3 Benefits of Intentional Creation Every Day
Hi, I’m Connie Sokol, a national speaker, bestselling author, program founder, and mother of seven and loving it. I’m reaching and teaching 1 million listeners to live a purposeful, organized and joyful life. You can too. So let’s go.
Welcome back to Balance Redefined, I’m Connie Sokol and have great things to share with you today about the benefits of the daily act of creation. Have you really considered that concept of: Am I daily engaged in the act of creating something? Something that is of meaning or value or bring some kind of feeling of happiness or fulfillment in my life? I don’t think we realize how much we engage in that act of creation of small, big things, medium, large, whatever, on a daily basis. I don’t think we realize the power that is in that in so many layered ways. So, for example, the other day, a friend of mine, it was a wonderful little celebration and she brought me this beautiful pottery bowl that she had made for me and it is so lovely and the colors and it’s speckled, it’s like a tan and it’s got speckled brown and it looked like it was from the store.
It had the ridges in the middle like a circle, you know, so it looked like it had been really shaped just by a professional kind of shaping machine. Anyway, I was so impressed and she’s just started pottery now, I’ve done pottery and I know that it looks like a beginner. And I said, what in the world? How did you get so good so fast? And she said I can’t even tell you. I didn’t know that I was even able to do this. And then I didn’t know how fun it was. She said it’s really my happy place. It’s so therapeutic. I sit down and I start with a lump of clay and then I just go into this other world of just creating and doing and it’s just magical. And now she has just found this new outlet for her that brings her such a happiness.
And that’s what I want to talk about today. The overriding benefits of, of this creation because we’re wired for it. It’s in all the things that we do and we actually engage in it and need it daily. But we have to be in some ways at some point intentional about how we go about creating. Otherwise, we’re kind of that just being acted upon. We have to be the ones that say, I want to create this. I am consciously creating this particular thing. And it could be anything. It could be making a meal or creating a presentation or a project or doing your yard or doing some kind of a, like for me, I do my books and I usually write nonfiction, but I love to write fiction and that’s kind of like my little happy place.
And so that’s the first benefit I want to go to is first of all that we’re wired for it. So really consider valuing and validating that this is really a key piece of our lives of intentionally creating. And how it shifts to even more fulfillment when we become more intentional about the way and, and the things we choose to create. So the first benefit is joy. It brings joy. It brings joy to ourselves. We have such a thrill in this newness of this creation. And when you think about all in nature and even the creation of the world, especially if you have the beliefs, when you think about everything is in these steps and, and what a joy it is that we get to engage in it, that there’s something absolutely fulfilling about taking sort of matter unorganized and creating something new that didn’t exist before. And again, whatever that is. Maybe it’s decorating your home or maybe it’s just doing some little vignette that’s um, at your office where you have something that’s motivating them or some kind of a, a little vignette for the season, whatever it might be that you are doing, this creation, it’s bringing you joy.
And just like my friend with the pottery, it didn’t matter really how it turned out. She was absolutely loving the doing of it, the creating of it. I was laughing ’cause the other day, like I said, my usual is nonfiction. Helping women and men and families be able to have lives of purpose, organization and joy. That is what I do. And that’s mostly nonfiction. My happy little therapeutic place is writing fiction. I love to write stories that have a bit of romance and have a bit of change of how these people came together and created change within one another for the betterment of both and everyone involved. And so it really brings me this happiness, this joy. But the fun, fun part, as any writer can tell you, it is not necessarily that the book is done. Now, there is an absolute joy that comes with a book being finished.
And if you’ve finished a book, you know that it is more of a sense of completion and, and relief almost that it is done. And then when you see the cover and you see it delivered or in the bookstore for the first time, you’re like, ah. It’s like you’ve just birthed the baby, right? It’s just really the, the fruits of your labor. It’s wonderful. But one of my favorite parts of writing a book is that beginning, that synergy, that the catalyst, the beginning am sparks of that. And the other day out of the blue, I had this plotline come to me for this cute, cute book and it was substantial, but it was fun. And so I, I started having scenes come to mind. That’s kind of how it works for me. I’ve scenes come to mind. So I started writing them down and then I would be driving and as seen would come to mind and I’m recording it on my voice memo notes and I am laughing.
The banter that is going on between the characters I love-that’s one of my favorite parts to write and I was laughing out loud. It was so fun. Now it’s a voice memo in a car. Has that even become an actual creation in the sense that it’s on paper, it’s a finished book and now people are reading it? No, but I can enjoy that. I can enjoy that. I have these sparks of creation and enjoyed the, the, the wonder of it and the actual creating of it that just brings so much joy and just like my friend with the pottery. So considering your mind, what kind of creations or act of creations bring you joy, small things, bigger things, whatever that is. What is it that brings you joy? Is that wrapping a beautiful present? Is it having a conversation with someone? That’s an act of creation. Is it being able to plant something? What is it that brings you that joy?
And then the second thing is that creation brings joy to others. I love, love, love the thought that we get to bring this joy to other people. I love this quote from C. Joy Bell, she says, “What multiplies is only up to us, whether it’s kindness or unkindness, goodwill or bad intentions, fear or love, whether it’s truth or doubt. What multiplies in our minds, in our relationships with others and our relationship with the perspectives about the world and our relationship with God in our outlooks and in our hearts. It’s all up to us. The power of multiplication is in our own hands.” Isn’t that beautiful? As we create, guess what happens? It’s multiplied. Our joy is multiplied. The joy for others is multiplied. The goodness in the world is multiplied.
I think about that first biblical commandment to multiply and replenish. It’s more than just having children. It is about multiplying and replenish with goodness and happiness and joy and light and make that the abundance in the world. Go out and create something that provides that. Doesn’t that just fill your soul with happiness and then we get to enjoy that act of creation again and again as it is multiplied. And I love this quote from Charles Dickens, he says, “the whole difference between construction and creation is exactly this, that a thing constructed can only be loved after it is constructed, but a thing created is loved before it exists.” So just like my saying, the story that I was creating, it’s loved before it even exists on paper and then it’s loved again when it actually gets into the existence of paper and then it’s loved again when somebody opens that book or reads it on their kindle and reads and enjoys that story and then it’s loved and enjoyed again when that person shares that story with someone else and say, Oh, I read the funnest book in it that Dah, Dah, Dah, and they share it again.
So multiply and replenish that joy with that act of creation. I love it. And then the last thing is it creation helps us see the purpose in the process. That benefit of creation is that we see there’s a reason for the steps in creation. There’s a reason why there were six days of creation and a day of rest. There’s a reason why we have frustrations and joys in that process of creation. There’s a reason for that. I think sometimes we fear the flaws. We fear starting the act of creation because we’re afraid it’s not going to turn out or turn out right.
There’s going to be, there’s going to be things that go wrong. We’re going to fail. It’s not going to succeed. It’s going to be embarrassing. It’s going to be yuchha, and I know from doing pottery, I’ve had a many a project, not that I went full force on it, but it was I a project that just look like lumps of clay that somebody tried to indent. Really. And so when you think about that, and even my children, when they did pottery at school, I still have some of their cups and things that I put my pens and pencils in and we laugh about their attempts, you know, of trying to do this. And then there’s the glazing and you never know how it’s gonna turn out with the glazing. You could have done a great piece and then the glazing goes weird. So there’s a lot that we don’t control in the purpose.
I mean in the process of creation. And there’s a lot that we do control that we can be intentional about. And one of the things we can control is not being frustrated to the point that we stop creating. That we don’t just go, well I did pottery twice and I hate it so I’m not doing it. If we say, you know what, this isn’t as fulfilling as I thought it would be. I’ll come back to this later. Great, but just to stop and start and we stopped because it didn’t turn out or didn’t go like we thought it would. That is not a good reason to stop creating. Creating just means maybe this isn’t something that brings me joy so I will go to something else that brings me joy and I’ll get that joy factor in. Maybe what will happen is I’ll expand in my abilities so that I can come back to this other thing.
That’s how I look at math. I loved math when I was younger. Sixth Grade, I had a teacher who was incredible and she did math packets and my friend and I just kind of, I dunno an unspoken kind of pact that we would go as fast as in far as we could with those, those math packets and oh my goodness, I jammed on those. We did so many and went so far that the teacher by the end of the year actually had to create new packets for the first time because we loved math so much. And then I got into, a year later I get into a class with a teacher who, bless his soul, I’m sure he didn’t realize that this is what was coming across, but everybody kind of knew him as a really mean and sort of a downer teacher. And my sister had been in that class before me and he had viewed her as being a little bit loud and kind of a rabble-rouser and that kind of thing.
The first day when he said my name, he’s like, oh, are you related to so and so? And I’m like, yes, she’s my sister. And he’s like, oh, you know, so I knew, oh, games were afoot, but I have to tell you the way that he taught and the way he kind of tried to nail you didn’t really help you succeed. And I have to tell you that really it was just not the best climate for growth for me. And I ended up just barely passing with a C and I did not engage in math after that at all, at all. To this day, I still don’t enjoy math. I maybe enjoy some of the graphing stuff that my kids do, but I still don’t enjoy math. And that’s my choice. It’s not just his, his deal. But I have to tell you and add onto that story that later, um, I happened to meet him in some kind of irregular environment.
I can’t remember what it was, but he wasn’t in his, you know, the things that he would wear to school at that time. It was like a shirt and tie and he seemed like a really nice man. Sad to say that he just didn’t really bring that across in the classroom. And this wasn’t just my perspective, this was most everybody, the kids knew him to be this certain way. And so, you know, it’s not, it’s not helpful for us to try something and then go, oh well, because that person was lame or this experience was lame. I’m not getting engaged in that creation at all. Just maybe put it on the shelf for a little bit and say, you know what, I’ll come back to that because I know there’s good in that. And, and I’ll come back to that. And these other things that I engage in will make me even more capable to be able to do, engage better.
So keeping your heart and mind open for more creation. So hopefully today you’ve had some kind of thoughts or ideas that will help you in your act of creation. Because again, I hope that you can understand that the creation isn’t a perfect process. It is, it is in its fundamentals. It is a perfect process, but we engaging in it is not perfect. In fact, there’s this other quote that I love, it’s uh, from um, Madeleine l’engle. She said, “I like the fact that an ancient Chinese art, the great painters always included a deliberate flaw in their work. Human creation is never perfect.” Isn’t that beautiful? It reminds me a lot of the Japanese artwork that can Suki, where they break the bowls and then they repair it with gold and they believe that it’s more valuable that way because it now has more character and it’s more beautiful.
And I really believe that, that we need to allow ourselves the enjoyment that I talked about, the joy of the creation process and not just try to get to the end result, the productivity of it, and then enjoy the process of it, the flaws, whatever it might be that will be included along the way. Just enjoy it, enjoy, enjoy, enjoy. So today I challenge you.
Choose something to intentionally create and then include the joy, find joy in the creating and don’t fear the flaws. Be able to know that this is all part of the process. And then comment below. I would love to hear your comments. And if you want more of these kinds of tips and principles, if you find value in this today and you’re feeling it in your soul, check out my free masterclasses. I have great life changing content that will make a difference in your life.
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Hi, I’m Connie Sokol, and thanks for listening today to Balance Redefined. Don’t forget to rate and subscribe, and if you liked it, get even more life shifting. Learning with my best selling books on Amazon from humorous decor content, seasonal to spiritual life hacking nonfiction too. Fun, romance fiction. I have a book for just what you need. So go to Amazon, search Connie Sokol, and check out the show notes for the direct link to guide you there.
