CREATIVITY AND PAIN-2-POWER

How the Creative Spirit Heals You

So many people have lived through stresses earlier in their lives that led them to wall off some of the best parts of themselves and live with less self-confidence and self-esteem than they deserve. The way many of them got through trauma and loss and lack of unconditional love was to hide parts of themselves that had (and have) great, great potential—their dreams, their imagination, their hope for the future, their trust in others and their faith in God.

There is more than one way to tap that underlying potential. Pain-2-Power is all about that process. Some of the ways relate to journeying back into one’s life story to find out how, why and when reservoirs of positive energy were buried. Discovering the events involved and what self-limiting meanings were assigned to those events (like feelings of being unworthy or always at risk) actually begins the process of reclaiming the positive energy. This is what I call “buried treasure.”

Another way of tapping underlying potential is through the creative process itself. Because creativity comes from deep inside us, at the level of the self. This pristine well of power awaits those who rediscover their passions for writing, painting, performance of every kind, creating new businesses, creating new ways to teach and motivate students or creating new lenses of understanding through which to view the world. These are just a handful of examples. I could go on and on.

Once the creativity well is tapped, the benefits go far beyond the projects that are, thereby, created. The true self takes note. One’s core energy is stirred, and the results can create positive winds of change in multiple directions—mood, focus, motivation to move forward in life, less tolerance for toxic relationships and commitment to other forms of empowerment.

Here are some quotes attesting to the powerful connection between our creative spirit—our imagination—and other forms of beauty in life. They are all taken from a book I love called, Your Creative Imagination Unlocked: Become Who You Truly Are, by Dr. Jim Manganiello and Frank Arnold.

“Love alone is not enough. Without imagination, love stales into sentiment, duty, boredom. Relationships fail not because we have stopped loving but because we first stopped imagining.”

 –James Hillman

“Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.” 

 –Pablo Picasso         

“Use your imagination. Your life can be art.”

 –Frank Arnold

“Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.”

 –Albert Einstein

To realize that to be genuinely positive, joyful and satisfied, we must live from the values and visions born from deep within, is—sanity.

 –Dr. Jim Mangianello

“The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven’s sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possibly can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something.”

–Kurt Vonnegut

You will also, I would add (at peril of disturbing Mr. Vonnegut’s magnificent words), have created yourself.

Dr. Keith Ablow

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978-462-1125