Tiny Steps, Beautiful Growth
“They're gentle invitations to weave creativity into the fabric of your daily life.”
Can I share something I've learned about sustainable creativity? So often it's not about dramatic gestures or waiting for perfect conditions. The most enduring creative practices usually begin with steps so small they might seem insignificant.
Five minutes of writing before your morning coffee. A quick sketch while waiting for the kettle to boil. One photo that catches your eye during your day. A moment to arrange flowers in a vase just because it brings you joy.
What I love about all of these, is they aren't grand creative declarations - they're gentle invitations to weave creativity into the fabric of your daily life. Like tender seedlings, sustainable creative practices often benefit greatly from regular, gentle care - usually more so than intermittent intense effort.
Here's what I've discovered matters most:
Process over pressure - When we focus on showing up rather than achieving specific outcomes, our creativity flows more freely.
Permission over perfection - Allowing ourselves to create "badly" often leads to more authentic expression than trying to make everything polished.
Rhythm over rules - Finding your natural creative rhythms matters more than following someone else's "perfect" routine.
In my upcoming book, I explore how sustainable creative practices grow from this kind of gentle attention and self-trust. It's about building a relationship with our creativity that can weather different seasons of life.
If you're looking to develop more sustainable creative practices, here's a simple place to begin.
Choose one tiny creative act that feels almost too easy to fail at. Maybe it's:
Writing one sentence each morning
Taking one photo each day
Drawing one small shape
Humming one snippet of melody
Noticing one beautiful thing
The key is making it so small that resistance doesn't have time to build.
In our Creative Hearts Community, we support each other in developing these sustainable practices. Through monthly calls, quarterly retreats, and ongoing connection, we:
Share what's working in our creative lives
Celebrate small steps and quiet victories
Offer gentle accountability
Create space for regular practice
Your creative practice doesn't need to look impressive to be meaningful. Sometimes the smallest acts of creativity lead to the most sustainable growth.
Be kind to yourself and nurture your creativity.
With my warmest wishes,
~ Nicola
P.S. If you're longing for support in developing sustainable creative practices, our Creative Hearts Community welcomes you. Join us to discover how natural and joyful regular creativity can feel.
P.P.S. During the recent Virtual Creative Retreat we had in Creative Hearts, I felt like having a play with my acrylics after mostly playing in my sketchbooks with watercolours this year. It was such a delight to let myself be drawn to colours, mark-making and joyful, exuberant brush strokes without any pressure to be perfect or impressive or finished. Just expression for the pure joy of play.
Here are my feet in the picture with the two A3 works on paper on the floor of my studio.
My desk can get pretty full during a virtual creative retreat in the Creative Hearts Community!
The following are all details of abstract mixed-media works on paper.
About Nicola Newman
I'm a Creative Business Coach, Award-Winning Artist & Mentor for Creative Hearts who want to flourish, flow & prosper.
My passion is inspiring and supporting Creative Hearts to trust their inner wisdom and carve out a life that’s personally meaningful and fulfilling to them.
I share practical, evidence-based tools for Creative Hearts seeking to improve their lives or businesses. My work draws from acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT), mindfulness-based techniques, body-based practices, and neuroscience -- and my own creative living adventures -- among other approaches.
My mission is to support Creative Hearts to:
Dissolve creative blocks, develop a loving relationship with themselves, nurture their creativity and reframe the beliefs and patterns that keep them from following their heart and making the creative contribution they would love to make in the world.
My approach is to embrace gentleness, playfulness and self-care to navigate self-doubt and instead cultivate deep self-trust so you can truly enjoy the creative process, bring together your body of work, make money doing what you love and leave a creative legacy you’re proud of.
Let’s pour a cuppa and get to know one another, shall we? :) Read more about my story here.
