The end of the year often inspires a call for inner reflection, a desire to review what you’ve accomplished or reassess if your creative energy is being used in inspiring, productive ways. It’s also a time of year when it’s easy to be judgmental about what you’ve done or not done, dragging you into a bout of self-imposed doubt.
Is this normal? Yes. Is it something that needs fixing? Not necessarily, but the emotional experience associated with a self-review serves as a great mirror. It’s an important factor in deciding how you want to see your creative energy efforts. Can you assess them from a detached point of view, or are you obsessing about all the details, trying to think yourself into a new, more favorable result that fits your expectations?
Attitude is Everything When Reviewing Perceived Successes and Failures
The plans you create are a guide to help you connect with the most powerful way to move forward along your creative path. They serve as the inspiration you want to follow, as a guidepost for your self expression.
Plans also aren’t set in stone, until you place too many expectations on them. Then it’s easy to judge your plans transforming them into a concrete benchmark that determines your value. This subconscious action is what changes a plan from a simple way to tap into or assess the vitality of your creative energy, personal progress or happiness, into an opportunity to obsess about timing, results and the “how” of it all.
When you place too much focus on the success of a plan it can quickly turn into a self-harming weapon, acting as a judgment you hold against yourself when the specific results you desire in your life or business are elusive. This can really impact your overall attitude and creative drive.
Attitude is also what carries you from a mindset of assessing what’s transpired and turn it into an opportunity to review things from a detached, less emotional point of view, instead of a way to obsess about what to change, do or plan differently to be more “successful” in the future.
Transforming Expectations with Attitude and Perspective
Do you have a 100% accurate crystal ball shows you the future of every choice you can possibly make? Yea…I don’t either – so stop holding that against yourself.
You plan, try and see what happens. The creative energy you expend is always a learning experience that offers a way for you to grow and expand your inner compass, tuning it for greater accuracy towards happiness.
All experiences help you build confidence, even the crappy ones. When you are feeling low or disappointed you have an invitation to try again, to use the crafty creative energy deep inside to come back with something more in alignment with a bigger truth you may not be able to see with your mind, but is alive in your heart.
Plans are Linear, Creativity is Not
Creativity is not a linear experience or expression- yet people expect their plans to pan out in a linear way. This truth is what causes a disconnect between what we desire to accomplish and how we view our worthiness. Despite the disappointment you may feel as a result of this gap, sit with it. Be willing to feel it, own it and then move through it. It’s the only way to be free to fully jump into something new with an open mind and heart. It will also help you learn how to go with the flow as things change without getting so obsessed with changing the outcome. You can “be” and trust you are more than capable to hand whatever rolls through your life.
Being mindful of how you assess your creative performance and success is the kindest, most loving thing you can do for yourself, any time of year. So before you jump ahead making grand plans for 2015, keep one very important thing top of mind- “I will honor the path I walk, knowing my creative energy is always worthy of expression no matter where the path may lead”.
Need a little extra boost to help you move through a personalized end-of-the year reflection? Let’s jump on a creative reflection call. Want some simple tips to keep your mind and creative intentions balanced? Check out my Mini Guide for Connecting with your Inner Guidance and Creative Fire.
Photo Credit: EddivanW