For most of my life I have been structure-less… from an early age, really. I equated structure (as in, schedules or any other “rules” that seemed to limit my spontenaeity) with being JAILED. I thought that going wherever my moment by moment whim would take me, was FREEDOM. It turns out, I had it backwards. My boundlessness had me in a bind. My lack of structure had me trapped in the chaos of too many choices.

External boundlessness does not create freedom, carefully considered structure does. Freedom comes from the ability we each have to creatively define this structure, and the structure, in large part… defines our life.

My first real discovery of how freedom, structure and creativity are linked was when I gave myself a 100 day blog writing challenge in 2017. It was the first time I actually stuck to completing something that prevented me from living each day haphazardly. I realized that, without the clearly defined structure of 100 days engaged in a clearly defined activity, I would have never found out what choices, both internally and externally, I would need to make to reliably generate content for my blog everyday.

Without structure I would not have had the freedom to let my mind explore what it is I WANT to share and get creative in how I want to share it.

I would not have had the freedom to screw up and have to learn how to clean up my messes publicly. A truly valuable skill. I also would not have had the perspective to see how often I think I ought to blog in the future for maximum effectiveness. There have been some subjects that I feel I only skimmed the surface of, due to the structure of needing to get something out every day. I didn’t know what I was compelled to dive into more, or what that would look like, until I gave myself a framework with walls and boundaries to bounce off of and ground into.

So, where does creativity come in? In the absence of structure, the endless possiblities can be crippling rather than freeing. If you are a painter and your canvas had no edges, you might be stuck in inertia, not knowing where to begin. When you have a well defined structure of boundaries, whether that be a time limit or a finite canvas, it narrows your focus and gives a home for your creativity to dance into being.

If you are an artist like me and have chosen an unbounded life, yet find yourself feeling stuck or just shy of truly thriving, perhaps self imposed structure would be something you could try on. Pick one thing, any thing, to do every day for a set amount of time. 30 days is fine, but I really think 60 is minimum to get maximum benefit. Announce it publicly or to a few key friends who are willing to help you stay committed. I am so curious to hear what your experience is!!

much love to you all… go forth and PROSPER!

xo Anah