Prioritize Your Creative Pursuits and Feel More Energized
It’s easy to let your creative pursuits fall by the wayside when you are focused on your career and making money. However, not prioritizing your creativity can leave you feeling stuck and unfulfilled.
It’s important to re-energize your creative self, recognise when it’s time to make creativity a priority, and know what to do when you get stuck.
A lot of my clients come to me with this issue: they have professional jobs that they're good at, that pay well and they feel safe with their current status and security. But it feels stifling and doesn't let them express their true self, which is more creative, adventurous and even counterculture.
Looking back over my own career stories, I can identify with these feelings.
Seeking Creativity In My Career Choices
When I was just starting out, I aspired to be an author, someone who wrote books and articles full-time, led purely by my own creative vision.
And then reality hit and I needed to make money.
My first job out of college was as an editorial assistant at an art magazine. As I moved up the ranks, I spent long days writing and editing and copy editing, and then I would try to go home and write my own things. Let me tell you, after so many hours of typing, the letters start scrambling on the page! I realized that this was not going to work.
I then experimented with easy part-time jobs that paid the bills and gave me health insurance so that I would have more capacity to write in the rest of my time.
This method also had issues though. It would get to a point where I simply felt like I was wasting my time. I felt bored and I felt like I wasn't making enough progress in my own creative work to justify having a dull job.
Every career move I've made has been based around this - Me trying to figure out what role my writing and creativity should best play in my job and in my life:
In a way that worked
In a way that felt good
In a way that felt like I was using my time well
In a way that allowed me to pay the bills
In a way that allowed me to express myself and develop myself
In a way that felt like I was using my potential.
And also, it's always been important to me that in some way I'm contributing to making the world a better place.
Today, I'm really grateful to have found what feels like a really good mix for me. It's taken a lot of experimentation, tinkering, intention, a few bold leaps, and a lot of perseverance. But for now it feels like I'm on the right track.
My coaching practice allows me to work with some incredible people who are also creative, and I love seeing the impact of our work together. Working for myself gives me flexibility and a lot of choice in how I want to keep learning and developing and where to focus my energy and time.
This year, one of the ways in which I'm continuing my growth is as a facilitator and group coach, so I'm expanding both my expertise and offerings in this area and that feels really exciting and inspiring. And after many years of diligent work and figuring it out, my business abundantly supports me and my family and also allows me to give back 2% of the revenue to causes that are making our world more equitable.
And this year it's even supporting me to take time to work on my memoir, a literary writing project that has been on hiatus for the last several years. It's supporting me to hire a writing coach who's going to help keep me accountable and also offer perspective on the project along the way. I can't tell you how exciting and scary it is to devote more time to this creative undertaking.
What Is Your Next Creative Step?
What about you? What is your next step towards creativity?
👉 Is it time to invest more in the development of your own creative self?
👉 Is it time to pivot in your work so you can show up as more of your creative and expressive self?
👉 Is it time to re-energize these creative pursuits?
The big question you might be wondering though, is how do you even know it’s time to make a creative step?
Here are some indicators:
1. You think about it a lot.
2. You feel these longings. You feel these tugs. You fantasize. And maybe even recently, there have been times when you've seen people doing what you would like to do and you felt twinges of jealousy.
3. Maybe you feel like you live a double life sometimes. You might find yourself in situations where you feel kind of indignant, like, ‘What am I doing here with these people? They don't know the first thing about me. This is not me.’
4. You keep trying lots of things to re-energise your creative self, but you keep getting stuck.
All of these, in any combination, can be signs that it's time for you to re-energize your creative self and your creative pursuits. The next step is overcoming the things that stand in your way 👇
Challenges In Shifting To A More Creative Career Path
The Fear of making Less Money and Having less Security
Do artists generally make less money than people who work in professional or corporate jobs? Yes. Some simple research on the internet could probably turn up a lot of numbers on that.
Should that stop you from pursuing a creative path? I'd say no.
No, it shouldn't stop you. So here are some things to think about.
How could you both explore a more creative path and increase your feeling of security as you do it? What would you need to do?
Is there a way to combine your desire for a more creative path and also make the type of money you'd like to?
Is there a shift in your lifestyle that might support you to move along a more creative path?
The most important thing is that you don't let your fear stop you from exploring. Ask What if? The more that you can stretch what is possible, the more creative ideas you're going to have for how to tackle this.
The Fear Of Failure
It can feel scary to start working toward a dream because we worry that we might fail. Dreams are super important to us, and when your dream is to create things that are good, that are beautiful, that are appreciated by others, you also might worry that maybe you don't have the talent to make it any good. Really, what you need, though, is to again not let this fear stop you from making progress.
The most important thing is that you start practising whatever it is that you want to be good at. Find some way to start and make some regular time to practice. No one gets good at anything without putting in the time to practice. Commit to using a growth mindset in this area of your life. And if you need to learn more about the difference between a fixed and growth mindset, I highly recommend that you pick up the book Mindset by Carol Dweck.
Making Time For Your Creative Pursuits
This is a super common challenge.
When you work a full-time job, it takes up so much time, mental space and energy in your life, that it can be hard to find space for your creative pursuits. If you struggle with this, know that you are not alone. Bandwidth is a very real challenge, especially if you have small children, other family obligations, or time commitments.
However, if you are ready to reinvest in your creative self, then carving out time to do so is absolutely key.
I'm going to be a bit tough with you here. You've got to make the time.
This is an indisputable truth. You must make time and space for your creative pursuits if you want them to grow and take you on a more creative path.
⌚ Reflect on your schedule and daily life to see where you might be able to carve out some time for this. It doesn't have to be a huge amount of time. It's a place to get started. There are so many different approaches. So this is about finding which one will work for you.
Here are some examples of how my clients have done this:
One of my clients who had a demanding day job revived his creative practice by giving himself a creative retreat every Saturday morning for 30 minutes before his partner got up and they started their day together. He laid out all of his painting materials on his desk before he went to bed the night before to make sure he'd do it.
Another of my clients who found it challenging to find space between a fast paced job and mothering two children signed up for a class once a week. This gave her a regular commitment that helped ensure that she both left work on time and arranged ahead of time that her husband covered dinner and bedtime with the kids while she was at her class.
I'm also a mother of two small children and have a job that could always use more hours. Here's how my days are usually divided. My husband and I get the kids ready for school, and once they're at school, my workday begins. These are precious hours with a lot to do because when my kids get home, I want to be fully present for them and my family. I don't work in the evenings or weekends because that's the time for rest, fun and friends and family.
So one thing that has been helping me carve out time for creative projects is simply by accepting that I give some of my work hours, those precious work hours, to my creative projects, and I do the same for my workouts - I schedule them during my work hours and just accept that they must be done in that time.
I ask my work to adjust my creative hours and my exercise hours and not vice versa. I'm trying to prioritize them as the foundation of my well-being and insisting that they need to come first.
There are definitely days where it's stressful to fit it all in. There are definitely days where I have to skip a workout or skip the hours. I just allow them to be skipped and I get back on to the routine later. It’s all about just making more progress than you would otherwise. So you will need to figure out also what works for you and keep experimenting with that. I hope you've got some ideas from today.
✨ Once you start giving more time and space to your creative pursuits, you start to feel energized ✨
You feel your inner spark. You might start to trust yourself more. You start to see where this could go next. You uncover clues about your path. You meet people who inspire you, guide you, support you, and connect you to new opportunities. This is the place where change starts to unfold. So this is so exciting. And it can all begin with such a small gift of time and space to yourself.
