A few days ago, I came to this conclusion:

When you let go, and let your dreams come to you in the way they fit for YOUR life (not in someone else’s life or how you perceive them to be in others lives) things click together. They just do.

The aspect of yourself that you weren’t sure of how you’d use it steps in and finally makes sense.

The most important ingredient: let your expectations GO and keep doing what you do. Keep showing up to your creative routine, and your unique truth you seek will be revealed. It will, it will, it will…

Here’s the truth of the matter: for a little over a year, I’ve been in a creative incubation time. I have known my true path, but how it was going to play out was feeling uncertain.

I was musing deeply about what it looks like for me to have my own, personal, unique version of success.

During this creative incubation time, I trusted deeply. I prayed.  I had idea after idea, and put a lot of them forth. I created ugly art. I let go, deeply, of my limiting expectations.

I’ve let go of the thing out there coming true so that I can feel good in here. 

What happened to me a few days ago is that all the parts of me made sense. It was as if the missing puzzle of this business was cosmically delivered in to place.

Me, as an artist, giving mentorship on creativity and all the modalities I have learned (birth coaching, yoga teaching, goddess study, the chakras, drawing, aromatherapy, meditation, business planning to name a few) play a part in all that is ME and my business.

Now, I don’t do things for my business that don’t feel right.

For instance, I planned an e-course last year. I did a ton of work planning, and then when launch time came: crickets. No one signed up. I let the plan go (after a bit of grief), knowing it wasn’t right to me at the time. (I later used the material for a live in person course, so it all worked out…as things always do!)

Important, even after that small failure, I kept showing up for my business. I didn’t give up, because I felt intuitively that this time was an incubation for something greater.

Also, I recently had a coach ask me what my 5 year plan was, and I answered honestly: I am done with planning far into the future. 

I trust the unknown to be fertile with the creativity of my soul’s success. That’s enough planning for me.

This time I’ve experienced of creative incubation is the opposite of creative crisis. My business is slowly starting to thrive. I can see what role all those tiny learning modalities play in my business.

If I had given up on my creative business, I would have entered in to a creative crisis zone.

Creative crisis is dark and sticky and full of fear. Creative crisis is not knowing who you are, what your purpose is. Creative crisis is making excuse after excuse that cuts off your fertile creative nature. Creative crisis is making a martyr of yourself in order to hide from your creative truth.

 

Creative crisis looks like:

being…

Easily distracted by fear
Self-judgement
Filled with excuses (no time, no money, no talent, etc.)
Overly tired and drained
At odds with your language and speech (includes being gossipy and mean to others)
Emotionally unstable responses to most things

Creative incubation looks like:

being…

Energized with anticipation
In love with your life
Organized thoughts and plans
Seeing inspiration everywhere
Looking forward to the unknown
Trusting and letting go
+ Feeling healthy

I am not a creativity doctor, but I am a mentor to women who experience creative crisis.

And yes, creative crisis often is masked as those feelings of fear, wanting purpose, and being filled with excuses as to why you can’t make time for your expressions.

I know this creative crisis because I used to be in that mode, and I was tired. I was exhausted. I was lost and trying to find myself through others or in my day time work.

Getting free from the cycle included taking refuge in my faith, my support groups, and learning to pause, listen to my intuition and ask myself:

What do I really want from this moment?

This question is pregnant with possibility. It serves you the most with allowing for you to pause, breathe, and check in with your truth.

So tell me, dear reader, what do you want from this moment? Do you feel like you are in a creative incubation or in a creative crisis in your life right now?

To your truth, your success, your creative flowing creative river…

R o s e

I have to give kudos to my inspiration for this blog from Clarissa Pinkola Estes’ book Women Who Run with the Wolves. Her chapter on nourishing your creative life inspired my thoughts and journaling that lead to this post.