Story about a Bare Tree and a Mini Guideline to Your Creative Survival

Have you ever seen a leafless tree in the middle of Spring? What would you think if you saw one?

Poor tree, it’s probably dying – this is what I would definitely find among a flush of different thoughts in my head at the sight of this picture. I would feel sad seeing it bare and weak standing among the countless green ones around it. I would think, it was unfair.

Here’s what happened to me a few years ago. I moved from a noisy city to a small town framed at both sides by vast fields and woods. Place that I personally believe to be wildlife heaven. It’s the place where a plain crown looks like a fashion model and hedgehogs are enjoying their bust lives on your backyard.

It was Spring and everything around stood in magnificent clothes of green and white and yellow. Everything but one tree.

Worn out, leafless, with tiny holes in its faint brown trunk, it looked that close to being dead. But time passed and when next Spring I went back in that part of the woods, to my complete surprise and inexpressible joy, I found that very tree only now it stood just like the others, dressed in the green of life.

How often out judgements turn out wrong. This tree became some kind of a symbol for me. Remembering that story, I always think about people who daily create. We all are different. We all are on different stages of our personal development. We all are living different lives. But creativity is what unites us all.

I’ve met a few people who reminded me about that tree. Moreover, a few years ago, I was one of those people.

The world we are living may seem unstable and shaky at times and we, just like that tree can get bare and weak in the squall of these turbulent changes. Especially exposed to it are the people connected to the divine - creativity.

I know someone who is convinced that creativity is an act of free will that in no way should bring you material goods. So many painters paint and never earn a dime for it. So many writers write for years and years never being noticed or acknowledged by readers. So many musicians compose living in a dump in the place no one could even locate on the map.

The path of creative living is challenging and at times can remind a life under pouring rain in the middle of nowhere. But it’s not necessary how it should be.

I’ve gathered from my personal experience and from what I saw other creative gurus use, a few tips I would love to share with you that can help you to see a glimpse of sun during this stormy weather of your creative reality.

A mini Guideline to Your Creative Survival

Action is the only cure for creative stagnation and if you are feeling that your life is not moving, that you are stuck in your own head, that your life is not what you dreamed of, GO OUTSIDE. Open the door and go out there.

Start doing what you never did before.

I bet you’ve not jumped in the middle of the street since you were a kid. Go and do it now!

Tip #2 Find your source of peace.

Creativity to me is like a waterfall. It is beautiful. It is powerful. And it is noisy. Sometimes your own creativity (or rather to say its outburst) may feels overwhelming and it only means one thing: you lost connection to your own peace.

There are many ways to get back to it: it can be reconnecting with nature, spending time away from social media, taking a day off to spend with your family, exercising, reading. This will help you to balance the flow of creativity in your mind and body.

Tip #3 Make your creativity free of material responsibilities.

I’m going talk about writing because this is something that I personally have experience with. Between the moment you start writing and the moment when you start getting some money for it can stand years and years and years. This is natural. This is how it works.

Your creativity is not your parent and its purpose is in self-expression first and foremost.

So, in order for your creativity to survive and thrive, you need to take care of it and make it free of such responsibilities like earning money or taking care of your social position. Your creativity needs freedom. It will painfully die if you keep pinning your responsibilities as a grown up human on it.

Of course, it does not mean that you will not get this privilege to earn your living with the help of your creativity someday. But to get there, you need to give freedom and independence to it first.

Being creative is the way of true living but just like everything about life you need to learn the art of it.

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My appreciations to each and every of you. Staying Creative = Staying Alive.