Finding Art in the Ordinary: Mindful Practices to Fuel Your Creativity
Everything in your daily life seems normal and repetitive, and because of this normality, you usually ignore it.
As a music composer, being mindful is a great source of inspiration. But the same thing applies to you, even if you’re not an artist.
Art is Around You
A question I often get about creating is: “Where does your inspiration come from?”
And the answer is simple: if you open your inner eyes, inspiration is everywhere. You’d be surprised where inspiration jumps up—in the middle of watching TV, brushing your teeth, taking a walk, or, most commonly heard, in the shower.
Everything in your daily life seems normal and repetitive, and because of this normality, you usually ignore it. But you need to know that many masterpieces came from the smallest stuff you didn’t notice in your everyday life.
As a film and game music composer, finding inspiration is easier for me since the visual often directs the music. But when I’m mindfully watching a film before writing music, I usually find some deeper subtext or get inspiration from a different perspective I didn’t think of. That way, I can write more interesting music to support the story.
How to Be Inspired?
In a place that preaches mindfulness, the answer is, of course, be mindful.
Start to notice the things you do and the things around you.
When you’re eating dinner, focus on the flavor, the bite, and the taste.
When you’re reading a book, reflect on the words, and imagine how the writer wrote these words down.
When you’re walking in a park, listen to the bird chirping, and feel the wind flow by.
When you’re listening to music, focus on the feeling, and listen to the different instrument sections.
Try to implant this mindfulness into your day-to-day routine. Even just three seconds of mindfulness every day is a great improvement.
Not an Artist?
Art is about creating. You recreate nature, express your emotion, reflect your thoughts, and design a problem solver. Anything you create, whether it’s a painting on toilet paper, a paragraph of words, or a rhythm that makes you groove, is art.
It doesn’t matter if you are an artist by living or not. In this life, you must have created something. An essay, a PowerPoint slide, a paper, a simple doodle, a melody you hum randomly, a diary, or a paper plane.
You will always need something to inspire you to create. Do you remember that feeling of spending hours just to write the first sentence of your essay? Do you remember having no idea what to draw in painting class?
Once you start to notice the things around you, you’ll find it easier to get inspired. But how do you preserve those inspirations?
Preserve Your Inspirations
You must have experienced thinking about a wonderful idea, whether it’s art, business, a story, or any kind of idea. Thirty minutes later, you just can’t remember what it was!
This happens to artists all the time. Inspirations are like flying little creatures. If you don’t capture them, they will just flick away.
The way many artists, designers, and I capture them is by taking notes, either using phone apps like Notion or Notes, or carrying a physical notebook in your pocket.
When something comes into your mind, write it down right away! Just a simple one or two keywords or a full sentence will do, as long as you can recall it.
As time goes by, you will build an inspiration database in your notes. When you want to create something, you can look into that note and find the one you’re most interested in working on. It’s a simple but powerful way to preserve your thoughts. As long as you keep this habit, there’s no burnout, because you are always mindfully catching the next inspiration.
Exercise for Building an Inspiration Database
So, here’s a step-by-step exercise for you to create:
- Be mindful.
- Notice the things around you in everyday life, even the smallest things.
- Prepare to have a note ready, whether it’s your phone or a notebook. (I use the Notion app.)
- Every time you think about something interesting, write it down.
- Build an inspiration database.
- Look at the database from time to time, and find something interesting to create.
Your mind playground just expanded to the creative side! Ready to have some fun creating something?