By Courtney Feider

While writing my book, I discovered that I am just as guilty as anyone else at blocking myself and slamming face-first into the wall of creative prohibition. I recognized what I was doing in fighting the creative wave and I have recommitted myself to regular practice. I am the proud new owner of a travel watercolor set and mini watercolor block and that is what I am doing when I fly or wait in airports. Creating art. Exercising the muscle. Knowing I will throw a lot away, but also knowing my mind will spin with clearer and more focused creative thinking the more often I am in that zone.

I hope that you believe that you can be creative. Let me say that another way—I hope you see that you are instinctively creative and feel willing to explore and grow in that. Meet yourself again through a creative lens. Take some time with it. Get to know your creative side or sides, and walk into a state of play as you do so. Creativity is fun, it’s beautiful, it’s shareable, and it truly can net results both for personal balance and business leadership.

Nurture that relationship. It’s really closely connected to putting yourself first and rooting your soul. Dismiss and release your previous expectations about creativity and about yourself in a creative space and start with a clean slate. Return to that childlike impermanence and create something, wad it up, throw it away, create it again, tear that one up and throw it away, and repeat until you are where you want to be.

Share creativity with others. It’s nurturing and comforting and helpful. It removes boundaries and barriers between humans and maximizes our opportunity to be present and available to each other. It tears down walls and lets you be authentic, which magnetizes the authenticity in other people. Make sure you spend time with creative people—ideally people who are wildly creative in very different ways that you are. Spend some time with them ideating, and look at that think space as relaxation. Get excited about what is possible and whenever you can follow something through.

Seriously consider and explore the impact creativity has had on your life. Then think about the things you might be able to accomplish if you enhanced your creative time and space. What new things might be possible if you not only expanded your perspective this way but teamed up with several other people who were doing the same thing?

Divorce duplicity. It’s time to be honest with yourself. Make friends with all of your creative natures and tendencies—the really attractive ones and even those that might sometimes make you moody or anti-social. You are who you are, and you’ll be happier in a space of honesty and creative release.

Set up a daily, weekly, monthly, and annual system for your creativity. We are all different beasts so your system is likely to be personal and it has to be one that you will follow. Give it as much structure as you are comfortable with and commit to it—make it a habit and a practice and adopt it into your life permanently. Soon it will be so second nature that you will forget it wasn’t always wired into your being.

When in doubt, remember: creativity is a circle. You reach an end only to come back to a beginning. Take a note, add a feather to your cap, and know you’re bound to return to the beginning. Just return better, kinder, gentler, smarter, and more creative.

This is an excerpt from Courtney’s book, I Heart Creativity, due out Summer 2017.