Creative Process: Recharge and Renew

No matter how we approach New Year’s Eve, with dazzling exuberance, quiet reserve or indifference, it’s hard to evade the sense that another cycle of life has ended. We navigate the portal to a new year, catching our collective breath. Sometimes the passage seems clogged with the air of uncertainty. Whether radical or mild, endings test our acumen and ingenuity. In regard to the creative process, we may be “full-term” pregnant with stakes that require evaluation and decision.

Turbulent endings may ultimately lead to powerful breakthroughs and renewal. Cultural evolution bears this out, as do our personal histories if we examine our patterns of growth. Challenging passages demand particular attention to the inner level of creating. In order to resolve issues that appear to exist outside, we need to look within. This essay contains a distillation of optimistic perspectives about endings that lead toward renewal in the creative process:

The Outer View:
During vulnerable times in the creative process, outer circumstances can grip the mind’s attention too firmly. The outer level can appear to be a daunting phenomenon which exists beyond us, and beyond our direct influence. We feel out of control, and emotional discomfort sets in.

The Aerial View:
The discomfort is good! if we can realize it’s actually a “call” that signals new opportunity. In order to decipher the signal, we need to pull our perceptions back from outer circumstances. This is not to engage with denial. It’s just to step back, to observe present challenges with a longer lens on our personal history. This way, we bring obstacles down to size. From an “aerial view,” we observe past endings that we survived, learning and confidence we gained, circumstances we overcame. Past evidence reveals that we ourselves are larger than circumstances, which are fleeting. Obstacles are friends passing through.

The Inner View:
Circumstances can no longer hold our creative process hostage when we recognize that we are larger than the obstacles. That which appears as a captor, is, in truth, only a reflector. Circumstances, people and events often cannot be controlled. But going within to shift an attitude or belief is where we do have control. Doing so will lead to new actions, and the shifting reflected back to us. Renewal is deeply inherent in the creative process. Renewal is process itself. It is gradual. It requires patience. But sure as daylight, it leads to the good.

The Long View:
As we all know, too much focus on creating income or celebrity is to miss the mark. When we create more value in service to others, we build trust, attract more income, and feel more fulfilled. To recharge might mean to tweak our brand, re-evaluate our messaging, or add value to our existing offers. Let the year’s ending become a gentle evaluation, a stepping back, to assess what has worked well, what has not, and why.

Renewal:
Endings lead to new beginnings. I remember reading once a phrase that struck home: ‘The inner subjective is primary.’ That little pearl captures a natural law. It helps describe the power of the inner level: to attune, interpret, discern, and act upon outer circumstances. During stressful transitions, the inward realm is our refuge, our primary place of power. Reflecting and sorting there awhile is the primnary key to life-giving renewal.

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*Essay by Barbara Bowen of GatewaysCoaching.com - the definitive source for artists and creative careers in transition. Contact Barbara to empower your creative process and for help with your career goals. She would love to hear from you.*