you consider yourself a Creative with a capital C… or you know you’re good at doodling but not much else. Even if you feel like you haven’t got a creative bone in your body! It is possible to learn how to turn on your creative energies. And it’s also possible to take the skills you learn and apply them to both the banal and difficult tasks of life.
In this post, I’ll define creative resilience for you, share a story from my experience, and provide some strategies for cultivating it in your own life.
How I define creative resilience
Creative resilience is what occurs when we work to thrive at the intersection of wellness and creativity. (That’s the place where you are generating new ideas and perspectives even as you face life’s challenges.)
It’s getting in touch with your innate creativity, growing it as a strength, and using it as a tool to solve problems.
When we feel more creative, our wellness improves… and when we feel better, our creativity grows. So cultivating creative resilience takes a bit of daily intention and effort, from a few different angles.
How chronic illness provided me with a chance to help others and heal myself
If you’re new to my world, you might not know that since 1997, I’ve lived with chronic pain and multiple chronic illnesses. When I first got sick, I was devastated; I was 25 and just starting my life! But eventually – with care I advocated my butt off for, and a great support network – I turned the tables on illness.
In the early 2000s, I launched a blog (they were new then!) for young women with chronic illness called ChronicBabe. It was an irreverent, often bizarre, hugely creative project designed to help people like me: sick young women who felt ignored by society and the health care system.
Eventually it grew into a movement and a full-time career. I published my book, ChronicBabe 101: How to Craft an Incredible Life Beyond Illness, and worked with many hundreds of clients.
By using creative resilience, I was able to problem-solve a ton of challenges… and help others in the process. In fact, helping others healed me in big ways, too! As I faced my fears over and over, my community did, too.
After 16 years of ChronicBabe work, it was time to complete the project and move on to this new work. But I’ll always be an advocate for my community. ChronicBabe is probably the biggest instance of creative resilience in my life.
5 key areas to cultivate creative resilience
You can become more creatively resilient, too! Start by focusing on five distinct areas: habit, belief, priority, equanimity and community. Now, you don’t have to get intense about this, but try spending a little time each day considering these areas:
- Habit: We evaluate our habits with honesty, release the habits that don’t serve us, practice the ones that do, and build new habits that work even better. Adding a creative practice like cooking or drawing into our daily routine is a lovely way to build a creative habit.
- Belief: We spend a little time each day reinforcing what we know to be true, so when a questioning voice enters our head, we can be resilient in the face of self-doubt. We may create unique affirmations or meditations to ground ourselves in these beliefs.
- Priority: We give time and space to our creative practice, making sure that we honor our commitment to nurturing our creative resilience. We might choose to schedule some time each day or devote space in our home to creative practice. Go ahead and make it pretty.
- Equanimity: We practice accepting when our creative efforts go wrong, or we’re imperfect; we even practice embracing our mistakes. And we can extend this feeling toward others, making space for them to be imperfect.
- Community: We cultivate a network of supportive friends and colleagues, by getting vulnerable and perhaps sharing our creative work. We may choose to join a supportive creative group or form our own.
How will you begin to cultivate creative resilience?
Now that you know a little more about the concept, how will you work to bring creative resilience into your life? Hop into the comments and let me know which area you’ll focus on first. I can’t wait to hear!
Want to go deeper on this learning?
Let’s work together! Head here to learn more about my coaching packages, or check out the Scrappy Society membership.
