I have written 14 books and well over 100 songs. I’ve produced 70 online video channels (1100+ videos), I’m a blogger, and I write for a Global Journalist award winning team.
How can I possibly keep my creative flow when, at the same time, were running life coaching initiatives through our NPO (Fruitful Life Network) and our business (C & C Connections, LLC). We have the constant pressure of fundraising and seeking customers, so that our work can do more than survive, but actually thrive.
I have learned to pay attention to the overnight download. Those first thoughts that come to me as I wake up, are usually pure creativity. It’s as if though my brain was given a total reset while I slept. Often the thoughts have nothing to do with what I dreamed. Many times they are simply ideas, images, impressions that just come in the very first seconds and minutes when I wake up or in the early hours of the morning while the house is quiet and the sun is just peeking over the horizon. I learned, through the years, to get up and write what’s coming to me.
I don’t try to organize the thoughts. I just write them down. I don’t know if it’s going to be an article, a song, a poem, or an idea for our business. That’s not the point. I’m not trying to edit, organize or categorize. That will come later. The only thing that’s important in the moment is to get the overnight download on to paper.
Most of our best articles, songs, or business strategies have come from last night’s download. So I encourage you to do the same. Before you let all the cares and concerns of your life drive away that creative flow that fills your first-awakening thoughts, pay attention to the download. Exercise the discipline of getting up and writing it down.
I realize the wonderful, rapturous feeling of enjoying the last seconds of the snooze. You may want to simply roll over and go back to sleep. I’ve lost some million-dollar ideas when I did that. I always assumed I would remember it later, but it never came back. I discovered that hidden within those downloads, were solutions to my problems. When I was actively trying to come up with a solution, many times I simply could not find it. But many of those overnight downloads had answers buried within the thoughts. It was amazing.
Besides, it is far better to get up and continue in the creative flow, than to allow yourself to just lay there drowning in worry, fear and all the negativity that you can’t change anyway. Why waste the moment with worry, when you could have seized the creative download and released ideas that can often times, provide the solution to many of our problems.
It may not happen every time you wake up, but when it does, it’s important that you recognize it and get up immediately to write it down. You could be on the verge of the greatest breakthrough in your life.
