ANGELIQUE ELECTRA
If you struggle with a Creative identity that hides and waits for full expression, this post may be for you. If you have pursued lines of work or a career that doesn’t align with your creative gifts, and that were largely influenced by well meaning parents, your culture or our own risk-averse personalities, this blog post may be for you. If you were a child or teen that was drawn to creative self-expression, and found yourself engaging in writing, music, art, dance or acting, and that there was no encouragement to grow yourself in these directions, read on!
You may believe you’ve been misplaced in the wrong direction or career, and that your “real life” lies in fully experiencing your creative life. You may feel at the effect of others’ expectations, or that moving in the direction of these creative dreams created overwhelming, paralytic fear. You may believe that you have a gift to share and that the exigencies of your life keep you bound from that expression. Turning back to recapture that creativity may induce painful memories. You may believe that your creative inclinations were, or would not be “good enough.” You may have fears of humiliation should you turn on that creative spigot and actually share or publish your work. You may also dream of quitting your job and devoting yourself to your craft.
As someone who subscribed to many of the foregoing beliefs, I felt I was doomed never to be the “real, creative me.” However, I had some interesting shifts during my decades of inner conflict. How we manage our minds (including the generation of fear) and the responsibility of being an adult are at the core of expressing creativity. Here are some insights that helped me to better incorporate creative expression back into my life.
Forgive Yourself for Creative Roads Not Traveled.
Every decision you’ve ever made was still guided by an inner knowing and honoring your deepest values, despite the ongoing cloud of confusion.
For those of you who felt you did not take the right path in life, and that you failed to choose a creative path, consider this. Despite what may feel like confusion or conflict at the time, we are really driven by our deepest values when we make key decisions.. Sometimes, the value can be as simple as “curiosity” as it can be about wanting “financial stability.” Our deepest values can be about caring for our family, or taking full advantage of a presented opportunity that may never come again. If creativity rates high for you as a value, then consider that each key decision you’ve ever made is based on who you were at the time, what other competing values you had, and that ultimately, you ultimately followed your own best judgment. Yes, sometimes, at the time, we choose to cede to the judgment or good opinions of others when we don’t fully trust our own, but that is okay too. With this understanding comes self-forgiveness. That self who hung up her ballet shoes, piano lessons or chose not to go to art school, and pursued a regular job or school degree, ultimately was led by a deep knowing that her decisions were made were the best ones at the time, or at least, not detrimental. Chances are that you also had to explore what adulthood really meant. At that time, you were not a coward, but were just making the best of it at the time.
Timing is everything, and when the time to express yourself in a particular way bubbles up inside you, you will respond to the Call.
You are and will always be Creative, whether or not you ignite it. Creativity waits for you to show up.
There is no such thing as deciding to be creative. You already are and will remain so. You are always capable of having a unique and original thought. It is a matter of choice and the timing of whether that thought gets further nurtured and fed with your time and attention. When you’re ready, creativity is at the table of self-expression, with knife and fork in hand.
When you believe it’s lying dormant, even for years, trust that it is incubating something special, and like a pregnancy, it will come out when you decide to call it forth. During the course of my legal career, I’ve always had a lot of unfinished creative writing projects I would either continue to ignore or ignite myself with new inspiration to work on them. Even a single renewed investment of an hour could yield new ideas and excitement. The love for the creative work and its potential stays alive. You don’t need to wear a banner and declare your identity — it’s simply a wonderful part of you, and it breathes through you no matter what you are doing.
Exercising your creativity is not an ALL or NOTHING proposition.
You don’t have to prescribe that the expression of your creativity must pay your bills.
In her book, Big Magic, the well-known writer Elizabeth Gilbert maintains that even if we are creatives, we still have to be grown-ups and find the means to care for ourselves as a priority. So we work. You can work for an employer or for yourself. When you are a grown-up, you work to sustain yourself with the basics, which is an ingrained human value. Some of may need or want more than the basics as well, especially when we care for our families. She further she had made a “deal” with her creativity — that she would never require it to support her, but that instead, she would support her creativity. When we look at many successful artists, there are few that support themselves wholly from their creative works — other work always sustained them. It is an evolving process to reach the level of creative mastery and sharing of your creative work to get to the level of financial support. Is that expectation and whether or not it is feasible negate your right and desire to create?
When we get ourselves in frustration that we want to devote all of our working time to our art, we begin to create an “all or nothing” condition. We begin to discount those moments after the kids are asleep, during a commute or a lunch time or a coffee break when real art can be made. Our commitment to creativity does not come from expecting to use all our time for just rewards, but to consistently commit to use some portion of your time, every day.
Feeding yourself daily with the joy of creative expression is what matters, not that it has to pay the bills to be meaningful. One day–it may pay the bills To stop yourself from doing your art altogether because it can’t yet pay the bills, is not honoring your soul. The most successful Creatives simply commit to a time every day (no matter how short) and show up for their Muse.
Grow where you are planted. Discover how your work supports your values, including creative expression, and further push the envelope.
Chances are very high that you already express some brand of creativity in your job, managing your family, or simply doing whatever you do! Once I committed myself to a legal career, it took several years to carve out what I wanted in the law that could also evoke my creativity and my desire to connect with others in meaningful ways. After a lot of self-assessment, I settled into commercial work focusing on business development. This meant enabling and facilitating two companies to agree to terms to work together to reach their respective objectives.
First, I found I could have deep engagement with the work, to strategize out how two parties could do business together effectively, while honoring their respective goals and values. Second, I found that it was creative to negotiate in a way to create new thinking and shifts that enabled agreement. Once I found my sweet spot, it was easy to say no to other paths and opportunities. I also began to look for more of what I liked about being a corporate attorney. For instance, I enjoyed that I had unconditional access to anyone in the company to enroll them in helping to complete a transaction. I enjoyed forming cross-departmental relationships all over the company. I found that there were a number of my values about “being me” that I could bring to my job. I found myself unconsciously “job-crafting.” I also found that the best hours to write was early in the morning for at least an hour -right after some inspirational reading material and meditation.
Just take a deep breath and allow yourself to create, for the pure joy of it. Your creative expression will both embrace and expand you.
If you are closeting yourself from exercising your creativity because of rationales that suggest you must have certain conditions in place to be creative, then question them. Are they really true? rationales. You already are creative. You just have to show up everyday to claim it. Take yourself off the meat hook of regrets about the would haves and should haves, and daily renew yourself with a loving commitment to your creativity. It need not be perfect…it just has to come authentically from you. Share it fearlessly. Fear is just a passing thought that can be replaced by deep engagement in your creative process. Express it however you can, ensuring a pocket of your day to love yourself, and in turn gift us all with that part of you that will make a positive difference.
Your creativity is the ultimate light within that will make you ignite and shine.