When an idea, experience or person sparks your creativity, it can feel like your whole soul lights up from the inside out. The dots start naturally connecting in your mind and heart. The way you see the world feels alive, colorful and open to possibility, and inspiration leads to creative action. As you walk through your personal creative process you find a natural rhythm and you intuitively find your pace.
For small, one-and-done projects, it’s easy to hit all of the stages of your own creative process and revel in a sense of completion. When creativity is calling you to make bigger and longer-reaching goals, it takes finesse to find how to feel accomplished, one step at at time.
What starts out as a great idea takes twists and turns, changing shape and focus. Initial clarity morphs into something unplanned or unexpected, which can make it harder to move forward or feel good about what you are creating. You might also lose sight of why you were excited about an idea in the first place.
To help reignite the passion and connection you felt when you set a long-term creative goal, “get meta” or in other words, go deeper. Your original idea can still hold the same level of interest, you just need a way to reconnect with what that means in the present.
Timing, Tuning In and Heeding My Call
I’m a strong believer in intuition. I feel when an idea sticks with you through twists and turns along your path in life, it’s definitely worth digging into it at a deeper level to find out why. In fact, that’s how Creative Katrina came into being. The words popped into my mind and stuck around for weeks. I wrote them down and continued living life.
The more I sat with the words, they better they felt; like coming home. At the time, I was in the middle of a really big business transition, trying to decide how I was going to find a way to offer writing, creativity coaching and healing, but no flippin’ idea how. The more I tried to think my way through all the business details of changing my name, shifting focus and building a whole new website, the more overwhelmed I felt. So instead, I re-framed my goal in the present and took the first step I knew I could – buying the domain name. I also started a twitter account using it as my handle. What better way to get into the spirit of my idea, right?
In the beginning, each time I thought about the name Creative Katrina I got excited and this energy inspired new ways for me to play with possibility. Then weeks grew into months, as I realized how many technical things needed to be done before I could really dive into using my creativity with clients in the ways I desire. Of course there was client work to finish, vendors to hire to create the website and imagery, content to write and the most important part – trying to find a way to be patient with living in the creativity juju of my big goal when it was going to take a while to shape.
A Slow Paced Goal Opens Space to Go Deeper
To help me move through the process of slow timing and re-ignite my focus on what I truly wanted to create, I got meta. I started looking at my progress through present moment eyes, through what made sense and felt good that day, and I celebrated the small accomplishments. I sat with doubt, what-ifs and new opportunities and looked at them on a granular level, assessing if they fit with my big picture vision of Creative Katrina. I also did my best to open up to the not-knowing, but trusting the initial creative spark that set everything in motion was worth all the extra work (and patience).
There are lots of ways to talk yourself out of following through on a goal that takes longer to complete than you expect, but why not focus energy on re-igniting your passion for it instead? A languishing goal doesn’t mean it’s a wrong one, but it does serve as a clear indicator of whether it’s still important to you. Instead of giving up, go deeper and reignite the passion you once felt, and focus on completing the complete loop of your full creative process – wherever it takes you.
For a little more insight on goals read through some of my previous posts – Take Ownership to Build Creative Honesty and Flow and Blending a Creative Pause into your Lifestyle.
Photo credit: sciencatelife, Robert Couse-Baker, Flashflood