7 Principles

Uncertain about what you're creating? Not managing to make it happen? Going nowhere despite great effort?

The problem's down to one of these seven principles of creation. And the good news is: the remedy's within.

1). Creative intelligence is not something we acquire, it is something we access. Your creative potential is innate, always there, but you've got to tune in. This is the fundamental principle, establishing that you are not separate from the creative, creating world. The great zen master, Thich Nhat Hanh, calls it Interbeing — the knowledge that the invisible intelligence that creates a new day, a tall tree, a full moon is also flowing through you.

2). Acknowledge this relationship with your own creative process as the No. 1 relationship in your life, the one that defines all the others.

3). Disregard doubt. Know that you can create what you need and want. "If the sun and moon should doubt…," William Blake wrote in Auguries of Innocence, "…They'd immediately go out." Doubt snuffs out creative energy.

4). Feel free to observe, allow and express your unique and individual essence and experience.

5). Wake up to what your five sense are creating. Come out of your thoughts and see, hear, taste, touch, smell instead.

6). Summon the sixth sense, that of overall perception and intuition. What's going on right where you are, not inside your cranium? Summon stillness, awareness and presence and do so regularly.

7). Allow life's challenges to teach you what you need to know. To grow.