PRINCIPLES FOR A CREATIVE ENDEAVOUR - BEING MOVED BY THE WORLD
When I first started out in business I thought my work would look like this:
90% coaching/therapy
10% administrative work and content creation
Well, guess what the ratio actually looks like:
30% coaching/therapy & teaching
60% content & service creation
10% other stuff
I’m not an exception, this is how it looks for many solo entrepreneurs in the transformative wellness space.
I call myself lucky, as I enjoy the creative process of coming up with digital content. I always did. I even majored in design research.
With content & service creation I include social media, newsletters, blog posts and also the pieces I create for different courses.
Each of these creations is a creative endeavor.
With every creation, I go through different phases.
Some are exciting, some filled with resistance and others just flow with ease and grace.
I. REKINDLE THE CREATIVE SPIRIT
There is something special about it.
The process of alchemizing an invisible idea into something that can be seen, touched, heard or felt. Something that can move another person. Something that can be experienced and that influences the viewer.
It gives a glimpse into our own world and experience. The viewer gets a taste of us.
It is also about caring for ourselves. We might spend most of the day caring for things that we don’t care about. 8-10 hours we care for a business that is not important to us. The money and the safety might be important but do we really care about what this business is in service of?
We commute every day to work. Do we care about commuting? Most likely not. Still, we give it a significant amount of our energy and time.
And the list goes on.
This kind of lifestyle easily leaves us numb & disconnected. We slowly suffocate our spirit and destroy ourselves. This is self-destructive behavior, which is so widespread and in our faces, that it is hard to recognize it as one.
Side projects, like creative endeavors, are a great way to create balance. To start caring about something that is important to us and that gives us a satisfying long-lasting feeling in return.
II. INTERNAL WORLD OF INSPIRATION
We have an internal world, this internal world is full of ideas and it resonates with outside sources. If it resonates we call it inspiration. We don’t know why we get inspired and why certain things inspire certain people and leave other people untouched. We also have no clue what in us feels inspired by something.
The mystery of inspiration isn’t something that we have to understand, it is a part of our life to experience. It is there to move us. So one must move with the flow of the inspiration.
My analyst once said: Being connected to the world means being moved by it.
The world generates impulses that transcend our logical understanding, but we can sense their impact and potential to shape our path, leaving us with a feeling of aliveness. Although we cannot fully explain them, these impulses offer us a glimpse into something meaningful.
A creative project connects us to this mystery. One that fills us with excitement, interest and inspiration. Dopamine is being released. We become awake. We alchemize energy from within. It lifts our spirits.
I see creativity as not only a tool for the sake of my business but also a conscious constant practice. It deepens my life, I become more aware, and I learn about myself and the essence of the project.
When an idea for a creation hits us, our creativity & awareness is called to the forefront.
Awareness opens us up to the information around us. Creativity helps us connect traces of information. These traces for our project don’t come into our awareness randomly. It vibrates in a way that we become aware of it. Not everyone would perceive this trace, but you do.
It happens so often to me, that when I work on a new creative project, lets say this blog post, I read or hear something that totally connects to it. Sometimes I even misread content in a way that makes total sense in the context of the project. Other times it is just a word that sparks an idea which is then influencing the creation process.
What I perceive while being committed to an idea (more about the commitment later) is filtered in a unique way. It reaches my consciousness and is streamlined toward the neurons & receptors that are in the process of making sense of the idea.
It is a wonderful process that is part of our human experience. Everyone has access to this experience, no matter if we call ourselves creative or not creative.
III. CREATIVITY BEYOND THE COMFORT
So maybe right now you are aware of a spark, an idea, something that excites you. Don’t deny it, don’t ignore it. It is like being in love with another person. Most likely you will not ignore this. That should be true for the idea that you fall in love with. This feeling is part of your path. It is the spirit's way of getting your attention to follow it.
Constantly we give up on potential creative endeavors, Just as we let a stranger we meet on the street, with whom we exchange deep looks of attraction, pass by without approaching them. A lost opportunity, a lost timeline and another What-if.
An idea that feels too ambitious for us. It can be daunting. The journey might be challenging, but no one said that it should be about comfort. Comfort we find in our beds, but not out there in the world of potential. Starting a new creative project asks us to let go of what we know. We take a journey innocent, and naive. We might be seen as a fool. Who do we think we are to pursue this idea? This is the first step, embracing that we have no idea and that we have to learn.
After we decided to be on this journey it is not all bliss & flow. There are the up and downs, being high up in love with the idea and being down there in our doubts and feeling lost.
How we deal with it is a measure of how devoted we are and how well-equipped we are.
During the low time, our ego will tell & prove to us all the reasons why we shouldn’t have committed to the idea in the first place.
It is up to us to decide whether to become a servant of our ego or to let the ego be our servant. If we don’t take the lead, the ego will feel pressured to take it. So we have to make a bolt decision before going on this journey.
I really appreciate people who start.
The ones who have the ambition to create something beautiful for the world, who go for it and who dare to face the challenges along the way. So much to learn from such a pursuit.
IV. HERE ARE THREE PRINCIPLES TO EMBARK ON A CREATIVE PURSUE
These three principles serve as a reminder to bring ideas into the outer world. There might be helpful for you as well:
a. BECOME A SERVANT OF THE IDEA
The first principle is a mindset shift: Become a servant of the idea. The idea is out there. We can’t own an idea. Anyone could just take hold of the idea and transmute it into 3d.
The idea is autonomous and open to be received by whoever feels the appeal of it. That means that when we commit ourselves to being in service of the idea, it becomes about it and not about us. This perspective is incredibly helpful. Our burdens, our biases, expectations and doubts potentially limit the idea.
So we want to reduce ourselves in a way and want to become an obedient servants of what the idea wants to be.
With this attitude, one might want to ask: How can I serve the idea the best way? How does the idea wants to be shaped? What is my role in this project? It will spark new answers, creativity and come with more ease than asking from a place of our own limitations.
B. DOUBLE DOWN ON SELF-DISCIPLINE
We don’t have control over our talent and a limited amount of control over the challenges we might face during creation. But what we have control over is self-discipline.
Self-disicipline. Not discipline.
Self-discipline comes from within us, it comes from a place of trust and it is a muscle that we have to train. We learn to be disciplined, but we learn a way of discipline that is outwards orientated. There is someone who keeps us accountable.
But in self-discipline, we have to keep ourselves accountable. The source of it is our faith in the process and our resilience towards challenges.
This discipline is being activated with a full commitment to the idea. Anything less than a full commitment is lazy and not worth following. So be conscious about the choice you make.
As Elizabeth Gilbert, Author of “Eat, pray and love” wrote: “I agreed to enter into a contract with the idea. We would work together. We shook hands on it, so to speak. I promised the idea that I would never fight against it and never abandon it”.
This is the attitude.
This commitment and the self-discipline that is being initiated with it will help you get through the muddy and not-so-glamorous stages of the project.
Lastly, self-discipline is also helping us to set structures, routines and spaces for creativity to spark. We start to stick to the things that we know serve our integrity, we learn to set boundaries and take responsibility for the idea.
C. TRACK TRACES OF INFORMATION
Don’t say that you are not creative. We are all creative. Understanding and applying this principle will help you to enhance your creativity.
With this principle, you become like a tracker, who tracks traces of wild animals. The only difference is that we don’t track animals but bits of information that will nourish our idea.
This is crucial if we want to come up with something unique, innovative and novel.
I do this with all my blog posts.
There is an idea coming up to write about a certain topic, in this case, “Creativity”. That is all I had in the beginning. The idea was not formed at all. It was just an interesting idea to explore.
I started to study the topic from different angles. I read books about it, I watched Youtube videos about it and listened to podcasts.
In this process, I collected bits of information that nurtured this idea more and more. I cross-pollinated the idea with different external perspectives and my own experience.
The result is potentially original.
The best way to do that is to keep an open mind. Let the idea be unknown, not formed yet. Consciously recognize that you don’t know and the tension of not knowing it. Let the tension of doing and not doing build inside you. It needs to incubate in your unconscious without being acted out.
And then you start researching. Your unconscious will start to create new connections and over time you will recognize the actual potential of the idea.
So instead of starting to think too much about it, just have an open mind, walk through the world with the idea and notice where the next trace of information is leading you towards.
UNDERRATED BENEFIT OF CREATIVE PURSUITS
In conclusion, creative endeavors are an essential part of our human experience that helps us connect with our internal world of inspiration, care for ourselves, and bring balance to our lives. Being moved by the world and following the sparks of inspiration can lead to exciting new projects that deepen our awareness and understanding of ourselves.
Although it may not always be comfortable, the journey of creativity can be rewarding and offer us a glimpse into something meaningful, leaving us with a feeling of aliveness.
Therefore, we should not ignore or deny the ideas that excite us but instead, follow them and see where they lead us.
What is a project that calls you and did this article give you an impulse to start one? I’m really interested, feel free to reach out, and tell me about the project and what in this blog inspired you.
If you want to dive deeper into this work, check out my coaching service. Connecting back to our creativity is part of my coaching journey with me.