Connecting to Your Creative Roots: A Guide

Leah Block
May 15
7 min read

Updated: May 16

Creativity is for everyone, and it’s the key to success, happiness, and mental well-being for many. Being creative is a worthwhile pursuit for artists and non-artists because of the immense financial, personal, and emotional payoffs.

There’s no reason to abandon creativity in life, and maturation need not be at war with it. To specify, creativity is an overlooked and often undervalued asset in work, play, and life. Indeed, creativity, productivity, and well-being may flourish and work best united. Getting creative is simple and not painful, and there’s no loss in being creative or engaging in artistic activities.

Creativity is quite like a muscle, I’ve discovered over the years; everyone has it, and it gets stronger with use. It’s a muscle to use and not neglect, so don’t think that graduation and getting a job mean the abandonment of creativity. Creativity can unite with goals and be connected and supercharged into bountiful fruitfulness.

For a bit more on my background, having achieved an education at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, North Carolina, failing many artistic pursuits, making plenty of mistakes, and nurturing a career, I can attest that creativity isn’t just a hobby and self-expression, rather, when harnessed and properly wielded, it is a tool that holds potential to be extremely useful, if not crucial to overall success for anybody.

Harnessing creativity can propel a myriad of lucrative pursuits and careers that are worthwhile long-term, benefitting practitioners and surrounding teammates. According to Quote Investigator, worldwide icon of intellect and achievement, Albert Einstein, said in an interview with George Sylvester Viereck in 1929:

“Imagination is more important than knowledge.”

This highlights that the ability to think beyond what is immediately known or seen is to be sought for. The picture that comes to mind hearing the phrase creative, moving forward, hopefully won’t be the stereotypical “starving artist” any longer; I beg to differ; because creativity is profitable, admirable, and sensible.

Furthermore, achieving and maintaining creativity in life may serve a more powerful goal of sustaining mental well-being and happiness in the long term, which is an intangible, higher-impact value! A study by scientists at Angela Ruskin University in 2024, published in the Frontiers Public Health journal, found a connection between mental wellbeing, happiness, and creativity. Psychologists, specifically art therapists, often utilize creative activities including drawing, writing, painting, making music, collaging, and even dancing to help patients achieve their wellness goals. An important aspect of creativity, which may play a role in its psychological benefits, is its social component. Creativity isn’t entirely a solo action, for it often involves social interaction through collaboration, instruction and learning, and feedback sharing. The collaborative nature of creativity can reinforce positive emotions, strengthen social bonds, and build happier and healthier communities.

Drawing on experience, research, and established sources of inspiration, the guide outlines ways to connect to creative roots with which readers can prop themselves up, no matter who they are. Whether a student. businessman, mother, child, beginner, expert, mathematician, or painter; may you gain inspiration, nurture an inner artist, or flex that "creative muscle;” and, hopefully, every reader is inspired to keep creativity in the forefront of mind while achieving life goals and dreams without abandoning it.

From Childhood, Everyone is Creative

Creativity is a part of the human spirit. Everyone can access and tap the untapped wells of creativity that lie dormant within them. It’s not a niche, luxurious skill only accessible to people with a certain upbringing and background. I grew up in a middle-class family with two parents who worked daytime jobs, and I sought creative outlets from a young age without direct instruction or formal commands to do so. Children are natural creatives, and that’s where a love for the arts begins for many. Sometimes, inner creativity can be quieted with maturation, but it remains available, awaiting diverse applications.

Recall childhood memories involving music, dancing, finger painting, story-time and storytelling, pretending, creating funny songs, and acting in a school play, all may have a connecting theme that can still play a role in adult endeavors. Creativity is the willingness to apply new ways of thinking, plus the bravery to act on it. Simply walk into a day care, and you’ll see children engaging in this creativity with all the new puzzles, toys, and problems they face. If something doesn’t work or fit, they know they need to figure out a new way forward! With proper support, the results can be fantastic. Connecting with creative roots has a lot to do with approaching questions or problems with a pure and clear mindset, innocently, almost like a child, and staying ready to take good, novel chances moving forward. Approach problems with aspects like these in mind, and creativity can flow out and shine!

Free Your Mind from Rules

Creativity is about making a life and world where barriers don’t exist, like how they don’t for children. Getting rid of the rules is among the first steps to creativity. Therefore, let go of preconceived ideas of ‘must’ and ‘must not’ when practicing creative activities, whether it’s music, drawing, or journaling. At a design summer camp before I went to college, industrial designers called this the process of “brain dumping,” putting scribbles and paint splatters on paper with no rules or real objectives, allowing them to “just be” without criticism or judgment, and it gets the creative muscles stimulated.

During creative slumps, ensure access to creative tools in case. It can be paper, like a journal or sketchbook, a pen, and maybe some colored pencils or paints. Always having access to these supplies creates an environment where it’s possible to put something on paper, anything at all. In my slumps, I would create lists with color coding and two-sentence journal entries with sloppy comic cartoon faces just to get anything out. I wouldn’t show some of these entries or works to anyone because of how illegible, and sometimes notably raw and personal, they are. Creativity is a form of expression, too, so it’s okay to allow enjoyment for its cathartic properties.

Prioritize Quiet Time

Finding quiet, distraction-free places aids the creative process. Sometimes, the best ideas arrive away from the pen and pad because it’s when the mind daydreams and roams. Walking in nature, jogging, swimming, biking, taking showers, lying in a hammock, or simply sky gazing encourage the creative roots to become established. The reason quiet, relaxed time, often in nature, stimulates creativity is that it expands perception and perspective. According to Christine Y. on Headspace, studies show the mind makes more creative connections between bits of information after a period of mind wandering. Instead of becoming stumped and paralyzed in a state of non-creativity, discover a routine that works to build and nurture the creativity within by carving out regular quiet times.

Daily walks in nature are part of my routine, for instance, and plenty of breaks to look at the back and front yard gardens, bird feeders, hummingbird feeders, and flowering bushes. I’ve also been known to request a desk by a window in office jobs to make sure I can feel my most creative! If I don’t have access to natural views in a professional setting, I try to take lunch breaks outside in courtyards or picnic tables, or I carve out places to walk. All these concepts can help the brain and creative muscles stay flexible and healthy.

The Heart of Creativity

Creative “roots” insinuate the existence of a hidden aspect of the human body or spirit where creativity lives, and although whether it lives in the soul or the brain is up for debate, creativity has its place! No matter the beliefs, creativity exists, and humans are fortunate to wield it and its many uses. Without creativity, there would be no comic books, television shows, fashion choices, cars, music, poetry, great cities, rocket ships, books, movies, plays, food variations, businesses, and the list goes on. Denying creativity would be denying humanity. However, there are certain steps to acknowledge in gaining access to the creative parts of the soul or brain and steps to ensure its sustained usefulness. Getting creative can require deep introspection, reflection, and meditation—and regularly, too. To connect to creative roots, look inwardly to a quiet part of yourself, and take stock of intangible aspects of yourself, including, but not limited to, morals and values, strengths, desires, areas of inspiration, joy, and love, to name a few. These are the areas where creativity draws nurturance and ultimately its sustainability.

Value Small Steps and Conclusion

Creativity is creativity, no matter how big or how small. Often, connecting to the root of creativity is about small creative moments rather than grand results, momentous performances, or masterpiece paintings. In nurturing the roots of the inner creative wells, a little bit of writing, drawing, singing, and dancing here and there can contribute to the bigger moments of creativity. It’s important to allow small creative gestures in the overall creative harnessing process. Every bit of creative action is beneficial and, eventually, thoroughly valuable.

Small moments of creativity add up into large payoffs, like a snowball gets larger and larger when rolled in snow, or how an acorn becomes an oak when watered. If small moments of creativity aren’t part of a daily routine or if they were lost along the way, try and invite small creative moments in, and return to a place of valuing them, as they’re majorly important for establishing a firm root and are necessary for emotional, financial, and personal payoffs. Fortunately, with a successful connection to creative roots, it becomes easy and natural to access, second nature. My creative routine, even as a self-proclaimed artist, was so full of chaos while young! Only in my recent, more mature years have I learned to hone creativity well, and I wish I’d learned earlier. I continue to learn more every day as well.