Writing Coach Cynthia Morris: Ten Creative Capabilities Enhanced by Travel

There’s nothing like hitting the road to spark your creativity. Travel can serve as a sort of refresh button to revitalize your creative work.

It’s no surprise that the challenges of travel build our creative capacity. Both creativity and travel push us to our physical, mental and sometimes emotional limits. Travel and creativity (in art making, business or life) aren’t for pansies.

Fresh from the road, I’ve charted ten ways that being on the road cultivates creative capacity. Check my list to see how travel has contributed to yours.

Wrong! capacity is strengthened. When you travel, you find yourself in the wrong at least five times per day. You have the wrong address, the wrong opening hours for the museum, you say the wrong thing, you pay the wrong price…it’s endless. Creative pursuits involve a lot of wrong turns and dead ends. The savvy traveler and creative knows that being wrong has nothing to do with intelligence, and actually learns from mistakes. You’re not an idiot but you’re going to be wrong a lot.

Willingness to be uncomfortable. Travel and creativity both require a person to be comfortable in the uncomfortable, or better yet, to even forget the notion of a comfort zone. We travel and create to surpass our known world, and we might as well embrace discomfort rather than try to contrive environments where we feel too ‘safe’. Discard an attachment to feeling comfortable and watch your ability to create grow.

Ability to process easily. While traveling, you amass thousands of new impressions daily. You have to make decisions based on limited information. Being on the road or in the studio calls for the ability to synthesize information and to use it in new ways. Travel forces you to sort, filter and critically assess information. Developing the ability to process more easily makes can simplify decision making. I use my creative travel tools to jot lists, capture names, and render in quick sketches what I was experiencing around me. Strengthen your ability to sort and process new information to keep what’s useful and discard what’s not.

Resiliency. When things are go wrong, how do you respond? Travel shows you that you are more resilient than you think because, well, when you’re out there trying to find a place to eat or a place to stay you have no choice but to keep going. You find yourself able to bear greater challenges, and perhaps even rub your hands with glee when facing difficulty creating. Suck it up: you can do and be more than you think you can.

Flexibility. If you’re not flexible while traveling, you’re going to struggle a lot. So you missed that train in Florence. You can always stay and check out something unplanned. The ability to shift from one perceived path or approach to another quickly is a strength of a developed creative mind. So your book ended up being on a different topic than you started. Be nimble in your creative process or you’ll be very miserable.

Surrealism. Experiencing how life is lived in another place can provide new ideas and fresh associations for problems you’re facing at home. Creative people are adept at taking one thing and pairing it with another for a fresh new idea. I have always loved the surrealists for their penchant for pulling disparate items together for the sake of jolting the psyche out of its predictable path. Cultivate new ways of thinking based on what you’ve seen elsewhere.

Ability to relax dualistic thinking. We’re naturally prone to comparisons that lead to judgments. But that can hinder insights. If you’re caught up in thinking that it’s better in the US because shops are open on Sunday, you’re missing the opportunity to see what could result from doing things differently. Your willingness to set aside a comparative or competitive mindset makes travel richer. Creative thinking goes beyond black or white or reductive thinking. Compare for the sake of opening your mind rather than solidifying an entrenched mindset.

Ability to adjust your pace. Perhaps the places you’re visiting operate at a different pace than back home. You’re either going to struggle against the stream, keeping your own pace, or you’ll adapt and enter the flow. This is evident in Amsterdam, where there are more bicycles than cars. The tram tracks, pedestrians, cars and bicycles could be a confusing mass. Creativity has its own timing and pace, and being able to adjust according to the ebb or flow makes things much easier. Be responsive to the flow of life around you.

Randomness. I call this juju – when unexpected connections surprise me. My favorite style of exploring is to wander with little or no plan, or as the French say, flaner. I almost always encounter something remarkable that sparks a new idea for my work. Random or unplanned occurrences are gold for the creative process. Don’t try to control your circumstances or projects too much; quite often unexpected gems arise throughout the process.

Physical fitness. Travel is tough on the body. Hauling luggage over cobblestones, eating too much and too strange food, and sleeping poorly can take a big toll. When your body is strong and resilient, you’re able to think beyond your basic physical needs. The same is true for creative work. If you’re not taking good care of yourself, chances are you’re not able to produce the best work. Build a strong physical foundation so you have energy to create and explore.

Bonus: Math smarts. Travel calls for all kinds of quotidian math: calculating currency conversions, estimating costs, juggling timetables all build your numeric literacy. Any creative project: writing a book, launching a business, publishing a blog calls for a nimble numbers mind. Don’t leave math behind; make it work for you and your projects.

Take a few minutes to list a few travel memories that you have. Next to that list, write a note about how that experience contributed to your creativity.

The next time you embark on a trip, know that your journey will build your creative capacity. You don’t have to do much other than hit the road and be open to the world’s gifts.

About The Author Cynthia Morris is a certified creativity coach who has been fostering creativity in writers, entrepreneurs and other creative types since 1996. She is a published author, writing mentor and writing coach and works with others to enjoy writing their own novel, memoir, blog or articles both online and in person. To contact Cynthia please visit - http://creativitycoach.originalimpulse.com/