Creative timing is one of the biggest influences on your creative path. Creative timing impacts when and if you do something, why, how easy or hard it can be and if your heart is in it or not.
With all these little bits of information influencing your effort and direction, it’s important to be clear on how to listen into what the timing is really telling you in the moment – not what you WISH it was telling you.
These are very different things.
If you are honest with yourself, past the frustration and dashed expectations, you can see why something didn’t work. Even more importantly, you truly feel in your heart that it’s OK, even if it stings a bit.
Separate Noise from Truth
I can get a bit frustrated with my creative timing on projects in ways that I don’t often expect, and it’s usually in relation to tasks that require me to be more “patiently creative”. For example, I dislike doing something again if I’ve already completed it and crossed it off my list. I also get irritated and impatient when I feel like I have a creative idea that’s not moving fast enough, or managing a technical knowledge gap that’s holding me back from bringing an idea to life in a smooth way.
Yet, when it comes to writing, editing, brainstorming – tasks where I’m extremely present, I’m up for revisions, redos and reshapes until I FEEL it’s where it needs to be, until it feels in alignment.
How about you? What causes you to feel a bit sticky and frustrated? Where do you start to focus on lack of creative timing rather than the bigger picture? Well, it’s easy to do – not only because you are human but because you are in the process of learning how to fine tune your creative timing and get past the mental noise that tosses you off-track.
Understanding How you Create Conditions that Bind Creative Flow
Check in with yourself to see how you feel about the timeline and flow of how something is unfolding. Do you read too much into it? Are you placing conditions like “it’s too hard so it’s not the right time” or “I missed my chance, so now I need to settle for something different?” While these thoughts are perfectly normal, they are also an indication you need to listen past the judgment and get more tuned in, more in alignment with all of you, not just your mind.
While some factors may influence the choices you make the in the moment, you made them for a reason. They are not mistakes, signs of broken creativity or any indication that you are not right where you are supposed to be along your path. Things are coming together in their own creative timing, even if they may not be what you “wish” just yet. Just take note of how you feel and what you want to change, and start moving towards it now as best you can.
When things come back around for a redo or creative timing is a bit wonky, it’s so you can see something in a new way. The disruption or “rocky flow” gives you a chance for a refresh, to choose a different approach or mental attitude or to dive deeper into something you would have glossed over, but has big depths of learning available for you.
Putting conditions on timing puts you in the future, not creating in the present. Is it always easy to keep an open mind? Hell no! It can be very irritating when your creative timing is put on ice or sped up to the point of hyper speed and you have absolutely no control of the bus. Just remember that being human means you will always have a conditional view of creative timing – just try and NOTICE when you do it, what combination of factors drive you there.
It’s the key to riding the wave of creativity, free of judgment of how it “should” be different than now it is right now.
Next time you feel like the timeline is way off or uncomfortable, do the most important thing first and get quiet, listen to what is really coming up for you. This is what will enable you see the beauty in how it’s unfolding, and help you get out of your own way.
Need a supportive ear to talk through a creative tough spot? Connect with me for a creative reflection reading. Need some quick, simple tips to get more familiar with your own approach to creativity? Check out my Mini Guide for Connecting with your Inner Guidance and Creative Fire.
Photo Credit: Hartwig HKD, Jason St Peter, Vicki&ChuckRogers