When was the last time you loved your creativity?
When was the last time you nurtured your creative gifts?
When was the last time you celebrated your artistic self?
I’ve been a creative person for as long as I can remember and I’ve gone through many seasons of feeling both connected and disconnected with my creativity.
And when you’re going through a season of feeling disconnected from your artistic gifts, it’s so easy to feel discouraged – as if you may never again find that spark to reawaken your creative passion. You may feel like you’re searching through the ashes for the hope of a glowing ember.
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The newest episode of the A Path To Call Your Own Podcast, entitled “Reignite Your Creative Fire” is designed to guide you out of those ashes and help you reignite your creative fire.
I went through a season of ashes several months back, after the release of my last poetry book, Mountain Medicine. I had poured my heart & soul into the writing of those poems and their release into the world. Once the book was out, however, I had the distinct feeling that my artistic well had gone dry. I felt like I had said everything I needed to say through poetry… and maybe I was done. Maybe that was my last poetry book. Maybe I just didn’t have any more poems in me.
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Thankfully, the road back to creative recovery was not as difficult as my doubts would have me believe. In fact, the journey consisted primarily of very simple steps, taken one at a time. I would like to share those steps with you, in the hopes that they can help inspire you on your own creative journey.
For me, it really begins with an inner decision, a simple choice that I must make on a daily basis: I choose to value my creativity, I choose to honor the fact that I am a writer, and because of that fact, I deserve time in my day dedicated to writing.
I know this inner choice can feel daunting to some. Career, family, laundry, dishes, dinner, and a whole host of life responsibilities are likely demanding significant amounts of your time & energy. On top of that, cultural narratives about art & artists tend to instill the belief that devoting time to a creative pursuit is impractical, self-indulgent, a frivolous waste of time compared to the more respectable demands of work life & family life.
But it’s right here, in the midst of our crazy lives in an even crazier world, that we must stake our claim to creativity. We must make the bold choice to honor our identities as artists, for the simple reason that no one else will see us as artists until we first see ourselves that way.
From that place of valuing and honoring our creativity, we then can bring this commitment down to earth by setting aside specific time in our day to practice our craft, to be in the flow of our creative energy.
I’ve learned from personal experience that my best creative time tends to be in the morning. I love the feeling of waking up early, making a cup of coffee, and sitting down with a pen & a blank page. When my creative energy is in need of a reawakening, I decide to dedicate my mornings to writing.
I put it on my calendar. I commit to it. I lay out my notebook & a pen the night before, so they will be the first things I see when I wake up. Before I start my morning writing session, I turn my phone off. I don’t look at my email. I show up to the page, I show up for MYSELF, as if it were the same level of importance as a business meeting, a doctor’s appointment, or a promising romantic date.
We have to treat our commitments to our creativity as something important, not subject to rescheduling just because someone else wants our time & energy at the last minute. We have to decide our creativity is important and hold firm to that.
Now that we’ve set aside time for our creativity and treated that commitment as something sacred, it’s time to show up and be present to our creative process. I use that phrase “be present to the creative process” deliberately. Because all artists eventually learn that creative energy is not always something that can be willed on demand. Sometimes it requires patience. We can often get frustrated when we sit down for a creativity session and it doesn’t immediately start to flow effortlessly. Our inner doubts can start to become loud once again, convincing us that we’ve lost our touch, lost our connection to the great creative muse.
That’s why we must learn to be present to our creative process, however that might unfold.
Sometimes it means staring out the window for a while, admiring the trees in the backyard. Or dropping into our bodies through some intentional movement. Or beginning to draw some random doodle. Or writing down a phrase that suddenly pops into our head. Sometimes the first few steps of creativity don’t feel like they have the making for high art, but instead have their roots in the unlikely magic of a simple moment to which we’ve decided to give our full, joyous attention.
The important thing, in my eyes, is to stay in that creative space you’ve committed yourself to, resisting the urge to grab your phone or get distracted by a household chore that we convince ourselves is more pressing & important than staring out the window waiting for a poem or song or idea to arrive. But it is precisely by giving ourselves permission to stare out the window, to just be present to the mysterious, unfolding process of creativity, that we also give permission for the miraculous act of creation to begin.
When the creative floodgates finally open and the ideas begin to flow, our task is to follow the current, to trust that we are being carried downriver to the exact place we need to be. In my poetry writing, I rarely (if ever) have a plan for how my poems will turn out. They begin so often with a simple word or phrase, some completely unplanned idea that suddenly grabs hold of my spirit and asks to be brought to life. And I simply try to follow where the idea wants to take me.
I’ve come to believe that the poems that come through me have a life of their own, a wisdom of their own. The poem knows what it wants to be. I simply have to be open to its message & intention and set it down on the page as clearly as I can, while trying to keep my ego out of the process as much as possible.
Our will power as artists is necessary to get us to sit down at our writing desks, or to pick up our guitars or paint brushes. But once the personal will has accomplished that fact, I believe the rest of the process is mostly about surrender.
Artists must be great practitioners of trust, holding to the faith that our creativity will always guide us right.
Because it always does.
– Matthew Foley
Podcast Links:
Apple Podcasts:
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/33-reignite-your-creative-fire/id1494628757?i=1000533232105
SoundCloud:
Spotify:
Matthew Foley is a life coach, soul path guide, writer, teacher, and podcast host living in the Blue Ridge Mountains near Asheville, North Carolina. His mission is to guide individuals on life’s hero journey towards purpose and authenticity. In 2019, he became a certified life coach and founded A Path To Call Your Own, a coaching business where he works with individual clients and groups to discover their purpose, connect with their creativity and spirituality, and share their gifts with the world. A life-long writer and poet, Matthew recently released his fourth poetry book Mountain Medicine and frequently shares articles and poetry through his website and weekly Pathways Newsletter. Matthew is also the host of the A Path To Call Your Own Podcast, where he shares conversations with fellow spiritual seekers and wisdom for navigating the spiritual life. To learn more about Matthew’s writing, meditation offerings, and coaching work, head to his website.
