What is creative independence?
I use the term to mean things like
- location independence
- financial independence
- generally, your life on your terms
- a free mind
- being empowered to share your message and vision with the world
The exercise that can change your life
Everyone has ambitions, desires, and goals that appeal uniquely to them. Some people strive for Olympic medals. Other people couldn’t care less for winning Olympic medals. There is no single right goal. The funny thing that I notice a lot with my clients is that we have multiple categories of goals:
- goals that sound good
- goals we’re supposed to have
- goals that really speak to us no matter what
We are apt to confuse which of these to pursue. Many people don’t even have goals at all. Even most people who actively pursue goals aren’t necessarily in touch with whether their goals speak to them deeply. They can’t discern which of these categories they are pursuing when they go for their goals.
The trick with understanding your goals involves finding your unique pathway to it
Even if the goal remain the same, that pathway will be different any given day, month, and year. The more we know ourselves in relation to our goals, the more nimbly we can adjust to what life throws our way, whether opportunity or obstacle.
Exercise: Write to find your pathway
Spend at least twenty minutes with the following questions (and other similar ones that occur to you). Write for at least 20 minutes. You could also spend all day doing this. If that sounds like a lot of time, I agree with you. However, we are talking about some really big ideas, even if they can be phrased really simply. And when I say all day, I do mean it. I have done that, and it has been powerfully transformative. Go with what feels right.
Look at where you are now. Be honest without inviting any scarcity mentality.
Look toward the future. Write about the future in the present tense as if you are experiencing it right now. By doing this, you are actively trying it on for size, inviting it to become your reality.
- What are my skills?
- What do I most love?
- What does the world need?
- What would people like to pay me to do/make?
Feel free to view this in stages as well. Nothing is written in stone that a person must have a single calling and that it must be static and permanent. Who is to say that you can’t be one thing fully for five years and then reinvent yourself?
Write without stopping, circling back to the central questions and main ideas.
If at any point you draw a blank, then feel out whatever feels present to you. Don’t push anything away. Let the act of freewriting be an opportunity for you to be present with the ideas that happen to be here for you. Focus where you want to go, but allow yourself to write whatever.
You can do it… unless you stop yourself
Freewriting, for me, is a beautiful model of the discipline required to achieve anything. Time ticks on inexorably. It’s my choice whether that time sees me taking action towards my personal transformation, enlightenment, and empowerment. I cannot guarantee an outcome, but I can dedicate myself to the process with devotion.
Freewriting requires a level of self-forgiveness that applies beautifully to the life of a creative entrepreneur. We make mistakes, we learn, we adjust. We can stop and judge ourselves or we can flow with what’s here.
Freewriting also invites a healthy way of engaging stubborn tendencies. If you have goals, then you want those goals. Maybe they are big goals and maybe they aren’t. They won’t come to you — you have to go to them. It can take incredible tenacity to achieve our biggest dreams.
Adjust periodically
Just as if you were driving across a country, you would need to move the steering wheel from time to time, you will need to adjust and hone and reposition not only your goals but your relationship to them.
Do this exercise periodically to get back in touch with what sparks you and makes you come alive. Find new definitions for projects you want to take on and things you want to make happen.
Show the world your best ideas, the best of what you can see and imagine.
[bctt tweet=”Give the future your version of it.”]
I believe in human potential. I believe especially in the unstoppable power of the individual. Nothing of the future is written yet.