“It is from the empty spaces that the future begins in moments of creative insight, where our world is re-patterned in an instant: where we are no longer able to think what we thought before and where we see a new way of leaping forward. You are now here.”
This landed in my inbox this week from NoWhere Group. Isn’t it beautiful?
Leave room for your creativity
Why are we so reluctant to embrace the empty spaces though? Have you ever noticed how difficult it can be to just sit there and be with yourself? Maybe you haven’t. Maybe you fill any moments like that with mindless scrolling, to pass the time. I think most of us are guilty of that…
But why do you want to pass the time? Time is the most precious resource we have and yet we let it slip though our fingers like sand on a beach. We tell ourselves we don’t have time to do so many things; eat healthily, exercise, call our parents, enjoy a hobby and yet, here we are with those little technological time-thieves in our hands again, wondering why our brains are fried and our self-esteem on the floor.
We need to make friends with these little pockets of empty space. They are probably the only places in our busy lives where we activate our imaginations, dream up new ideas and create impactful solutions. Creativity needs space to shine! Have you ever heard people talk about the best ideas coming to them whilst they were out for a walk or under the shower? It’s no coincidence that when we switch off, the ideas turn on and I loved the expression
“we are no longer able to think what we thought before.”
Once you know something, you can’t unknow it. If you’ve suddenly seen it from a different perspective, you can’t then unsee it that way and ideas unfold down a new, exciting path.
Could you try it for a week?!
So this week, I just want to draw your attention to the creative insight that’s available to you when you stop pushing for the answers and instead lean into and enjoy the moments of mental resting and recuperating. The Italians understand this best. They even have a saying to describe these moments: ‘il dolce far niente’ – the sweetness of doing nothing!! I know already you’ll tell me you don’t have time for a walk or you can’t fit in a little journaling or meditation. But how about trying your commute without the podcast, the supermarket queue without YouTube or the school run minus the Reels after drop-off?
Your greatest idea could hit whilst you’re out walking your dog, that one day it’s howling outside, you have the wrong shoes on and you absolutely cannot think of anywhere you’d least like to be! But it would be so worth getting wet it if it changed the trajectory of your whole life, right?!
Try it. Less Book-of-Face and more empty space!
And of course, let me know if you get that elusive insight you needed!
Zoe x