Each year when it’s that odd week between December 25 and the New Year, and it’s kinda the holidays, but kinda still busy, and you start to think about what resolutions you want to set for 2020. Perhaps you’re how I used to be, and start to think about what you should set, getting distracted by weight loss ads that are suddenly everywhere, or all those “cleaning checklists” that are bombarding your social media feeds because you’re a woman and therefore apparently care about these things. You get swayed by fancy Word of the Year printables, and you hurriedly throw out some ideas, writing them down in a notebook only to forget about them by February.
But not this year. This year, we’re going to be prepared before Christmas.
I firmly believe that goal setting for 2020 should start now, and while the process I’m going to share about can apply to all areas of your life, I want to specifically talk to you about setting creativity goals for 2020.
And by creativity goal setting, that does not mean immediately thinking about the what, like those WIP quilts you “really should finish” next year. I want you to think about your life, think about what are the big-picture things that matter; the things that will matter to you in 10, 20, 30 years’ time and why. Why do you create? Why do you make quilts?
Why is it that fabric and stitching makes our hearts come alive?
We are all innately creative. For some, that comes out in paint, and for others it’s in music. There are those who creatively design buildings or bridges or medicines or maps. For my husband, he loves to create in the kitchen. For us, it’s quilting. Playing with fabric and colours and making stitches brings us such joy and satisfaction.
Cultivating and nurturing our creativity is important to our wellbeing, and to do so through quilting is why you’re here and why I am writing about setting creativity goals for 2020. I don’t want your creativity and your quilting time to be something you squeeze into your life when you have time, I want you to cultivate your creativity with intentionality.
Cultivate. A word rich in meaning, and apt for pairing with creativity. But to cultivate our creativity, we need to be inspired and motivated by the why.
Why Creativity
Why do we create? Why do we make quilts? I asked on Instagram and here are some of the answers:
- Satisfaction
- Helps with mental health
- Sense of achievement
- Feeds my soul
- Therapeutic and productive
- Grounds me in the present
- Quilts for babies is my joy!
- To give to others
- A gift that lasts forever
- Just have to. Can’t stop.
- Makes me happy
- To show love to others
- Relaxing after work
- Stress relief
- Addicted!
- I can’t draw, so this is my way of playing with colour
- To contribute to the community
- To express myself
- To escape to my happy place
- To bless others
- Keeps me sane
- Innately have to
There are three common threads that come out in all those answers.
I quilt because I love it.
I quilt to love myself.
I quilt to love on others.
In fact, that’s my whole quilting (and business!) motto – quilt what you love, with love, to love.
It can be so easy to get all caught up in quilty FOMO (fear of missing out) in buying the latest fabric, jumping on the hottest QAL bandwagon, getting all caught up in the newest shiny thing in quilting, that we forget why we quilt. Spend some time, even just 5 minutes, pondering and noting down why it is you create, why do you quilt.
I’d love to hear what your answers are! Here’s a template to save and upload to your Instagram Stories and fill in the blanks. Tag me @blossomheartquilts and I’ll reshare them to my Stories. Or just play along in this post’s comments) and just ignore the GIFs!
Further resources for goal setting
Living life intentionally is something that has become very important to me over the past few years, as I realised that I was letting life happen to me rather than living the life I wanted. There are two people that have made a big impact on helping me grow in this area, and I want to share them with you.
For the past few years, I have followed Lara Casey and her annual goal-setting series with a notebook and my daily planner. Her business is literally about cultivating what matters, and the grace-filled language they use around goal setting is empowering and has changed my own philosophy and language around goal-setting.
This year and for 2020, I have invested in her PowerSheets goal-setting planner to help me really take it to the next level, but that goal-setting series she shares each January was a great starting place for me. Each year’s series is very similar to those shared previously, so have a read through this year’s series and work through some of the exercises to get yourself in the right frame of mind.
Elise Blaha Cripe has been a big inspiration to me, as her passion in and focus on creating and making things happen over the years has now led to her current business, the Get To Work Book planner, and her recent book release, Big Dreams Daily Joys. She constantly shares her goals for creating on her Instagram, and her progress as she goes along, with her Project Breakdown pages setting a good example of how to break down bigger projects into bite-sized chunks.
This post contains affiliate links, thanks for your support!
Leave a Reply