What Would You Love To Create?

Your creative expression is unique to you.
So what would you love to create?

The question and words ‘What would you love to create?’ Or ‘What would I love to create?’ are specific. Would is a word of invitation. It is different from could. The word could is conditional. It has definitive answers associated with it, usually a yes or no. You can always do something but would you want to, choose to, love to? When the word would is used in a question it reflects possibility and sometimes vulnerability, openness, which leads to us to the word love. Love is the most powerful force in the Universe, and creativity is born from love. What would I love to create invokes your wondering power, possibility, and your positive abilities.

To begin exploring this question, take a piece of paper and write at the top of your page, What Would I love to Create?

Lists Are About Listening

You are about to create a list. A free associative list is the “ask” in “ask and you shall receive.” It’s the kind of asking that creates a level of receptivity in you, for list making is about listening. You forage the gems floating in your subconscious, inviting them to the surface of your conscience. With your hand gliding across the page, your breath deepening, listening to quiet music, or none at all, list-writing in a playful way engages creativity and can be is as much of a kinesthetic experience as any. It’s a journaling practice that may appear linear but can be anything but linear. Sounds paradoxical? It isn’t. Free associative words poured on paper without restriction, encourages freedom. It is the feeling of being free from restriction that opens up to you the world of ideas, words, possibility, and that which you would love to create.

Fly Out of the Box of Limited Thinking

Take off all bars, unknot the ties, and move into the imaginary realm of “anything is possible.” In this personal excavation let yourself explore unknown shores, what makes you feel good, what brings joy. Ask yourself, “What dreams, wishes, and desires fill my deepest longings? What would I love to create that brings deeper joy, peace, satisfaction, contentment, excitement, or adventure?”

Incite the play-filled wondering dreamer. Write down everything that comes into your stream of consciousness:  personally, professionally, creatively, artistically, home and garden, travel, health and relationships.

Write down the outrageous. The dreams you’d love to create but don’t dare tell anyone about. The dreams you’d love to create but think aren’t possible. The dreams you’d love to create but are far away from your present everyday reality. The dreams you’d love to create given that all the conditions in your life are perfect with your health, family, financials, that you had the time and energy, complete permission, and felt free enough. What would you love to create? What would you love to embark on?

The outrageous is encouraged. It is joyful and energizing and it gets you outside the box of limited thinking. You loosen the hinges on old musty thinking that kept your dreams locked in a box. You breathe life into them and into yourself!

What you would love to create does not have to make sense. You don’t have to know how it will occur. Sometimes not knowing, or non-knowing as I prefer to say, is more powerful as long as you hold the overall vision or dream. This leaves details malleable. You will plan as you move towards your vision while remaining open to what may come that you cannot yet see. For now, you only have to know that these are the things you would love to create.

Fill the page and write some more. Write down qualities you would love to embody more often in your life like humor, joy, security, peace, courage or health.

If you can’t think of anything, then recall what you loved as a child. Did you love to play outside and get muddy dancing barefoot in puddles? Did you love to sing to music on the radio? Did you love taking apart your toys and then trying to put them back together again? Did you love to watch the night sky and think about who or what else might be out there?

A composite from several people:     

                                 I would love to study ceramics
I would love to own a children’s bookstore
I would love to travel to Italy for six-weeks
I would love to create a new wardrobe in all bold colors
I would love more laughter and dinner parties in my life
I would love time alone in nature.
I would love to work with horses and at-risk children
I would love to get my masters in engineering
I would love to have more inner and outer peace
I would love to create an Earth where people peacefully live to be a 1000 years-old
I would love to start a foundation to eradicate world hunger
I would love to create a good news television network

The beauty in writing down what you would love to create is that it both focuses and sets free your imagination. You see what excites and inspires you. Many times when people create a list like this, things they didn’t expect mysteriously pop up. If you’re working with a group of people or have a family of friends you are comfortable with, then try this practice with the group and read your lists aloud. You will find yourself inspiring others with your list and being inspired by their lists.

Lists grace refrigerator doors:  grocery lists, to-do lists, children’s schedules, carpool and school lists. Why not let this creative list also feed you? Tack it on your fridge, by your bed, on an altar, or at your desk. Gaze at it and let the swirl of images and dreams give fire to your passions. This is not to become another to do list, and if it ever does become that, then toss immediately. In any event, you may one day toss all your lists away because you will have reignited the inner confidence that there is an order to what seems like madness, and you will see that everything arrives, disappears, and arrives again, in its time. For the Universe offers ample possibilities to create, love and enjoy. It is an endless well.