Ignite your creativity and your business with aromatherapy
What is creativity to you? Beyond the arts that many equate with creative pursuits lies a whole world of creativity that is crucial to entrepreneurs and anyone else looking to stand out in their industry.
Originality, unique ways of expressing thoughts, ideas, and feelings, and imaginative problem solving require our creativity.
Every one of us is creative in our own way. We are all born with that capacity. You were probably handed a box of crayons at some point and knew instinctively what do to with them. Many of us have experienced discouragement or shame around how we express our innate creativity. When people say, “I don’t have a creative bone in my body” all I hear is that they’ve been forced to silence and hide it to the point where they are disconnected from it.
The role of creativity in entrepreneurship
As entrepreneurs and business owners, the most powerful tool at our disposal is our creativity. When you’re tapped into your creativity you are listening to your own voice, which does two things: it keeps you and your messaging authentic and aligned, and it sets you apart from everyone else in the marketplace.
By acting from your own creativity, you create messaging that aligns with who you are and what you stand for. You create marketing messages aligned to your unique voice through your unique lens.
When you are tapped into your creativity, you aren’t listening to what anyone else says. The voices saying “there’s only one right way to do this” or “you need to do this particular thing in order to succeed” are silenced when you are in that creative space within yourself. This place of pause and inner quiet allows you to hear your own voice, your inner wisdom, your intuition, the creative spirit within you. It creates sacred space where your unique ideas and approaches can grow and come to light.
You will not sound like anyone else in your market because your marketing will come through your unique lens. You will be taking focused, inspired action on your ideas, not someone else’s.
Tools for tapping into creativity as an entrepreneur
So, how do you tap into your creativity? Many of us (and this was me for many years) get so bogged down in all the obligations and commitments of daily life that our joy and creativity get buried.
In my mid-30s someone asked me what I did for fun and I honestly couldn’t think of an answer. This was a turning point in my own spiritual and creative journey. Answering that question cascaded into major changes in my life: career, marriage, and spiritual growth among them. By reconnecting with what brings me joy, my creativity reawakened and flourished.
What did you love to do as a child? Draw? Paint? Dance? Did you love to bake? Tell stories? If that doesn’t spark anything, get curious about anything that captures your attention or interest over the next few weeks. Follow your curiosity and you’ll find something that can help you reawaken your creativity.
A whiff of rose geranium essential oil was the catalyst for my own creative reawakening. I was offered a sniff in my late 20s and my whole body and spirit lit up. I felt something I hadn’t felt in years: pure joy. No surprise that in answering the question “what do I do for fun” some five years later, the first answer that eventually came to me was the memory of the impact of that essential oil.
Reawakening creativity through aromatherapy
Essential oils have the ability to impact the central nervous system, brain, and psyche in the most beautiful way. They are a natural best friend of creativity and your creative process. By following my curiosity about the effect that rose geranium essential oil had on me, I found my passion and life’s work: aromatherapy.
An aromatherapist or aromatherapy practitioner is trained in the art and science of using essential oils as a means of creating positive change in the physiology and psyche of an individual or animal. Aromatherapists work with essential oils and carrier oils either singularly or in combinations depending on the needs of the client.
In my work as an aromatherapist I’ve curated a collection of essential oils that work singularly or together to inspire creativity, be it creative thinking, focused action on ideas, inspiration, or imagination.
A selection of essential oils for creativity:
Rosemary: stimulates mind, clarity, and memory
Ginger: increases determination and courage
Coriander seed: promotes creativity, imagination, and expressiveness
Vetiver: grounding, calming to central nervous system
Select one of these essential oils and put a couple drops on a tissue near your work station. Take a few deep inhales and center your mind. Notice how it impacts you over the next half hour.
How flower essences can awaken creativity
Flower essences provide us energetic support. They are gently transformative, and work to nourish and harmonize on our emotions. Flower essences can be taken internally on their own or via a beverage or food. They can also be applied to the skin or added to a room spray.
In my aromatherapy practice I use essential oils combined with flower essences in most situations when creating products for my clients. I find that by adding specific flower essences to the essential oils, my clients get another layer of support on their journeys to vibrancy and creativity.
Flower essences are "a safe and natural method of healing discovered by Dr. Bach from the 1930s in England. They gently restore the balance between mind and body by casting out negative emotions such as fear, worry, hatred, and indecision which interfere with the equilibrium of the being as a whole." (from the Bach website)
A selection of flower essences for creativity:
Pink monkeyflower: Courage to be vulnerable and open your heart
Indian paintbrush: Unblock creative flow
Blackberry: Stay on task and take action
Columbine: Inspire self-expression
Select one of these flower essences and take it four times per day. Notice any shifts in your approach to your marketing and messaging that come through.
The ultimate creativity tool: The Creativity Kit
Creativity can be fickle so I’ve formulated two aromatherapy sprays to address two aspects of the creative process: creative flow and creative direction. These aromatherapy sprays are part of the Creativity Kit, a collection of aromatherapy and other tools to help you foster, flow with, and free your creativity.
Creative Flow: Contains essential oils and flower essences to encourages stillness and receptivity, intuition, going deep, inspiration. Calms the central nervous system, relaxes breathing, helps you create space to hear your own voice and intuition.
Creative Direction: Contains essential oils and flower essences to encourages taking action on our ideas, courage, healthy boundary setting, and confidence. Improves blood flow to brain, improves circulation, uplifts mood to help you move into action, energizes your process, generates new ideas.
I invite you to check out the Creativity Kit to learn more about the tools and read testimonials from the entrepreneurs who are benefiting from it. (These make a thoughtful client gift as well!)
Time to create!
If your market is anything like mine, it’s noisy and hard to get noticed. Many people are following the same business coaches and marketing experts and applying what they say is the best way to do things. I encourage you to listen to the experts, but then take what you’ve learned and see it through the lens of your own creativity. Using aromatherapy as a tool, along with flower essences, you can awaken your creative power and ignite your business.
Blog post photo by Vanessa Rose
