Hello dear friends. I’ve been doing a lot of soul searching recently, and I wanted to share this thoughtful conversation about aligning with your creativity and being the author of your life.
be the author of your life
How are you? I hope 2021 has been treating you well and spring is a welcome change in season for you. For me, it’s been a fulfilling and really hard first quarter. I’ve had some painful breakdowns about not being far enough in my life in certain aspects (more on those in the future when I feel more open to sharing it publicly) and generally struggling to reach out for help. It is such a cliché I never thought I’d fall into… having trouble and shame asking for help and sharing the monsters that have been haunting me. And that is what it feels like. I have been so terribly unkind to myself, it hurts.
The words: be the author of your life, the same ones I wrote into my book Embrace That Girl, came to me this week when an episode for The Good Space podcast I recorded a few months back aired. How did I lose sight of that? Of the power I (we) have to show up and create the life we want.
I must say the lesson has been lost in recent months for me. I’ve felt powerless, desperate, weak and ashamed. It’s probably the darkest I have felt in a really long time, maybe ever.
Cheryl Strayed’s words come to mind when I think of being the author of my life. She wrote so beautifully:
“You don’t have a right to the cards you believe you should have been dealt with. You have an obligation to play the hell out of the ones you’re holding and my dear one, you and I have been granted a mighty generous one.”
These past few months, I’ve been wishing so hard some of the cards I’ve been dealt were different. I’ve been sad, angry, resistant and downright depressed at the cards I’m holding. And I’ve been forgetting, I don’t get to control that. None of us do. We don’t get to choose our circumstances, but we can radically transform how we feel… which in turn can transform those very circumstances.
Surrender
If this word had a face, I’d punch it. Seriously. Because I know from experience (and maybe you do too) the way through anything hard is to finally give up the “the fight,” and by that I mean the resistance… the denial I feel about what I’m dealing with. The indignation that it’s not fair and should be different. When I (we) can let go of that, and accept, even appreciate, what we have going on, something magical shifts.
Unfortunately, I don’t know how to practice surrender. I can’t even fully explain how to surrender to someone. I know what it feels like, I know the peace I’ve felt when I’ve truly let go of something hurting me… but i’ve never been able to reproduce that feeling. Which is frustrating for a go-getter personality willing to “do whatever it takes” to better her circumstance. Surrender is ambiguous, and I (many of us), do not like to live in ambiguity. We like things explained. We like step-by-step instructions: “do this and then this result will surely follow.” We like control. And…we can’t always get that.
Aligning with your creativity
What has felt the best for me is coming home to myself through creativity. I forget how much of a salve artistic expression is. How some of the best artistic work can come in the most difficult moments. How therapeutic creating can be. I’ll leave you with an excerpt from the podcast, which reintroduced me to the divine calling in aligning with your creativity and how spiritually healing the process of creating can be:
Creativity and the creative process are otherworldly, it’s “very spiritual. And I think any artist will tell you this, no matter the discipline, we’re touching on something that is divine.” The way your ideas and inspiration come to you and blossom and then one day you sit down and “everything flows out of you in a way where maybe it even feels like, did that flow through me? Was it mine?”
But some days those ideas and that flow don’t show up, even if you do. However, “that unpredictability… That’s the magic part. And the part that I can’t really fully explain.” With creativity, there is that magic but we still have to show up and do the work. We can’t just write those affirmations and goals and then meditate on them, there’s still work involved, and “inspiration finds you when you’re showing up to do the work.”
Finding answers and seeking guidance all starts inside of you with the decision: “the firm, genuine, I feel it in my bones, not just intellectually want it and understand I need it, but I’m not really being it. That decision is the most important thing. When we make that for ourselves, I honestly think the right books fall off the shelf, especially if we’re willing to be open.”
And yes, that decision can be difficult or “get you stuck,” especially for the “go-getters,” but “that decision that you make will shift mountains more than if you’re simply going through the motions without genuinely believing it.”
Thank you Francesca for having me on The Good Place podcast.
Follow Francesca on Instagram and visit her web site, where she offers so much free content on productivity, self development and creative inspiration.
Ps. If you liked this article, you may like my book, Embrace That Girl.
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