"My name is Peter William, and I’m... uhh...there's not a clear word for it... well... I'm a hopeless creative"

I'm 29 years young and I've been struggling with harnessing my creativity for most of my life.

For most of that time I have found myself saying these two paradoxical phrases:

“I wish I could just start."
"I wish I could just finish!”

I simply either did not have the motivation (or courage) to start or try anything new.

OR... I would have motivation, start a new project, and realize I was stuck because of the unrealistic and seemingly impossible expectations and goals I would set for myself.

Both situations led to incredible amounts of stress and a constant burdening feeling. I was either feeling an overwhelming sense of my enormously untapped potential - or I was simply overwhelmed by my inability to follow through with whatever it was that I wanted to experience.

There's always been a part of me that has known that I am capable of creating the magical things that appear in my mind and dreams… but at the same time there’s also been this damn ass of a voice telling me that I’m just not focused / creative / inspired / smart / fun / (fill in the blank), ENOUGH.

To sum that up...I always felt like I was lacking or missing something that seemed JUST out of my reach.

My creative conundrum has always been a journey in understanding how to bridge the gap between my creative potential and how to practically, consistently, and effectively bring that potential into the world.

Sound familiar? I know I’m not alone here.

So long story short…

After years of struggle, I did discover my solution, and surprisingly enough, it ended up turning into a very simple creative process.

That process (which I will share with you in a moment) quickly turned into an experiment. I wanted to share it with others, and I knew that there would be even more power and possibilities if more people knew about it and could collaboratively experience it firsthand.

I call this online creative community experiment "Cycle Up". If you're more of a visual person, I explain the process and creative experiment in the video below.

The process is very simple and can be explained utilizing three words: Experience, Time, and Reflection.

EXPERIENCE

I realized that a lot of my pain and creative struggle came from the fact that whenever I would start a creative project, my focus would constantly be on the end result. That typically manifested itself whenever I would share my creations.

"Only 100 views!?", "10 likes!?", "2 people watching!?"

I was immersed in the expectation, not the actual experience.

THIS KILLED MY CREATIVITY.

It wasn't until I started turning my focus away from my expectations and completely and fully towards the present moment experience, that I finally discovered that I was and could easily be creative, whenever I desired. I simply was so immersed in things outside of myself (and my control) that it was impacting my ability to just take the next step.

As much as I'm not a fan of Nike, I am a fan of their famous statement: "Just Do It"

Just do it! Do something. Do it and don't think about it while you're doing it. Just effing do it.

TIME

The second creative issue was solved when I shifted my relationship to time itself. My mistake in the past is that I would not set a clear beginning and end to my creative experiences.

OR I would set a beginning and end, but it would be far too big of a commitment. In the past I would commit to doing something for a year...

This has always been a bad idea. It's very difficult to commit to anything for a year, let alone just a month! I've realized that in order to commit to a year, you need to first prove that you can commit to a smaller cycle.

That's where I discovered the power of committing to 3, 7, 14, or 30 day cycles.

This allowed for immediate gratification and a sense of ease. When your creative goal is only 7 days...suddenly it becomes a very, very doable thing.

I call these "micro-commitments", and they're very powerful.

Have you ever tried writing or reading for just 5 minutes? It was probably pretty easy to sit down and do that, right? And once you started doing that for 5 minutes, did you end up stopping at 5 minutes? Maybe...but most likely you kept on doing what you were doing because by that point... IT WAS EASY.

That's the same concept here, except we're utilizing that concept as a daily cycle.

REFLECTION

When's the last time you had a really great experience where you felt you had rediscovered yourself... and then 7 days later it seemed like whatever you had discovered, seemed to have vanished?

The thing is, we don't actually learn things until we 1) have first hand experiences, and 2) reflect upon them after the experience.

In my experience, when I actually take the time to process and reflect upon my life experiences, I find that there's a ton of undiscovered potential there. It's not obvious, but it suddenly becomes obvious when you choose to open those doors.

That's why I believe that sharing your experiences are so important.

Does it have to be shouted to the world? No, not at all. But I will say that as human beings, there is something that innately feels good about knowing we have been heard.

For me, sometimes the journal or webcam is enough. It was recorded somewhere, and it doesn't matter if no one ever sees or hears it.

Other times it does matter, and the stories and dialogue that results become extraordinarily useful to me and my evolution of self.

And so in a nutshell, my process for being creative is:

1) Choose an experience and then focus fully on the experience (forget about the outcome and let go of expectations)
2) Commit to a short time frame to have the experience, whether that is a day, 3 days, 7, 14, or 30 (something that feels easy)
3) Share those experiences by documenting and reflecting upon them (writing, filming, streaming, etc)

That's it!

It's simple, which is why it works for me.

If this is something that interests you and you'd like to prime yourself to take action come 2018, then join the Cycle Up Facebook group.

I'll be facilitating the process and we'll be starting our first official "cycle" come December 1, 2017.

Here's the link: Cycle Up

[DO IT!]