Creative Pause

In Edward de Bono’s paper for International Journal of Psychoanalysis, Professor Lajos Székely describes creative pause as follows:

The ‘creative pause’ is defined as the time interval, which begins when the thinker interrupts conscious preoccupation with an unsolved problem, and ends when the solution to the problem unexpectedly appears in consciousness. (“The Creative Pause, 1967)

 

How are “you” going to figure out a “Creative Pause” from everything and finally allow your mind and body to relax from all the cascading elements of everyday life?

 

This was the morning message from my body. I woke up tired and feeling as if my body had been beating during the night… as I stood in the mirror I realized I was the only suspect being held in custody for this.

 

Being an artist I have the wonderful ability to realize new and creative elements in almost everything I see and because of this my mind gets very few opportunities to shut down and recharge. Except for when I fall over in a heap at night and get dragged into sleep as I am kicking and screaming, “I just need to finish one more thing, please!” But I know this is not good for my creative process or for my physical body. Although, this is how I have moved forward in my life.

 

Most of fears (rational and otherwise) along with my desires for creating this life and the creation of my artwork stems from both my conscious and subconscious mind. Here they are realized and then resolved by the same creative process.

 

I am good at structuring my life so I get the best use of my time, even to the point where I can multi-task and get three things done at the same time.  I do try to schedule fun things as well like reading, a long walk in the park and even a nice relaxing coffee beverage in the mid afternoon. But even during all of this my brain does not stop, it is processing and plotting and planning. I have learned because of this when I rush into solutions, my mind jumps to the easiest and most familiar route and then moves on to the next issue at hand.

 

Although, if I allow myself some distance from the situation, to walk away from it for a moment, my brain works in a more creative fashion. Allowing different solutions to materialize out from the mist giving me better choices to choose from.

 

My goal in July is to create some new rules to schedule allocated blocks of time for my “creative pause”, because this mind and body of mine needs a break!

 

 

 

 

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