Welcome to Your Creative Chord Podcast, where host Jenny Leigh Hodgins, author and educator, shares unique insights dedicated to empowering your creative flow and inspired living. Through solo reflections and dialogues with creators and wellness experts, Jenny Leigh shares holistic wisdom influenced by her Buddhist practice, alongside poetic insights and practical strategies for living authentically.This podcast helps you overcome challenges and unlock your full creative potential.

Welcome to Your Creative Chord, Ep 86 – How To Attune to Your Creative Voice. If you’re new here, I’m Jenny Leigh Hodgins, Creative Empowerment Coach and host of YCC, where we empower your creative flow and inspired living. 

For returning listeners, thank you for tuning in again—I appreciate your support and engagement.

If you listened to last month’s Episode 85, From Overwhelm to Creative Flow: Lessons in Resilience, Boundaries, and Sustainable Action, today we’ll focus on tuning into your creative voice with practical steps you can use immediately to strengthen your creative practice and clarity.

Everyone is creative.

Some tap into it more readily than others.

People describe me as creative. That’s because I know how to create: I garden, cook, sing, play piano, bang on drums, write, compose, take nature photos, decorate, design, present, speak, and tweak lessons and content for clients/students and my podcast. 

Ideas, thoughts, melodies, drama, humor, patterns, and words burst forth from me like a freely flowing and nearly unstoppable fountain. 

So I understand the creative process and how to access it.

In my role as a piano, music, and chorus educator for 30 years, I’ve seen how easy creativity is for kids. All the children I’ve taught over the years were readily able to access their creativity. 

Adults need help getting connected. As we grow up, we take in our experiences and allow our voices to be silenced. 

That’s why many people think they are not creative. 

Or why professional creatives experience temporary perceived blocks. 

Of course, creativity has an ebb and flow, and if we don’t honor the season of rest and incubation, we end up in burnout. Which is why I teach my RESET format first within all my digital products and signature creative empowerment coaching program. 

Practicing self-compassionate awareness of the season and your life’s rhythms allows you to build sustainable creative flow. 

But what if you’re currently blocked or are creatively curious but don’t know where to start? 

That’s why I’ve used my Creative Exploration Formula to help thousands of students and clients. It’s a simple strategy based on self-compassionate practices that open up your creative potential. 

I’ve shared more about my Creative Exploration Formula in episode 3, Learning To Be Creative, episode 41, My Creative Exploration Formula, and episode 69, Reignite Your Creativity: My Proven Formula, which explore the Creative Exploration process from different angles and lived contexts that may deepen your understanding.

But today, let’s keep it simple. If you want to get creative, the following 7 steps will get you started:

1. PUT YOURSELF IN A BOX. Start with setting some parameters. Allow only select materials, timeframe, or a work process within which to create. 

• As a visual artist, this could mean using an 11 X 17 canvas, acrylic paint, a select color palette, specific brushes, and a time limit of 30 minutes. 
• For a composer, maybe it looks like a 30-minute time block, a laptop’s recording software app, a select instrument palette like only strings, or piano, or percussion or brass, or a vocal/guitar instrumentation. 
• For a writer, maybe it looks like using a pen and paper, a 15-minute timer, a rule that the pen must never leave the paper, no editing is allowed, a specific character, plot, or setting, or a writing prompt, and the same time for this activity daily. 

The point is that you choose your limitations before you begin. 

When we have too many options, sometimes we feel overwhelmed. Having less options forces your brain to look for unique ways to use the space provided. 

2. LET GO OF YOUR HEAD. Take off your head—release rules, structures, and expectations. Imagine sending your judgments into a balloon and letting them float away.

3. SET YOUR INTENT. Tap into your soul and heart. Sit with your feelings and allow them to breathe loudly. Freely. Let everything come from this inner compass. Channel from this point of your core, your purpose, your inner intent or authentic emotion. 

Let this anchor you from start to finish. 

Connecting to your truth in this way allows creativity to thrive freely. Follow your intuition without concern about the end point. Let that connection to your spiritual and emotional inner core lead you. 

4. VISUALIZE your intent by deeply feeling and sensing it. Envision the mood, color, sound, story, and setting. Like walking onto a stage or storybook, immerse yourself into your core anchor–your inner intent or authentic message and emotions. Using visualization helps you attune to your unique voice.

5. EXPLORE, BRAINSTORM, EXPERIMENT. Use courage and humility to allow your inner core to lead the way into exploration and experimentation. 

Open up to a beginner mindset and to willingly learn and be led. The more you trust it, the more readily your authentic voice will avail itself. Be open to learn and follow the lead. Release control of the outcome.

6. ALLOW FOR FAILURE. At this stage of expression and experimentation, the most important focus is on allowing yourself to express whatever comes out. 

If you lose focus on your inner anchor, or begin to hear internal judgments, shake these off and reestablish connection with your inner life and your courageous, playful beginner’s mindset. 

When you allow space for mistakes, often your creative voice will take you into new territory that can build into something unexpectedly fresh. 

So let failure have its place in the creative process.

7. REDESIGN. At the end of the process of CE, you can allow your editor hat, judgments, rules, and inner critic to have a say. That’s actually a good contribution from your inner critic. That editing perspective is what your inner critic was made for! Allow it to find ways to improve whatever you’ve created. 

But the key is not to allow this judgment voice to enter the creative process until the final step.

These seven steps are the core of my Creative Exploration Formula, one of the three concepts included in my Creative Empowerment Sampler. 

If you’d like a simple guide to help you put these steps into practice, you can grab your free Creative Empowerment Sampler at YourCreativeChord.com/getinspiredhere. 

And if you’re ready to explore your creativity with step-by-step guidance, personalized support, and tools to build sustainable flow, my Creative Empowerment Coaching Program is designed to guide you through this process—you can apply at YourCreativeChord.com/workwithme.

Thank you again for joining me today. I hope this episode inspires you to explore your creativity using my Creative Exploration Formula and to enjoy the process at your own pace. 

Keep honoring your energy, following your inner intent, and letting your unique creativity flow. 

I’ll see you next time on Your Creative Chord. Remember, creativity is a practice, not a performance—embrace it, play with it, and make it your own. 

Until next time, nurture your creative flow, trust your process, and allow yourself the joy of creating.

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Visit YourCreativeChord.com for more resources. Remember daily life is where your creative flow begins. Embrace the journey.