Helping people become more creatively expressive is my mission in life. And I’ve learned a few things about what works to keep your creativity, which is really another way of saying your life force, operating at its full and fulfilling capacity.

There are just so MANY different ways to talk about what supports you to keep those creative fires burning bright.

But there’s a particular way of being that I’m convinced gets regularly ignored and overlooked as a pipeline to creative flow. And that is the power of generosity.

Generosity is an always available and renewable type of energy. It’s related to love and is one of the most abundant forces in the Universe. And the more you allow yourself to access it the more creative you will become.

I have identified four portals into generosity that I have listed below.

This is the type of generosity that most of us can relate to and that we most readily define as generosity. It’s simply the act of voluntarily giving of our time and attention to another living being.

All of us here reading this can happily think of ourselves as generous folks. We will very willingly help out a friend, a child, a pet or a family or community member who needs our care or support. This is the generosity of love and time and a listening ear that we give to other people in our lives. It’s the joy we feel in being able to offer the blessing of comfort, encouragement and aid to another person. It’s what we do when we provide succor and service and support without a moments hesitation to those we love and care about. And it’s a beautiful thing that brings so much goodness and grace into the world.

 I want you to take a moment now to close your eyes and maybe even put your hand on your heart. And think of all the people that you have offered yourself in generosity to. Of course you can’t remember them all, but just allow the whatever images arise of you being generous to others to float through. Just pay attention for a moment to how that feels. Allow yourself to feel the bigness and the fullness of your heart. Make space to appreciate yourself for the light of love and benevolence that you bring to the world.

I give my love to others with an open and joyful heart.

We are all incredibly creative beings filled with ideas and stories and art and songs and dance and a new recipe for ratatouille that need to be birthed and brought into the world.

But because these creative babies of ours are so very close to our heart and spring from our unique creative source and are so much about who we are at the core of our being, it is often difficult to freely give them. We want these bright gifts of our creative spirit to be celebrated and appreciated. But many of us have been hurt by feeling that our gifts have not been valued. We have fears, based on past experiences, that what WE create will be rejected, ignored even ridiculed. So to protect ourselves from the pain, we can go so far as to never create at all. Because we begin to believe that our creativity is not worthwhile.

When we are caught up in those old beliefs and experiences of being hurt around our creative expression, we forget that our creative genius is a gift of spirit, which is the true source of all generosity and abundance. And that every time we create we are honoring spirits generosity to us. Every time we risk bringing that creative brilliance into the world, even if we don’t immediately get the response that we hope for from other people, we are increasing and feeding that endless river of creative generosity.

Meditation: Open your hands to the sky and just imagine creativity pouring through you. Feeling yourself as a conduit for that endless abundance of creative flow. Remember all that you have already created and your continued desire to create more. Allow yourself to be filled with projects, ideas, paintings you want to paint, songs you want to sing, words you want to write.

I am an open channel for creative goodness and my creative gifts are a blessing to the world.

This is a tough one for most people to fully understand because we associate receiving with all kinds of not so nice things like selfishness. But truly being part of the flow of generosity means being fully open to having things being given to you. Just think of the excitement you have felt in buying an incredibly special surprise gift for someone that you dearly love. And how painful and disappointing it would be for you to have them open that gift and then toss it aside with a shrug, or to respond with a lukewarm “Thank you… that was nice.”

We all want to give but to keep the flow going we also need to be available to receive.

It’s scary sometimes to receive. it makes us feel vulnerable. It gets us in touch with all kinds of feelings of need and want and grief from times past when we didn’t get something we dearly wanted.

Responding with pleasure, excitement and greedy joy to being given to is a way of participating in that energy of generosity and making it bigger and more luscious and fun. I see this a lot when people try to give each other compliments or praise. We shy away from the generosity of being seen for our beauty and light because we are too identified with being less than or not good enough. But being able to own our goodness as reflected in another’s yes, to say thank you and mean it, to allow another the pleasure of being generous towards us, is truly a gift and a blessing for ourselves and for those who are wanting to generously offer us their love.

Meditation: Open your arms in an attitude of receptivity and bring to mind someone who truly loves you. And imagine some lovely thing they have said to you that made you feel seen and loved and valued. Allow yourself to feel their generosity and their joy in giving to you and to fully drink it in, breathe it in, to completely take it in.

I am open to receiving the gift of being seen and loved by others for the beauty that I am.

This is another place where it’s hard to enter into the spirit of generosity because we often ignore our own wants and needs. We have the mistaken belief that attending to our own needs makes us selfish or inconsiderate. But the true spirit of generosity asks that we put our own needs first, which for some of us is a completely radical proposition. What happens most of the time is that far from putting ourselves first we end up not putting ourselves on the needs list at all. But having the energy to be creative and to fully give to others means that we have to first and foremost be willing and capable of filling our own creative well.

Meditation: Put your arms around yourself and allow yourself to feel your love for you. Bring to mind times when you have nourished yourself with good food, or being at the beach or buying yourself a lovely gift that makes your heart sing. Think about the times when you valued yourself enough to say no to something that wasn’t right for you and yes, to what would allow you to become fully alive. Try and remember those times when you made space to spend time with someone who deeply loves you or time in your studio creating for the sheer joy of it.

I am open to being a channel of love and generosity in the service of my own self care and well being.

May the spirit of generosity flow through your life in all the most amazing and wondrously delicious ways and keep your creativity vital and vibrant and oh so alive!!

Come and join me for a two day online intuitive painting retreat in early December as the ULTIMATE act of generosity to YOU!!