Tozak Filming

No matter what strategies, methods, practices, and skills you adopt within your creative process, please never forget that the most powerful source is within.

I feel called to write about this because I believe that sometimes we forget or misplace where the true power in the creative process is coming from. It’s not coming from the physical microphone, pencil, canvas, or camera. These are tools used in order to express your soul. They’re like the items in Fantasia that come to life around Mickey Mouse. The true life force power is coming from Mickey.

You can also look at these items like mirrors, reflecting back at you what’s already there. The magic and beauty you experience from creativity is the magic already within you. It’s the beauty of our souls. This is so empowering when you remember this. When you experience beautiful art, you are experiencing the beauty of other souls. Even in admiring nature, there’s beauty within that recognizes itself in what you are seeing. It takes two to tango.

This is all important because we have to remember our own capability within our practice. We are the engine. Our best time investment as an artist is to develop our relationship with this source.

This is the creative spirit.

The part of our soul that sends ideas to our minds. Don’t mistake this power with something else in the outer world. 

Practices and rules you learn about creativity should be to harness this relationship, not to take you away from it. This is why rules can be very dangerous to us artists. They can be helpful to the extent that they show us what we like, but once we allow them to disconnect ourselves from our creative spirits, they threaten what’s important. Our intuition transcends all rules. In fact, I believe it’s the only true end all be all rule. The mind has to catch up to the soul, so the mind will doubt what the soul, intuition, is saying if it can’t make sense of it at that moment.

But even when an idea doesn’t make logical sense, if it feels right in your heart then that is enough. The artistic skill of recognizing and actualizing that process is invaluable.

So, with this mental framework of the true power in our creative process coming from within, let’s look at what we’re actually doing in our own practice. We want to make sure we’re keeping this part of ourselves empowered, not giving that power away. 

I want you to reflect on what your workflow looks like. What are the main activities throughout your day that are a part of your creative process? This is not just the time where you work on your craft. For example, while making music in your studio may be a big part of your process, it’s not the only thing. 

This could be journaling, researching, watching videos about your craft, listening to music, watching movies. These are any activities where your creative spirit may be triggered. Now, when you are engaging in these activities, where do you feel the power coming from?

Is it coming from within, or from somewhere outside?

Does it feel like you are allowing, or chasing?

These might seem like weird questions, but let’s look at something specific.

Say you are watching videos about writing scripts. You want to work on your craft as a writer and this is your research. As you’re watching, the feeling inside may be to pursue some exterior standard for what makes a story “good”. You want to learn about these rules so that you can achieve something validated by the outside world. In this case, it may feel like the power of your work lies somewhere else. Somewhere out there that you need to find and chase.

Now, if we adopt the mental framework from the beginning, we can empower ourselves in this research process. While watching these videos, we can be alert for when our creative spirit is triggered by what we’re hearing. Maybe a rule stands out and we are intrigued by it. We are allowing our true power within to simply be and recognize the parts of our research that resonate. Instead of chasing, we are allowing that that resonates to come into our process.

The true power is within, and our job is to cultivate that power. Instead of trying to make something that fulfills an exterior standard, make something that fulfills your soul. Create something that fulfills the feeling your soul is giving you.

Throughout the practices within your creative process, always remember that the true power is coming from within. You need to recognize when your mind is giving that power away. When you see something in the outside world that you are prioritizing over your creative spirit, that is you giving that power away.

Your practices should be used in order to feed this relationship with your creative spirit. How do you think you can do more of that throughout your day?

You’ve seen this in all of my content but I will go and list some things and you see if they resonate.

• Journaling
• Silence
• Walking
• Stream of conscious writing
• Meditation
• Solitude
• Spending time outside

Everyone’s creative process looks different and you have the answers inside as to how you can make your process into something that empowers you. Into a process where you remember where the power comes from. 

Remember that this is your best tool as an artist. It is your relationship with this source. Reflect on how you’ve been relating to this power. Have you been remembering this or giving it away?

Be conscious about this next time you engage in a creative practice. You will notice how your body feels. If it feels like you are trying to bring out that power or trying to chase something else. Something that you feel will validate your art. But nothing outside will validate it, I promise. It’s already validated within, now you just have to bring it out.