‘If you don't risk anything, you risk even more.’ — Erica Jong

It's those in-between days of late winter. Sunshine teases and the air is soft. I meet with friends for dinner on a Friday night.

Your essence is your fundamental nature and what makes you uniquely you. It is the deepest part of yourself, where your authenticity lives.

From the moment we wake in the morning until we drift back to sleep at night, we move along the path of life making decisions and taking actions that steer our life in a nearly infinite set of directions.

I recently wrote about how I'm inspired by the calm energy of kaizen, an approach that requires making small, continuous changes over time. I’m playing with methods to develop habits and behaviours to create change in my life. For a few weeks, I experimented by trying out different habits to support my creative exploration, purpose, and well-being.

At the close of last year, I completed The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity, a book and self-study program developed by Julia Cameron in the 1990s. The course helped me reclaim my identity as an artist and return to my passions with new energy and confidence. At the start of the course, Cameron introduces a few exercises to repeat over the 12 weeks.

Growing up, my teachers encouraged me to draw as an act of exploration. To let my eyes trace a line, not looking down at my drawing, but instead looking at what I was attempting to represent. I’d let my drawing unfold outside my frame of vision.

As this year kicks off, I’m experimenting with methods to weave new habits and creative behaviours into my daily routine. I'm inspired by the calm energy of kaizen, an approach that requires making small, continuous changes over time.

Walking the streets of the surf town of Fuerteventura filled me with a sense of wabi-sabi, the Japanese concept of transience and imperfection. In the pale architecture, the wind-beaten murals, the plants filled with blooms and broken branches, the stoney black beaches, there was a sense of nature’s perfect imperfection.

As I change and grow, moving into work that feels more meaningful and true to my life’s purpose, my relationship to the idea of work also transforms.

The past eight months have been an exhilarating time for me, and I feel more connected than ever to my life’s dual purpose of sharing my creativity and helping others to tap into their own potential.

After spending my life surrounded by highly creative people, I’ve realised creativity is a mindset, not just a process of exploring and making. Could it be possible that creative people’s brains really do work differently?