Have you ever felt creatively empty- unable to generate fresh ideas and think outside the box? Have you ever had a hard time getting started on a creative endeavor? If so, join the club of those of us unable to find our creative Flow.

Flow is when the creativity faucet in your brain has been opened. Much like the rush of running water, Flow is the current of your creative thoughts. It is this motion of creative focus that facilitates our best ideas and inspiration.

No one lives in a constant state of Flow; many of us have a hard time experiencing it on a regular basis. You may be wondering if you’ve ever experienced Flow. Well, good news! Flow isn’t magic, and we have some ideas to help with its sometimes-evasive nature.

Here at MossyBrain, we’ve developed an exercise to jumpstart your creativity- the FlowJam.

A FlowJam is an abstract exercise, unrelated to your creative task, that helps get your creative juices flowing. This activity boosts our creativity by propelling us out of our normal thought patterns. It removes barriers like practicality, fear, and feasibility that cause us to self-edit our ideas before we even put them out there. Once these barriers are gone, our creativity is able to flow, unimpeded.

There is a deep well of ideas on the internet to inspire creativity – our list is by no means comprehensive. Rather, this can be a starting point for you to dip your toe in the FlowJam waters.

Here are some of our favorite FlowJam ideas:

  • Write a haiku about your day
  • Choose a song you love and make up new lyrics
  • Draw something without lifting your pen
  • Freestyle rap about something you see
  • Pitch a movie idea
  • Solve a problem in a creative/complicated way
  • Find as many uses as you can for a paperclip in 2 minutes
  • Find a partner and improv a scene (or solo improv in the mirror!)
  • Draw your non-writing hand without looking at your paper while you draw
  • Create an original product
  • Recast a classic movie with new actors
  • Write a heartfelt ode to the next object you see
  • Make up a new dance, complete with appropriate name
  • Come up with 5 never-before-heard-of ice cream flavors
  • Create a new, original game show

Of course, there are many other ideas that can inspire creativity- new experiences, nature, learning a new instrument, and travel. But FlowJams are intended to be something you can do anytime, anywhere, to fire up that creative engine within a matter of minutes. Pardon the competing creativity analogies.

If you’ve ever listened to our podcast, The MossyBrain Show, you know that we do a FlowJam exercise to get things rolling near the top of every episode. If you haven’t listened yet, go check it out to witness the glory and sometimes ridiculousness of the FlowJam in action. We’re happy to make fools of ourselves for the good of creativity.

As always, we want to hear from you; share your best FlowJam ideas with us!

Jessica Beresh is a blogger and co-founder of MossyBrain. Along with her husband Ben, their 4 kids and their sweet puppy Charlie she resides in Broken Arrow OK. She is a 9 on the Enneagram, loves drinking Chai (hot or iced) and also enjoys rainy days.

Connect with her on Facebook or jess@mossybrain.com.

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