I’m weird. I watch my boredom.

My work requires me to create things whether I feel like it or not.

(Or my business slowly starts to pack it in and die.)

I’ve learned, over the years, that feeling crap or being in a bad mood interferes with my essential creative work.

• Whether it’s brainstorming new business ideas.

• Writing a new article for Substack.

• Or editing a flash fiction story for my Story Cabin.

Bad moods and creative output mix poorly.

People ask me how I stay so creatively prolific.

But, I’m no cool dude completely free of bad moods.

They still come and go. But they’re out the door faster than they used to.

Obviously, sleep and decent diet (and regularly touching trees) are critical.

But the third foundational column for good moods and subsequent creative energy is the relationship I have with my emotions.

For most of my life, I identified too closely with my feelings.

I’d feel angry, for example, and get lost in the anger.

I’d make the anger about me, and my ‘personality.’ So the anger stuck around longer - spiralled even.

These days, I make a point to observe my emotions more.

If I feel bored, I don’t enter a decline. I watch the boredom.

It can be fun. Interesting.

I taste it. It has a texture. A colour even.

When I observe my feelings, I see they aren’t a part of me anymore. That’s the trick, Sally.

Bad moods diminish quickly when I separate my sense of self from the feeling. That bloody feeling far too many of us take far too bloody seriously.

What happens next?

Up rises a better mood. My default. Your default.

Creativity.

And if you’d like to cement this habit for yourself, you absolutely need to spend 2 hours absorbing ‘The Understanding’ in my Untethered Mind course.

Learn more here.

That course is not only about ’reducing stress...’

It’s about reaching your dreams because you feel more creative, happier, more of the time.

What’s that worth to you?

Toodles,

Alex