Hello there – it’s your Creative Wings to Fly friends Cordy and Kirsty here, checking in and chatting about creativity and finding a place for it at your table.
We don’t know about you, but it feels like life is incredibly busy at the moment. The two of us were discussing the idea of work-life balance yesterday, trying to work out what had happened to ours! Actually, when we got to thinking about it, neither of us were too keen on that expression anyway. Isn’t work part of life? Are we somehow not really living when we’re working?
Unhelpful!
We realised that the words we were using to describe a busy time in our lives were, in fact, standing in the way of making things easier for us. This is something we talk about in our second Creative Wings to Fly course, where we challenge the language choices we make when talking about our work and how we view it. The idea of, for example, going outside our comfort zones, can sometimes be useful but it does reinforce a belief that doing different things is inherently uncomfortable. Not sure about you, but both of us rather like comfort!
It’s just a tiny shift of perspective, the hint of a new angle on things that can make a massive difference in how we feel about something. When we were getting a bit hung up on our work-life balance, we realised that we were falling into an old pattern of belief, taking the cliché as given, without even questioning it. Much more helpful to us was the idea of a balanced life. Work is part of life and, because we have chosen to work doing things that bring us joy, it was strange that the concept of work was feeling a little…joyless. The very words we were using to describe an uncomfortable situation were making it worse.
Time to remember our own lessons. Again! 😊 Ah, life always is a work in progress – a truth that’s easy to forget when things feel a bit overwhelming.
How this lack of balance can affect creativity can be seen in all kinds of ways. Block can creep back into our lives, even when we think we’ve worked through it. Confidence can take a knock. Perfectionism can rear its head and start cracking its whip again. The joy can disappear before you notice it retreating into the shadows.
None of this is remotely unusual, though. And it doesn’t have to be dangerous. You can simply start to notice what’s happening. Take a step back and look at the situation. Ask some questions and look for honest answers.
What’s happening here? What feels out of balance? What am I feeling good about, even in the middle of this tricky moment? What feels wrong? What do I need? What would make me feel better about this work – right now?
We asked these questions of ourselves and began to establish a clearer picture. There were too many little bits of things happening all at once, starting and not taking the time to complete them, so we had a rather unfortunate end-of-the-buffet feeling, when there are only unappetising scraps left, when both of us really wanted a square meal. We had taken on too much and it was unmanageable. Balance out the window, joy leaking away through the floorboards and block knocking at the door.
That’s when we realised we needed to press pause and take a good look at what was going on for us. Just doing that is enough to start getting back on track: it’s the most important step, actually, because it means acknowledging the reality of a situation. Next, we started using some of our own tools from the Creative Wings to Fly playbox and gently got ourselves back to a place where the balance just naturally began to reappear.
Gentleness – we love that stuff! – is so important here. Being hard on ourselves never seems to make that busy, overwhelmed mindset cope with things any better. Let’s be honest, it makes things worse, more often than not. So, with a gentle, open-hearted approach, we started the practical task of rearranging our workload into something that felt much more achievable, letting some things wait or even letting some things go completely, in order to complete what was in front of us.
And, where there is more balance, there’s less room for those sea-sick feelings of being swamped and/or exhausted. More room for joy. Where joy lives is where creativity feels most at home. Work-life balance doesn’t cut it, friends! We’re looking for something more like a joy-rest-work-play-service-satisfaction-exploration balance in our lives, where our creativity can express itself freely.
If you want to explore some of these ideas more deeply, here’s a link to a great starting place: Course 1 of Creative Wings to Fly.
https://creativewingstoflycourse.thinkific.com/
What counts most of all is believing that we truly deserve all of that good stuff. That’s where the power really lies – believing in ourselves and our right to be happy and fulfilled.
And, if you’re feeling a bit low on that belief, we’re here to tell you that we believe in you. We really do. Have a great week. 😊