Table of Contents
Introduction
How to Discover and Unleash Your Creativity: Creativity eludes us in the routine lives we live. But the need to create and articulate ourselves is a primal, unceasing desire.
And sometimes, all we need for our creative juices to flow is a change of scene — a bit of mystery, letting ourselves be stimulated by unfamiliar sights and sounds, breaking the monotony of our daily routines.
Which is why travel in every shape and form can be such a powerful creative outlet.
If your desire is to discover your creative side and nurture it, then maybe you need to be an “inspired traveler.”
With these tips, you are going to learn how to fully engage in the experience of discovery — feeling connected to the world around you in a way that allows for new ideas and insights to arise effortlessly.
Lets find out how to become some sort of inspired traveler and use your own new places and experiences to fuel your creativity.
Travel With an Open Mind
How to Discover and Unleash Your Creativity: For me, creativity flows in the face of new experiences and travel is a naturally occurring entangle in the unknown. Be exposed to stuff as it occurs rather than requiting to structure.
Follow your curiosity and you will find yourself in interesting places, talking to interesting people, learning interesting things that may end up giving you new ideas.
Visualize this: the lively vibes of a Marrakech marketplace surrounding your senses with vivid shades, alluring smells, and energetic dialogues. It allows for exploration, without any scheduled programming.
You can spot handwoven rugs, and colorful pottery, spices piled into mountains of color. Mind the details—touch the grains and listen to the cadence of vendors’ calls.
This passive soaking of your environment can stir up ideas and insights that simply would not arise at home.
Embrace the Power of Solitude
As much as travel can be about venturing to new locations and experiencing new personalities, it is also about solitude.
Sitting alone in a new space evokes a much more profound inner reflection and self-exploration — both vital ingredients for creativity.
You know the feeling when you have found yourself in an isolated and beautiful place — the forest an hour into dawn, a deserted beach, the tip of a mountain during sunset.
Your mind has space to wander without the interruptions of everyday life. It might just be that during these silent times, thoughts and inspirations bubble up to the surface with ease.
Try to walk alone and aimless Take a little notebook with you, and get “lost.” Observe what is catchy for you, and write it down.
We need to be bored, and alone with our thoughts, and in moments like that often creativity comes about.
Discover the Local Arts and Crafts Scene
How to Discover and Unleash Your Creativity: Art is the language of culture and there is nothing more inspiring than experiencing that creativity first hand.
From painting and sculpture to dance and music, local arts provides a glimpse into the values and history of a place, and can also be a great way to experience new forms of art.
Go to a local gallery, a music performance, or participate in a local craft workshop. Art classes that welcome travelers — pottery in Japan, tango in Argentina, painting in Italy, and so on — are abundant in many cities.
Engaging with the creative traditions of another culture can broaden your horizons.
Tip: If you happen to be in a new city, go to an art quarter or a neighborhood market and simply watch. Try to speak to artists, artisans if you have a chance and know about their work.
Aside from that, you may even find an interest in a form of art that you absolutely love or even learn something new that you can apply to your own art when you get home.
Take Pictures of the World Around You
Photography is one of the fastest ways to access your creativity when on the road. A better camera helps, but no, you don’t need one — a smartphone is fine.
Photography is the art of seeing things in a different way, of looking more closely and identifying aspects you might overlook and even snore around for an interesting pattern, light, and color to make an ordinary frame look magical.
Push beyond documenting iconic sights, and try to photograph the less visible aspects of a location: the bark of a tree, the puddle with a reflection in it, or the shadow from an old structure.
You will learn to appreciate the beauty of everything around you from these little gems.
Daily Photography Challenge: Create a daily themed photography challenge. Examples: Capture blue things or Symmetry in the environment.
A theme can prompt you to see the external world in a new light, and it may produce a cohesive body of work.
Conduct Form Of Deep Observation & Mindfulness
How to Discover and Unleash Your Creativity: How long has it been since you really observed your surroundings? Observation is one of the most potent tools for fostering your creativity.
Which means, being in the moment and experiencing everything around you. It means being aware of the textures, sounds, scents and small details of a place that most miss through their honeymoon haze of mindless travel.
Imagine this: sit in a cafe around your place and watch life happen around you.
Walk about sense how people engage, sense the light coming through the window, the smell of the coffee blending with the smell of baked things.
These observations may seem trivial, but they provide limitless inspiration and often lead you in new directions.
Mindfulness practice: Five Senses Observation Spend a few minutes with each sense individually, wherever you are.
Look for five things that you can see, four things that you can feel, three things that you can hear, two things that you can smell, and one thing that you can taste.
This will ground you in the present moment and make you more aware.
Have a word with locals and hear from them
Nothing saddens me more than discovering that travel culture can insuffocate travel connection more than trips bridging divides.
You can learn valuable, new perspectives by talking with locals and stories you hear usually contain the little golden nuggets of wisdom or insight to inspire your creative pursuits.
Engage the shopkeeper in a conversation, ask the guide about their life, or go on a tour where the guide tells something about the life of local residents.
Learning from the experience of others is a way of deepening in a new place and, at the same time, discovering new aspects. Who would think that during a conversation with a random stranger about their life, you can get an idea? And all due to the fact that he shared the experience that is similar for you.
Pro Tip: Always carry a small notebook and write down interesting stories, incidents heard from people, funny little stories, or some statements.
The story may come in handy later or turn into a source of inspiration for a drawing or a creative project. Experiment with a travel sketchbook. Making sketches while traveling is one of the creativity-provoking experiences.
Skill is not important here; it is about the process itself and not about the final result.
It will also help you to engage and absorb the place more fully: sketching increases one’s sensitivity to the surrounding world.
Your travel sketchbook might include sketches of the beautiful views, some episodes you hear in a cafe or a street, or a small sketch of a cute sign.
Later, these words will become a memory of your trip and a piece of a creative process.
How to start: you don’t need to sketch some hard sketches or views; just start with small details or an arrangement of objects in front of you.
Spend some time reflecting on what you have learned that you can apply to your own life and journal your thoughts
Spare a moment to think about how each day went on such a field. Travel journaling, in my opinion, should not only include what you did but what you felt, what amazed you.
What moved you very much: Writing can dig deep into self-understanding and creativity, providing a way to process everything new and this helps you listen to your own voice and learn new things about yourself you might not even be able to see otherwise.
The act of reflection creates mental space for your creative ideas to solidify, and while journaling you may notice reoccurring patterns, thoughts, or topics.
If you want to become a writer or simply like to write your thoughts down, then journaling provides a medium through which you can discover yourself, and this can be translated straight into your creative work.
Seek An Inspiration From The Daily Routines Of Other Nations
The most beautiful thing about travel is how everyday life changes from culture to culture. More inspiration can be found in a work culture derived from the smallest things such as making coffee in the morning or how people greet each other.
Such routines are the mean to new concepts, traditions or modes of thought that broaden your creativity.
Watching a Japanese tea ceremony at when I was in Japan, seeing such simple beauty helped me appreciate how intentional and mindful we can be with basic tasks in our day.
During my trip to Italy, I was struck by the fact that every evening I would see locals come together to take part in this activity called “passeggiata” (a walk), and it made me want to incorporate more leisure and connection into my life.
Try this: Choose a local habit or custom and practice doing it whenever you visit that place during travel.
By perhaps as small of actions as getting a local breakfast during the day, or simply taking a stroll during the evening.
These simple gestures can mend the roots that you need to sink your teeth into a place, where you can derive joy from hearing how other people live.
Read MoreForget about being perfect and just create
This is the great thing about creativity; it never needs to be perfect and travel is the best setting to practice this in.
The constantly shifting backgrounds, the freshness, and those brief instances of feeling uneasy remind us that there is pleasure in experimentation and trying things out. Give yourself the freedom to express, to take pictures, to write, to draw, to make art, to compose a song, to sing and dance.
That’s the whole point, to go through the process and to release the notion that everything has to be clean or final.
This mentality then liberates you from any selfish need of perfection and opens you to a much truer creativity – one that is positive and anchored in curiosity and pleasure.
Note to self: Celebrate the Imperfection of Creativity Your sketches need not be masterpieces, and your travel journal need not be well-written.
Create for the auspices of creating, and you will have the key that opens the door that leads to something magical.
Final Thoughts On How to Discover and Unleash Your Creativity
How to Discover and Unleash Your Creativity: One reason that travel is so magical is that it gets us out of our usual groove and opens us up to new ideas.
You will be inspired at every corner when you allow yourself to be present, explore with curious eyes and engage with what is around you. So grab a notebook, a sketchbook or a camera, and let the world be your playground.
Uncovering your creativity and bringing it to the surface happens not with a bang, but a whisper, not in the distance, but in your backyard.
It is about getting into the flow of what is happening around you, letting your discomfort of the unknown stretch and inspire you and infusing your creative spirit with the inspiration that only travel can create.
