{image credit :: mwmgraphics.com}

Acknowledging and cultivating my own creativity is still a struggle for me at times, but can honestly say I’m always inspired to stretch the limits of my creative mind when I read Margarita Tartakovsky’s brilliant ideas. She’s the a PsychCentral author of Weightless, a totally amazing resource for all things body image and eating disorders. (Each Monday she shares an awesome body image boosting idea that often focuses on getting creative.) Margarita’s also the author of MargaritaTartakovsky.com, where she talks candidly about life, fashion, and writing (among other things!). Read on as she explains why (and how) to incorporate more creativity into your life.

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I live in my head. I always have. But it was a lot worse years ago. My negative thoughts would wrap themselves around other negative thoughts and write their own negative stories. Stories about having the wrong body, not being pretty enough, needing to lose weight. Needing to fix the latest “flaw.” Needing desperately to change.

But connecting to my creativity helped me stop filling my world with superficial, stagnant things and start pursuing my passions and really living life. Because when you focus on exploring what you love to do, you feel more alive. You’re less burdened by constant body-bashing. You’re less impressed with the thin ideal. 

Your priorities shift. You shift from wanting to whittle down your curves to cultivating your craft. The conversation in your head changes.

And your voice starts to get louder. The voice that yearns to try new things and express itself by making art, taking pictures, writing, sewing or doing tons of other creative activities.  

Creativity helps us become whole. It brings richness to our lives. Suddenly, the world is brighter. And it’s a whole lot more fun. There’s the fun of experimenting. Of finding something you love. Of being immersed in the process.

Creativity also gives us back our power. The power to build things with our hands. The power to make images come alive. The power to solve a problem. The power to use our minds for positive and interesting exploration. The power to be curious and ask questions. The power to contribute our voices to a conversation.

Here are five ways I like to tap into my creativity, which might ignite your imagination, too.

1. Take e-courses. One of the things I love about writing — and reading and interviewing experts — is that I get to learn new tidbits every day.  I’ll always be a student at heart (minus the scary standardized tests and long term papers). That’s why I love taking classes online. This website provides a list of creativity courses. I’ve taken many e-classes. But I especially love the e-courses from Susannah Conway. I just finished her photography class, and it was eye-opening.

2. Connect to your inner child.  Kids are super creative. They live and breathe creativity, and we can learn a lot from how they unabashedly play and experiment and invent. Recently a reader on Weightless mentioned that one of her favorite self-care practices is to color. I love that. How can you play with creativity? What used to fire up your imagination when you were a little one? 

3. Read. When it feels like the ideas have been permanently plucked from my brain, I know that I’m not reading enough. So I go to my favorite books and blogs to feed my brain the nutrients I need for ideas to blossom. One of my favorite books on creativity is Patti Digh’s Creative Is A Verb. This was really the first book that helped me connect to my creativity. It was my a-ha moment that I am creative. Everyone is.  I also love Maya Stein’s poetry, which just gets me at every line. I get inspiration from a variety of blogs, from writing to food to fashion. These are some of my favorite creativity-boosting blogs: Susannah Conway; Dooce; Eat, Live, Run; Kendi Everyday. 

4. Journal. I don’t journal regularly. I wish I did but I don’t. If writing pages a day seems overwhelming to you, start small. That’s what I do. Last year, in NYC, I bought one of those five-year journals — I’m seriously addicted to journals and own way too many — and I’ve been writing down snippets of my thoughts and doings a few times a week. I also love my itty-bitty notebook by Marta from Marta Writes. It reminds me to savor and truly taste my surroundings. Every day (or really whenever you feel like it), you record:

• ·       I love the smell of
• ·       I love the sound of
• ·       I love the taste of
• ·       I love the sight of
• ·       I love the feel of 

Many people also like keeping a gratitude journal or using journal prompts.

5. Take yourself out. This tip comes from Julia Cameron. She suggests taking yourself out on a solo artist date every week. It could be anything from going to a fabric shop to going to a museum. She says the goal is to “enchant yourself” or “woo your own consciousness.” It’s less about working hard at your art and more about playing. I also love the idea of learning to enjoy your own company, which is something you rarely do when you struggle with body image or eating issues. I live in a small city in Florida where the options are limited. But I regularly see musicals — I’m also addicted to Broadway — or the ballet, browse bookstores and ride my bike (activity is key for creativity). And when I’m visiting my family in NYC, I make sure to check out at least one museum and take tons of pictures with my iPhone. I try new foods and visit new sights. I try to slow down, focus and breathe it all in.

How do you tap into your creativity? Has connecting to your creativity helped your body image?

{image source :: iheartgifs.com}

For inspiration for this post, I have Kelly Clarkson’s anthem blaring in the background. I have to admit, it’s both catchy and empowering – a lethal combination in my musical book.

What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger
Stand a little taller
Doesn’t mean I’m lonely when I’m alone

Rock on, sister…

What doesn’t kill you makes a fighter
Footsteps even lighter
Doesn’t mean I’m over cause you’re gone

What makes this song so powerful, in my estimation, is that it utilizes a pretty pervasive cultural ideal and makes it pop. It’s adds a bit more life to the idea since it was originally stated by philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche as “That which does not kill us makes us stronger.”

My own experience has been that people will use this phrase as a means of consolation. As a society, we’re fairly uncomfortable with other people’s pain, or our own for that matter (see here and here for elaboration). So, we say things like “it’ll all be okay in the end” or “everything happens for a reason,” or “what doesn’t kill you…” to try to both ease the heartache of another person and obscure the idea that pain could exist just because it exists.

Sometimes it’s something that we tell ourselves. We want to believe that our pain serves a greater function, that some good can arise from the ashes of our suffering. I’ll admit that I’ve reminded myself of this idea many times after a tragedy or hardship rocked me. And to be honest, it’s helped to bolster my sense of potency and self-esteem. In fact, I often look back on the difficult moments on my life collectively and think that these junctures shaped me as a strong and independent person.

Could it be, though, that I would be strong and independent without enduring these struggles? That’s a chicken and egg question that I’ll never be able to answer definitively for myself. However, there are researchers looking at what happens when people suffer trauma and hardship.

What the researchers have found is that difficult situations do enhance individuals’ ability to cope with future life stressors, at least to a point. In classic Goldilocks fashion, researchers note that those with the best ability to cope are individuals who have experienced some turmoil, while those who have experienced none or a lot are at a disadvantage.

So it looks like adversity is beneficial in the right amounts. If you skate through most of life with minimal obstacles, you never learn how navigate around or through the ones that inevitably crop up. This might explain why we see so many children who completely melt down when asked to share a toy. They’ve never learned how to regulate and manage difficult emotions that arise with things like frustration and disappointment. On the other hand, a person who’s dealt a heavy hand of tragedy might have their resources completely tapped. Their system is literally overwhelmed by the stress of what they endure and stops functioning properly. They might become immobilized when more stress emerges.

So what we know is that this issue is complex. We have not really defined the “optimal” amount of stress, and I think that varies greatly depending on individual factors, like personality, temperament, and resilience. It also depends heavily on the amount of social support a person has when in the grip of something difficult.

What we do know is that trying to make meaning out of suffering helps us to create coherent narratives of our lives, and this leads to us feeling more fulfilled, content, and healthy. So if you want to say that whatever kills you makes you stronger, be my guest. You could even sing it!

{credit prettystuff; via pinterest}

I used to wear glasses, and when I did you could frequently find me running frantically around my house, late for work as usual, as I searched for them. If you were looking in the window during this charade, you would undoubtedly laugh, as I would estimate at least forty percent of the time they were on my face or folded on to my shirt. To me, this demonstrates just how disconnected I was from my own body. I could have glasses resting on my skin, making my vision clearer, and have no awareness in the moment of what was, literally, right in front of me.

Thanks to LASIK and mindfulness practice, I am much more connected to myself these days and don’t lose any glasses. I know that I’m haven’t been alone in this disconnection, however. Every day I see individuals who are utterly unaware of their bodies unique signals, and I see how this unawareness wrecks havoc on their ability to properly care for themselves.

When it comes to feeding ourselves, our bodies have an absolutely incredible system for keeping us healthy. Many of us believe that if we really listen to our bodies, it will tell us to eat Hostess cupcakes all day long and send us spiraling into a state of obesity. In fact, our bodies just don’t work like that. That belief itself is worth exploring, and is often tied to messages that we’ve gotten throughout our lives about how bodies just can’t be trusted. We’re told this by our parents growing up (“You can’t be hungry yet – you just ate!”), by our friends (“Watch out or your Twinkee addiction is going to catch up to you.”) and by the diet industry (“Trick your body into losing weight!”), and even by the government and food industry, (“Follow these food pyramid guidelines, not your hunger! Don’t worry that they are the result of dairy and beef industry’s advice to the USDA.”).

What we often fail to hear through all the white noise is the sound of our Inner Nutritionist, despite the fact that he or she is wailing to get our attention. Our Inner Nutritionist is comprised of all of the internal wisdom that resides in our amazing bodies. It’s built on millions of years of collective evolution and decades of your own personal experience. To put it frankly, it knows what it’s doing – a heck of a lot better than your Aunt Sally, Slim-Fast, or the USDA.

Our Inner Nutritionist tells us things like when we are hungry and when we are full. The Inner Nutritionist even has cool hormones at his or her disposal that can make certain foods more or less appealing.  Linda Bacon talks about the restrained eater, the subject of many studies, in her book, Health at Every Size. The restrained eater is someone who has kicked their Inner Nutritionist to the curb, and instead responds to external cues to determine their eating. The restrained eater responds to things like the amount of food available, peer behavior, and their emotions to determine how much and what they eat. While these things can influence all of us to some degree, those with a tight relationship with their Inner Nutritionist are able to observe and acknowledge these factors and return to their own sense of what’s right for their body in the moment.

Utilizing this resource can take a lot of practice, particularly for someone who has long ago fired the Inner Nutritionist. Bringing it back happens when we can practice mindful eating and develop a more balanced relationship with our bodies. An Inner Nutritionist packs his or her bags when her boss doesn’t believe she exists, ignores her, or, worse, berates her.  Just for today, practice being curious as to where your own Inner Nutritionist might be.

Do you believe you can trust your body for your food choices?

{on bloglovin, via pinterest}

I’m beyond honored to get to share this guest post by Mara Glatzel, as she is the queen of self-love in my eyes. Without further ado…

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We’ve all seen the movies or TV shows – there she sits, all alone, without a date for Valentine’s Day, wallowing in a nest of chocolates and chick flicks, while her mascara runs all over her face as she cries.

Because she’s sad, right? Of course.

Because it’s Valentine’s Day and it is crucial to have a super romantic lovefest on Valentine’s Day.

Now, I love Valentine’s Day. I love an opportunity to skip around and hand out love letters. I love the permission to wear both pink and red, at the same time. However, the dark underbelly of such a holiday is the correlation between romantic love and happiness, as if you are only whole if you’ve got someone to love you. This is not going to be that kind of Valentine’s Day post.

This is the kind of post where we talk about you crazy awesome you are and all of the wonderful things that you can do today to celebrate your awesomeness. This is a call to action kind of blog post, designed to make you feel like jumping up out of your chair and running to do something that makes YOU feel loved and cared for.

Activities to Improve Feelings of Self-Love

1. Random act of kindness: Make a valentine, cover it in glitter, and magazine clippings. Collage to your hearts content. Make ten valentines if you are so inclined, and spend the rest of the day handing them out to strangers, putting them under windshields, and giving them them to the person bagging your groceries.

2. Treat yourself to a deluxe spa day, or whip up a DIY face mask out of stuff in your cabinets. Take a bath, luxuriate in the shower for an extra ten minutes, give yourself a mani/pedi, or buy yourself the brand new moisturizer that you’ve been pining after that smells like roses. The crucial aspect of this activity is carving out time in your day to treat yourself to something special, and to focus on not feeling remotely guilty about putting your phone on silent and spending time on YOU.

3. Move your body. I know that it’s February, and that for many of us that means it’s too cold to run around outside all afternoon. However, making an effort to get your blood pumping and endorphins circulating can make you feel all sparkly and new, despite the cold weather. Take it as an opportunity to go to that new yoga class, or try out something new, like Nia, which can be a great way to sweat a little and get comfortable in your skin.

4. Tell someone that you love them, without expecting anything in return. Give a present, without wanting to get one back. Do something kind for someone else, just for the sake of how it feels in YOUR heart to do it. Pay the toll for the car behind you. Call up your best friend and leave them a this is why you’re amazing and thank you so much for everything voicemail.  Write your favorite blogger/writer/artist a fan email. Thank your teacher profusely for how much they’ve taught you. Do it because of how it makes you feel.

The important element in all of these activities is the the emphasis on self-care and putting yourself first. Now, you might say, it makes me feel awesome to sit on my couch and eat chocolate while watching Bridget Jones Diary, which, well, is hard to argue with. However, I challenge you to think about how you feel during the activities that you do today – do you feel energized? excited? enthusiastic? Do you feel like you can accomplish anything that you put your mind to? Does it make you feel like you are worth loving? Does it make you feel happy to be in the skin that you’re in?

Because that’s the feeling that we’re shooting for today, and you are oh so worth it.

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Mara Glatzel is the highly caffeinated maven behind the body image + authentic living blog, Medicinal Marzipan. If you enjoyed this post, catch up with her (almost) daily body-loving antics and general rabble-rousing on facebook, twitter, or shoot her an email at medicinalmarzipan {at} gmail {dot} com.