The Groove 114 - How to Use Gratitude to Expand Your Creativity
HOW TO USE GRATITUDE TO EXPAND YOUR CREATIVITY
Your happiness and state of gratitude can expand your creativity exponentially. In fact, there are recent studies that prove that self-reported gratitude has been associated with higher creativity scores and larger perspectives.
I know, it sounds so simple. Besides, most people do have some level of intellectual gratitude in them: like being grateful for their families, or for the food that they eat every day. But what about an intentional daily practice? Feeling the type of gratitude that swells in your heart and radiates outward to all you do?
Matisse’s Creative Expansion
Matisse working on his cutouts from his bed in Vance, France, 1948.
There are specific instances in your life that can trigger levels of gratitude not previously known. From getting a scholarship to attend the school of your dreams to becoming a parent and everything in between, a single event can change your perspective forever.
What’s not often discussed is how true gratitude can help you find ideas that you had never considered before.
One of the rooms in Matisse’s house in Vance, where he directed his assistant on how to place the cutouts on the walls.
In 1941, Henri Matisse got diagnosed with abdominal cancer at the age of 71. The surgery to extract the tumor left him reliant on a wheelchair and often bedbound. Painting and sculpture had become physically challenging.
Instead of mourning his lack of mobility, Matisse felt enormous gratitude for getting a second lease on life. He picked up more manageable materials and tools: sheets of paper paint-washed by assistants, sturdy scissors, and plain tailor pins.
This is how his celebrated cutouts were born: intense and contrasting colors, free shapes - they weren’t paintings and not necessary sculptures either.
His technique involved the freehand cutting of colored papers which he then pinned loosely to the white studio walls, later adjusting, recutting, combining, and recombining them to his satisfaction. Subsequently, the shapes were glued to large white paper backgrounds for shipping or display.
Expressing Gratitude Out Loud and Consistently
Matisse and his assistant Lydia Delectorskaya in 1949.
“Une seconde vie”, a second life, was what Matisse called the last fourteen years of his life and he made sure to express this sentiment consistently to studio assistants, friends and family members, and all who would come to visit.
Then in 1947, Matisse published “Jazz,” a book that mixed a collection of images of his recent works alongside some of his thoughts:
“Derive happiness from yourself, from a good day's work, from the clearing that it makes in the fog that surrounds us…
Happy are those who sing with all their heart, from the bottoms of their hearts. Find joy in the sky, in the trees, in the flowers.
There are flowers everywhere for those who want to see them.”
There was such purity in his attitude, such honest thankfulness in those last 14 years of his life, that he used every opportunity to express this feeling in simple ways, yet the results were so powerful.
His cutouts are among the most admired and influential works of Matisse's entire career. The drama, scale, and innovation of Matisse's rare and fragile shapes remain without precedent or parallel.
The Daily Practice
You don’t have to be bedridden or have any major shift in your life to be grateful.
Brené Brown says that through her extensive research, she learned that the most effective way to cultivate joy in our lives is to practice gratitude. “The key word here is practice. It’s not just about feeling grateful, it’s about developing an observable practice. So often we think that joy makes us grateful, when in reality it’s gratitude that brings joy.”
She tells us that if we are to generate more joy in our lives then we must speak out loud or write down the things that we are grateful for that day. Verbalizing it is important.
Gratitude affects the limbic system of your brain, replacing fear, dread, doubt, and cynicism with good images of the people and things you are personally grateful for. This is the state to be when you want to come up with great ideas.
Additionally, practicing gratitude requires that you be present in the “here and now” and grounded. This avoids feelings of anxiety and allows you to assess options and see possibilities that weren’t there before.
Knowing this, would you start with two minutes of gratitude every night, writing down or saying out loud three positive things that happened to you during the day? Try it for 30 days and let me know if your creativity and the quality of your ideas increased during that period. My bet is you’ll be hooked.
Happy Thanksgiving!
PS: The Groove won’t come next week as I will be overwhelmed with work in Miami for Art Basel. See you in two weeks!
UNLEASH YOUR CREATIVE GENIUS
I’ve put together a free webinar for those of you who are not members of my online course, Jumpstart.
If you’d like to watch it, please register here (it’s on auto-repeat every 15 minutes once you have registered).
HOW CREATIVITY RULES THE WORLD
I am super thrilled that my book won the International Book Award in the Business/Entrepreneurship category!
It’s in three formats: hardcover, eBook and audiobook.
TEDX TALK
Have you already watched my TEDx Talk: “NFTs, Graffiti and Sedition: How Artists Invent The Future”?
I share three lessons I have learned from artists that always work for anyone in their careers. Watch it here.