Refresh Your Creative Practice: How to Let Go and Thrive
Shake off creative stagnation, refresh your routines, and thrive. Learn how to reconnect with your creativity this spring.
Refreshing a creative practice means letting go of what’s holding you back.
Imagine your creativity grows like a perennial vine, unfurling and thriving, reaching for the summer sun, for no other reason than because thriving is in its DNA.
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In the winter, the vine goes dormant. Succulent, glossy leaves dry out, paper-thin, clinging. The vine sleeps like a baby. When spring arrives, green shoots poke through the dead weight. Once again, renewed and determined to thrive.
Refreshing your creativity means pruning your vine. Snip away what isn’t nurturing. Water it, feed it, tuck it near a sunbeam. Under ideal conditions, your creativity grows stronger and faster. It doesn’t question its right to thrive—it just does.
You can’t thrive when you’re weighed down by creative blocks—whether that’s self-doubt, exhaustion, or the pressure to perform. Creativity is emotional labor—it requires care and the right environment to grow. Tasks, habits, relationships—if it’s dead weight or draining your energy, snip it like a bonsai master.
Set the Right Growing Conditions
Thriving creativity is innate—but only if you give it the right conditions. My creative process starts with setting the space. I have an office filled with beautiful and meaningful things. Before I write, I put on XM’s Jam on station, turn on my orange and magenta lava lamp, and light a scented candle. Then I sit at my adjustable desk in an ergonomic chair and focus on the present moment.
Just like a vine needs sun and water, creativity needs protection from distractions. When I protect my time and energy, my creativity thrives.
Shake Off Stagnation by Letting Go of Outcomes
Improv taught me how to let go of creative deadweight—like pruning back a vine to allow new growth. I walked into my first class feeling anxious and left feeling liberated. Improv isn’t about getting it right—it’s about showing up and letting it be messy. That mindset helped me loosen my grip on my novel. I have a whole new career riding on its success—that’s a lot of pressure to bring to the page. But improv reminded me that the process itself is the reward.
Refresh Your Routine to Support Creative Growth
Once I let go of perfection, I realized my creative routines needed refreshing, too. I started experimenting with 90-minute writing sessions followed by a 30-minute movement break. Knowing I only had a limited time to write made me work faster and more intuitively. And the break? It recharges my creativity. Creativity thrives when you give it space to breathe.
Find New Inspiration Through Productive Meditation
Another way I’ve learned to refresh my creative practice is through productive meditation, a concept I found in Deep Work by Cal Newport. It’s simple: focus on a creative problem while doing something easy—like walking, showering, or cooking. When your mind wanders, bring it back to the problem.
Recently, I couldn’t sleep, so I started thinking through the chapter I was working on. Once I had a clear idea of how to begin, I thought about what came next. By morning, I had the whole chapter mapped out—and when I sat down to write, it took only 90 minutes to draft.
Prune Emotional Blocks to Let Creativity Bloom
Sometimes the creative block isn’t mental—it’s emotional. Yin yoga helps me release what’s holding me back. Holding supported poses for several minutes loosens not only my joints but also the emotions trapped in my body. My practice isn’t daily, but it’s always weekly. It reminds me that creativity comes from a place of ease, not tension.
Stop Chasing Growth—Start Trusting the Process
For years, I believed hustle was necessary to succeed. If no one knows your work exists, no one will buy it, right? But I’ve realized that anything you do solely to influence others—rather than express your true nature—is a hustle. I’ve decided to stop chasing growth and start protecting my energy instead. Success isn’t in the outcome—it’s in showing up with integrity.
Trust Your Creative DNA
Creativity thrives when you’re aligned with your true self. Letting go of relationships or commitments that drain you isn’t failure—it’s pruning. The energy you reclaim will flow back into your work. When you trust your intuition, your creativity grows stronger. It doesn’t question its right to thrive—it just does.
You don’t need to hustle your way back to inspiration. Just like a vine knows how to grow when the conditions are right, your creativity will too. Let this be the season you return to yourself—and give your dreams the space to bloom.
Subscribe today and join me live for the Begin Again writing workshop on Monday, April 7 at 11 a.m. MST. We’ll explore what it means to reconnect with your true self, prune what no longer serves you, and create the conditions your creativity needs to thrive.
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Love this so much! What a fabulous way to describe the creative process and how to nurture it!
I love the vine analogy, it's so true we must create conditions and it will come. Beautiful writing! 🌱