665: Enter Your Wild, Juicy, Creative Flow

Hi, everybody. It's Summer. I am going to nickname this episode the Noisy show. Because I. I want to record. I'm in the mood. And like you just heard, that was my cat jumping down off the desk. I've got a foot heater going. There's our guy, literally standing outside my glass doors right now, putting new screens on. And you're gonna probably hear the drill. Got someone helping me clean the house. I'm just. It's gonna be noisy, but exciting. And that's kind of what creativity is, right? Creativity is letting all the jumble of things come together and seeing what happens. So this is episode 665. Enter your wild, juicy, creative flow. You ready? Let's get creative. Flow Dreaming. It's a show where we talk about the power of your mind to change your world around you, to literally affect the fabric of your reality. We talk about this feeling of hope and joy and relief, and that is what being aware of your flow does. It gives you a feeling of power again in your lives. Breathe. I'm Summer McStravel, and welcome to another episode of Flow Dreaming. So, like I just mentioned today, you're going to hear my unedited sound life, the life of sounds. The birds and the planes and the cats and the dogs and the handyman and the. There's a drill. Do you hear the drill? Well, good thing we're not flow dreaming right now. I'm here because I want to talk to you about creativity. And when you are rummaging around inside, you saying, I need to be creative, I'm ready to be creative. I need to uncork that bottle. I need to tap that endless. Well, there are things that I want to do that I want to become, that I want to express. Well, then that is when we tap in to this creative being that we are. And here's the funny thing. Like, I'm using today's episode as a demonstration. I know right now that this is probably not the best time to be recording podcast episodes, right? I could wait till it's quiet and do my usual quiet thing, but I also know that when I feel creative, I feel creative. And I've done that thing too many times where I say, well, I'm going to wait to feel creative before I do this, or, I'm feeling creative, but I can't do it now because I've got this other thing to get done. The energy of creativity is a wild, bright spark of light that whisks through like a falling star. And if you have it, if it's bubbling in you, you've got to risk. What do they say? Hell and high water. You've got to risk it and do it no matter what the circumstances. This is going to yield all the best jewels for you. Now, on the other side of things, when you're waiting for that wild, bright spark and you keep saying, it's not here, it's not here, here's what you do. You begin, you call it in. You unzip the night sky by sitting down and pouring yourself into whatever it is that's requiring it. So when it comes, jump on it. If it's not here, don't wait. Ooh, there goes another drill. I'm getting a set of screen doors, my friends. So getting back to this creative person that we are, you might be feeling like I'm not really creative, Summer. I don't do anything creative creative. I don't knit, I don't sew, I don't paint, I don't write. I'm going to take big issue with that. Creativity in my world is not based on whatever tangible form, whatever thing you make from it or of it. Creativity in my world is about how you think. It's about whether you let things stir together. I'm the kind of person who, when I make a vegetable soup, which I do several times a month, I never make it the same way twice. Drives my husband insane because he's following his recipes to a tee. And admittedly, they often turn out much better than mine. But the point is, I throw everything in. I'm like, cinnamon. That sounds like could be interesting. Put that in the soup. By the way, my daughter hates it when I put the cinnamon in the vegetable soup. But my point is, I like to explore. I like to see, I like to think in a very free way. When you think of yourself as being a creative thinker, a person who thinks outside the box, who maybe approaches things differently. I know you're a creative thinker already by virtue of you listening to this show, right? If you aren't creatively open, if you aren't a searcher, if you aren't somebody interested in growth and change and transformation, there's no way that you'd be fascinated with flow dreaming, because that's what we talk about here. So by definition, you've already qualified yourself. You already think outside the box, meaning you are a creative thinker. Creative thinkers are creative beings, and that's what we're sent here for, right? That's what we're really doing in this human life. We're here to be creative and to Explore. To discover new things. To discover who we are. To discover what we like, to discover what we dislike. To discover how to love, to discover who to love. To discover that we prefer action films over sleepy romances or vice versa. Being alive is a process of constant discovery. So how creative in that discovery will you allow yourself to be? This is the difference between living that small, marginalized, tiny, boxed in life versus something that's floating and fabulous and filled with mystery and possibility and magic. So how do we cultivate this creativity in ourselves, in our thinking, in our being? I already told you, you've got it. And maybe you do in fact put it out in some form of art, right? A classic form of creativity. Maybe you don't. Maybe your creativity is expressed in business or your entrepreneurship or your management style or in the way that you stock the shelves at Trader Joe's. I don't. But it's coming out. Your creativity is expressed every time you have a conversation with someone. Every time you share thoughts that are percolating through your mind. That is your creative being on full display. I'm kind of enjoying all of these drills and hammers going on. I feel like I'm in a house of ghosts and they're knocking on the walls and they're clapping their appreciation every time I make a good point. That's what I'm gonna pre. And this is, see? Creative thinking. So how do you get this creativity? How do you nourish it? How do you nurture it? How do you let it out? How do you trust it? Well, here's what I do. First of all, I stop caring what people think. I'm doing that right now. The handyman who's installing this door, I have a feeling he's wondering what the heck am I doing here, speaking into a microphone while he's making all this noise. And he probably can hear me through these doors. And my thought is, well, now he knows another dimension of me. I'm not hiding it. I'm not putting it away out of sight. And granted, there's a time and place for all things, but a lot of us are very used to having to hide away pieces and portions of ourself, hiding the cinnamon in the soup. But your creative self says, show me more of that. Show me more. I have no way of knowing if this man who's listening over the sounds of his drill and clanking of metal out there, maybe he really needs to hear this. I don't know. But that's the thing. I'm not going to dwell on this. I Am not going to fixate on it, even though it sounds like it, because I'm talking about it. But I'm doing this as a demonstration for you. What I'm saying is your creativity does not like to be monitored. It does not, not like to be hidden. It does not like to be zipped up or shut down. How many times have you had a great idea? Maybe you're at work and you want to share it, and then you think, nah, it's not worth it. Nah, my boss won't like it. Nah, it's too much trouble. Nah, I'll just let it go. This is a part of you that's saying, take me out, walk me around the block. Show me off, Let me breathe. Let me. Let me be seen by others. Let's see what happens. But we're afraid. We don't want to rock the boat. We don't want to change the status quo. We don't want to be looked at as weird or obnoxious or pushy, any of those things. So we take that creative thought, that creative idea, and we stuff it right back inside. What happens over time when we're stuffing all of these ideas? We end up a kind of bland, melted bar of chocolate. You know, the kind that gets all the white spots on it after a while. That's how we feel. We aren't that sweet, delicious, excited, like, vibrant being. And that's what we all want for ourselves, right? Sweet, delicious, vibrant being. That is the person I want to deliver to the world. I want to deliver it to my daughter and my son. As a mom, I want to deliver it to my husband. As a wife, I want to deliver it to my friends. As a good friend, I want to deliver it to you guys. If I didn't constantly stoke the fires of my creativity, there is no way we would be here on episode 665 of Flow Dreaming. I'm challenging myself. What else can I reveal? What else can I probe and look into and take apart and put back together in a new and different way? And sometimes, as I did with a recent episode, I'll look back to something I recorded, I don't know, five, eight, 12 years ago and say, huh? I bet a lot has changed since then. I wonder what? Let's do this one again. This is creativity. Are you starting to feel a little lit up? Are you starting to feel a little looser around the edges? That's what I want. Now here's another very important point about creativity. It does not always pay off. Some of my soups are atrocious And I mourn the fact that I spent all that money on all those canned tomatoes and everything, and I just had to throw the whole darn thing out because, darn it, I stuck it in the refrigerator and nobody ate it for a week. The family has spoken. Sometimes it doesn't work out, but that's okay. That comes with the whole kitten caboodle. Sometimes your creative self, your creative thoughts are pure, beautiful gems of inspiration, of ability, of vision. Sometimes your creative thoughts are clunky little pieces of coal. Creativity doesn't make guarantees. If it did, it wouldn't be creative, right? I mean, doesn't that go without saying? Creativity doesn't make guarantees. And you gotta be cool with that. Some things you do aren't gonna work. Big deal. Do you know how many painters paint over a painting that they labored over? And then they look at it and they're like, this is crap. And they just paint right over it. Even old masters. Have you seen documentaries? They're like, well, Michelangelo painted over this original painting that he painted. And we're like, why would he ever paint over a painting? Well, he didn't like. It didn't come out the way he wanted. That's called creativity. Creative, juicy flow. It's an energy, it's a vibe, it's a way of thinking, it's a way of allowing. Yeah, maybe that's what we're really heading toward here. It's a way of allowing. I allow myself. Freedom of thought, freedom of my heart, freedom of my hands and fingers and the things that I do and make. I allow myself to try something that I'm not really good at. And maybe I will get good at. But right now, I'm just creatively flying all over the place. That's it. You have things already in your life that, you know, increase your creative capacity. You know what they are. Maybe when you read books, you feel more creative, right? Maybe you feel like, yes, I'm. I get inspired. I love this author. I want to write like that myself. Maybe you have certain friends that you hang out with, and after you're with them, you feel like, yeah, I'm. I'm pretty creative. I'm on top of things. I feel like I think differently after being with them. Maybe there are certain movies. Maybe there are certain activities. Maybe after you go to the gym and you've got those endorphins flowing, you're like, yeah, everything feels loose, easy, free, open. That's creativity. That's how you rouse it. You invite it. I'd like you to Think of creativity as like an honored guest. Invite it, right? Set the table, allow it. As opposed to waiting for the lightning to strike. It will strike sometimes, but most the time I throw open the door and I say, I've got a great soup cooking. Why don't you come right on in? And that's how I ignite my creativity. Now, caveat. Sometimes we reach these very low spots in our life where we have over scooped from the well. We have, Wow, my goodness, that was a drill, wasn't it? Where we have over scooped from the well and we have no. What do they call that? I can't say it without marking this explicit. No Fs left to be given. And in that case, you're saying, how do I get inspired again? How do I even get close to that feeling? Well, I tell you what, you make yourself very attractive. That's what you do. How do you make yourself attractive to creativity? How do you muster any energy to get that going? So again, I'm gonna pause because I just realized as I heard the drill yet, by the way, I think the door is now finished, that just kind of opening myself to record in a different way without all my usual safeguards might be inspiring a little bit of a different take on my show or today's episode. That's really what I'm getting at at heart. If I do things the same way all the time, I don't get that fresh possibility. And it works sometimes. And sometimes you're like, I'm turning this off because there's too many drills. Well, there's no more drills. But this is a case in point. Like you're, you're living this with me right now. And I'm thinking that this flexibility that I'm being forced into is creating a kind of creative flexibility as well, perhaps to give me the actual ideas that I want to share with you. Which means we're going right back to where I just paused. How do you fill up that well? And I was saying you've got to invite creativity in. Like a luxurious stranger at the door. But not a stranger stranger, a good stranger, someone delightful, someone entertaining. Someone that you've been dying to meet, wanting to invite over for so long, never thought you'd have the chance or the opportunity. You're mind is starstruck. That's how you invite creativity back in. And at first maybe you say, well, I threw the door open, but nobody was there. Summer. I sat and I couldn't think of anything. And I felt flat and I felt tired and I felt depressed and I felt like I don't want to have to go to the grocery store to get dinner, but I have to because there's nothing in the house. And, you know, the usual litany. Well, there is always a usual litany of life. The things that we have to do, the things we don't want to do, the things that led us to the empty place in the first place. Well, let's invite sweet, sugary creativity back into the home, into your heart. And you may open the door a few times and nobody arrives. But think about a door that's. Or think about a house that's been beautifully decorated for the holidays. Right? Maybe you have a Christmas tree, you have a menorah. You have. You have ornaments, you have pine boughs. I mean, it's just, oh, there's candles burning. There's cinnamon simmering on a pot in the stove. Oh, God, this place is like. I just want to rush in and hang out, create the atmosphere in you that says yes to this. Yes. How do you create the atmosphere? You open. You just straight up say, I open my heart to my creative thoughts Again. I open my heart to feel passion again. I open my heart to doing things that are different in new ways Again, I open my heart to all those activities that I know how to do, that I used to do, that I know will draw out something interesting in me. I open my heart to those. And then I wait. Yeah, wait. I'm gonna have that beautiful pine bao, cinnamon cooking smell, aroma, beauty in my home. As long as it takes for that fabulous creative being to show up at my door and say, summer, let's go swing dancing. I'm joking around, but I really want to share with you that I feel I have a lot of experience in the realm of creativity. I've written four books, I've produced hundreds of audios, meditations, flow dreams, every one an exercise and creativity and reaching out and asking myself, aha. I wonder if I can do this, you guys. There are flow dreams that have never made it to my shop. I recorded them, and I'm like, nah, it didn't carry the energy, didn't carry the flavor, didn't carry the emotion, the feeling that I wanted. That's okay. I started my career in writing. Then I shifted into graphic design. Basically, I made books for a long time, designed them inside, outside covers, the whole thing. And then from there, I moved into creating other kinds of products. Oracle card decks, journals kits, candles and wrappers and note cards. Boy, I did catalogs. I just did everything. If it was a Package. I could print something on it. I was gonna do it. And then from there, I moved into creating other kinds of products. Audio products, programs, podcasts, radio shows, a whole darn network and then another whole live broadcast network. Produced so many podcasts and webinars and CD sets for people, you know, did that for a long time. Then I built Flow Dreaming. So I've been creative in many arenas for two decades or, well, more. I'm not going to tell you how many more. But more than two decades, maybe three decades. No, I'm not going to say that. So I've had my share of creative deserts in my life. I've had my share of going through cancer, going through really difficult times at home. Those times, those years when I just have nothing left to give. And every single time, I've had to lead myself into recapturing that creative being that I am, I've had to lead myself. We think sometimes other people will lead us to it or it'll just happen. But you guys, you want to shorten that time zone. You want to say, no, I lead myself back into it. What do I need to do next? What do I need to do? And that's the purpose of today's show, to give you these ideas to get you fired up on. Yeah. God, I wonder what my life would look like if I felt a little more creative. If I felt like, yeah, I have new elements swirling around, new ideas, new directions, new possibilities. If the things that I'm doing could be expanded on, grown, changed, shifted, moved into new territory. Whatever creative means to you. What if all that was happening? What if you knew 100% next month you would be so creatively inspired that you would change something, produce something, grow something, something beautiful would happen. Doesn't that kind of make your heart flick on, you know, light, go bing? Yeah. Oh, yeah, I would like that. Then you need to start choosing toward it. You need to choose that creative renewal. You need to throw open the doors of your mind and your heart and invite it in. Don't wait for it, invite it. Create the space in you for it. Now, the ways that I particularly do this, and I wish I could tell you it's a one size fits all, do these things and you will get there. But I'll just let you have a little peek into how I juice up my creative self. First of all, I do flow dream, you guys. You knew I was gonna say that. Of course I flow dream. I have several flow dreams creatively fired up and finishing projects. Creative rebirth. I mean, just go to the website flowdreaming.com you'll find them. You listen to these, you let them remold you. They remold you emotionally, energetically. They remold you in your flow. The more you listen, the more you practice and the more you change. And they're not, these aren't recordings that change you. You're doing these recordings. It takes the two of you, the two of you in the tango, but you do it with the help of these and you become this remodeled being that you want. Now I add on to that because something I constantly stress, this is a core me school teaching. By the way, if you guys haven't heard me talk about me school in a while, yes, this beautiful program, a creative rebirth for many people, a transformative rebirth. But one of the core things is you do non physical work and you do physical work, you do both. So the physical things that I do to reinvent, to allow in that creative is I do things that are way outside of my, I don't even say comfort zone, but my known things that I'm like, never done this before. I don't know what this is. I'm gonna go, go kart racing with my son. Don't know how to do this, never done this. Don't know if I'll like it, but I'm gonna do it because he likes it. I do a lot of things that are not in my wheelhouse. Sometimes I take myself on excursions. And this is something admittedly I haven't done in a couple years because of our current climate. But previously, and maybe you remember some older episodes where I said, look, once a year, sometimes twice, I'll book myself some sort of event or, you know, a three day thing, a five day thing, doing something that there's no reason for me to do it other than I'm just curious. I'll go to a writer's conference for three days. I'll go to an artist's, you know, event and paint and do weird things and body paint and whatever. I do these things not because I think they will add to my flow dreaming or to my library of knowledge that I'm going to use somehow. I do these things just to open my mind, to open myself. That's the whole point of it 100%. Like, oh, I had a really weird experience. That's cool. That just added some, you know, fairy glitter into my, you know, workspace that I didn't have before. I don't know what I'll do with it. So I purposely put myself in these places of Being different, of trying different new things, things that don't have an agenda attached to them or a work related reason for going. If it has any of those things, it's not considered a creative. Just splurge. It's different than a vacation, by the way, can be a vacation, but it's different. Other things that I do to get my well pumping and moving and get that creative surge back in my life, there have been points that I've been through, and I know you have too, where we've really, something has just taken it all out of us. Maybe we were caregiving, maybe we ourselves had a health issue we traveled through, maybe we're going through grief, we've lost somebody and we're tapped out. When I've been in periods like this, one of the things that I do is I just go, all right, you can back off for a while. And you've seen this. If you've paid attention through the years to the way that I communicate with you, I won't podcast for a few months or you won't get an email for three months from me. And you're like, what happened this summer? Where is she? Well, I'm regaining, I'm filling my well again. I'm not pressuring myself to produce, produce, produce, produce. I'm all produced out. I'm like the farmer who took all the harvest out of the field. Now the ground is just kind of dry and icky and you know, I need a cover crop. I need to have some nutrients put back in that ground. I'm taking that time. That's a life cycle of creativity. So I will give myself these big wide spaces when I need them and I don't freak out during them. At first I feel like, oh my God, will I ever be able to write again? Will I ever have a creative thought? Will I ever feel like recording another flow dream? Will I ever, you know, sure, all that jibber jabber comes up, but I know it comes back, it always does. And yours will too. So if you don't have it, you put together your own list right now. What are you going to do to get it? Did anything I say inspire you? If you're already creatively on fire, Ha ha. If you're creatively on fire right now, go for it completely. Do as much as you can. Do it as best as you can. Unleash it, let it go right. Stir the bonfire, make it bigger and brighter, Throw more palettes onto it. Get that thing roaring up to the sky. Make the most of it. Your creative self, your Creative being ultimately is what drives you through life. Now, it's kind of a weird idea, but it is. All the things that you choose to do originate in your continuous desire. Meaning every day you wake up and you have a series of desires that are generated from some invisible place inside of you. Some of those desires are very mundane. Yes, I need to work and make some cash today. Yes, I need to make dinner and put the kids to bed or whatever. A lot of those desires though, don't have such an obvious daily grind in point. Those desires are for bigger things inside you, in your soul. That's what leads you forward and makes life not just be a series of how do I keep myself alive today? And you know, we're all looking for more than that. Creativity. That desire in you, that's the juice, that's what propels you so to turn around and say, God, I'm pretty low on that. You can almost see your whole life flattening out as a result. Get that back, cultivate it, invite it, woo it. That's how I sometimes think of it. I woo my creative self. I woo it like a lover. Come on, look, I've got roses for you, I've got chocolate for you. I've got an inviting cinnamon smelling home entree. Come on in, let's do this. What do you need to do for yourself? Doesn't matter where you're at. If you have zero or you're up at 95% capacity of creativity, what do you want to do for it? Because every day, this is what drives your desires, this is what drives you forward. This is what drives you to feel complete and content with life, right? I gulped down some life today and it was delicious. That's what I want to hear you say. So you're going to take some pre action, right? You're going to do some flow dreaming around it. You're going to prime yourself emotionally energetically for it. Open that space and then you're going to take some action around it. Join a writer's group, join a book club, learn how to do collage, go on an interesting trip, learn how to trade, crypto, whatever it is that that makes you go, huh, huh? This is kind of fun. I don't know, I don't know what the point of this is. You don't need a point, you just need the energy of creativity. Pointless creativity. So go get it, refill yourself, top yourself up, be creative. It's in there, it's been there, it's coming back. You can't get away from it. You May as well make a cozy little invitation for it, see what happens. You know, you can have a goal for yourself. I want to feel inspired, fulfilled, passionate, warm, content, safe, secure, meaningful. You. You just continue. Those are the ones that popped into my head. That's how I want to feel. What. What things can I bring into my life now that will allow that? I. I start that today, right now. Like, right now. I'm like, yeah, this is important to me. I forgot how important. So I ask. And with that, it's time to wrap up this little show of ours, to wrap up this podcast. And I have one request for you guys. I am actually doing that thing, which I do at the end of every season of shows. I reevaluate. What do I want my podcast to be or feel like next year? I would love to know if you have some thoughts and feelings on this. I'd love to hear from you. You can email me summerlowdreaming.com you can join my I love Flow Dreaming private group on Facebook where I have a poll up right now where I'm asking everybody, do you guys want me to do some interviews? Do you want me to focus on certain topics? Maybe do more episodes, but shorter episodes? Or you just want to hear me? I want to know. I need your creative input. I need. I need some elements that I can play with and hear from. So please, please drop me a note, send me a line, tell me if this is meaningful. Tell me your favorite parts of the program. Tell me your least favorite parts of the program, but be nice about it. Just, just. Just relate to me and let me know. I would really love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love that as well as if you were to drop a little podcast rating in itunes or whatever. It's not hard. Just open up your podcast app and find the show. And there's always a rate and review button. Just, you know, punch it up. God, I would be so grateful to you all. Thank you. Thank you. That's the give back. And of course, last thing, go to flow dreaming.com. i do have an amazing program called Flow on, and I give you a new course every month. Different than these podcasts. This course has the techniques, it has the worksheets, it has recorded, you know, multiple recorded classes, has a Flow Dream specific to the course content. So check it out. There's more than a dozen courses that I've put together this year. And believe me, these are. These are big, you know, meaty things. You'll enjoy them. So go check those out, too. All right. Enough of me sharing and, you know, pointing, pointing out, my love goes to you guys. Please stay in your creative and gorgeous space. Go lay in the grass and look at the stars tonight in the sky. Do any of those things, they can get that juice running through your veins again because that is the stuff of life. So what propels you? Propels everything. Propels your desire. And your desire yields experience. And your experience yields the emotional payoff of I have a good life. I love, love my life. That's what I want for you. My love to you all. And I'll see you on the next episode. My friends. Flow on is a brand new membership and its goal is to keep you in flow, in alignment, and in a state of beautiful growth and emergence. Emergence into the next you. Sometimes this is going to mean some healing or renewing your energy from depression or burnout. Or maybe you're gonna be pushing into new areas of growth and rampant success. Well, Flow on is your monthly spiritual backpack. It's a brand new program. I haven't done anything like it since. Well, it's been so many years when I used to have a Flow Dream of the Month club. Think of this as its new 21st century iteration and Flow on has everything that you need. It's a monthly masterclass, a monthly Flow dream, even some live interaction. And best of all, you can come and go as you please. There's no long term commitments, so please check it out@flow dreaming.com if you're lucky enough and it's enrolling, do grab a spot. It will not be open and available at all times all year. But if it's open, please jump in. I know you won't be disappointed and I look forward to traveling with you on this beautiful journey of Flow and giving you so many tools, all the tools that I've ever created.