Episode 130 - Recharge, Refocus & Reignite Your Creativity
-
00:00
Hello and welcome to the Come to your Senses podcast. I'm your host, embodiment-based coach, mary Lofgren. Here we explore how to live bravely and beautifully through a lifestyle of embodiment. You'll hear gems to empower you around mindset, mindfulness, somatic psychology and neuroscience, as well as beauty, food, style and the art of slow living to meet your soul through the senses. I am so happy that you're here. Let's begin.
00:50
Hello, beautiful beings, and welcome to Come to your Senses. I missed you last week. I took the week off from podcasting because it was my birthday and also because I had taught showgirl charm school, which was a roaring success. I'm so proud of all my showgirls and I'm so grateful for the opportunity to re-engage with how I got started in the work of embodiment and the sensual which is through Berlesque. I took last week off because my creative cup was well, let's just say there's a hole in the bucket, dear Liza, when it comes to my creative cup after a big output like that of teaching an intensive class. I am happy and proud to say that after a nourishing birthday weekend with a dance party wearing a completely fringe jumpsuit, a horseback ride with one of my best friends, dinner with some of my best friends, chocolate presents, texts, calls. You know I find that birthday level attention and stimulation is really what my system needs to just operate at baseline. So I am feeling so regulated and so happy to be with you here today to talk about today's topic, which is refilling your creative cup. So I was just out actually right before I recorded this with a dear client who happened to be in town, in the town where I live, for a work event and we got the opportunity to meet for tea and truffles and we were talking about that pressure of I don't have enough time. I don't have enough time, like I always feel like there's not enough time to do the things I want to do, or the things that I feel like I need to do, or the self-care that I feel like I need. And it got me really thinking about that statement and whether or not that's the whole story. You know, I don't know a single person in my life who doesn't wish that they had more hours in the day or more time. And yet have you ever noticed that, even when you have an abundance of time and I think a lot of us noticed this in the pandemic when we were staying home that Time is not the only contributor to the equation of creation. The equation of creation is fueled by creative energy. So on Monday, for example, after I got back from my horseback ride, I had plenty of time to record a podcast, but what I did not have was the creative energy to think about what I wanted to mansplain you on this week, and so today I am going to share with you three ways to refill your creative cup. Something I've been thinking about a lot lately is creative energy as we are coming to the end of 2023, which means we are coming to the beginning of a brand new cohort of Come to your Senses Co-Therie, my six-month group coaching program. That's all about nurturing the body and enriching your life through beauty, and I recently went to an exhibit all about the Renaissance, and it really opened my mind, because the Renaissance was a time where the virtues of creativity and innovation, beauty, indulgence, surpassed the theme of the Middle Ages, which was simply focused on survival and getting through the day, and where the culture made a decision to center the arts and where creativity became a more prized value than productivity. And so I've been doing a lot of research into that and a lot of just pondering on that and research about that in my own personal life and my own personal relationship to creativity as a way to have more energy, inspiration and sustainable access to our life force, in contrast to this more masculinized idea that if I have four hours of time, this is what I should get done and this is what I must get done, and then if it's a day where, let's say, I'm menstruating, I get done one of the six things that is on my list, because it's all I have the energy and capacity for, and then, all of a sudden, I'm a failure. So, if you can relate to that, today's episode is going to drench you in a more feminized experience around your time, your energy, your expectations of yourself and having more fluidity in how you move through your everyday. So let's dive in to our gems on refilling your creative cup.
07:07
So our first gem is a visual that I encourage you to project in your mind's eye, which is this idea of a cup, and that cup is the vessel of your energy. So on a typical day, you might have a cup that is full to the brim. If you are a person who menstruates, you might be in your ovulatory phase, where your hormones and your energy levels typically tend to be more regulated and higher. Maybe you slept great the night before. Your blood sugar is balanced. You got a workout in in the morning, you meditated, you are rocking and rolling, so your creative cup is like really full and juicy. Now let's say you're in your luteal phase, which is the phase right before you menstruate, where your energy levels tend to take a dip. Your mental capacity tends to be a little fuzzier and foggier. Maybe you didn't sleep the night before, maybe you woke up late, maybe you slammed a dry bagel for breakfast instead of having some blood sugar balancing protein smoothie, whatever it is. Your creative cup is going to be less juicy and less full and might be just sitting there with a bunch of backwash in it for the day, and so you therefore have less capacity for creative activity. And when we talk about creative activity, you know creativity often is associated with painting and singing and art making. But loving is a creative activity. Responding to an email can be a creative activity. You know creative energy is creative. You're creating something new, something that has not existed before this moment. So even a five minute phone call with a friend is a creative activity. One of my coaches, steve Chandler, used to say that we always prioritize tasks with a known outcome because they're easier for the brain to process. So at that time in my life I was in a sales job and I would put off my cold calls until the very last moments of the day, or I just wouldn't work them into my day because I'd be answering emails or I'd be updating a document. You know all these tasks with a known outcome and of course you know creative tasks require the most energy, so of course I didn't have energy leftover to engage with people. At the end of the day, creative energy is also where we get our best most ingenious ideas and innovations and where we can see aspects of ourselves and solutions to problems that we might not be able to see when we're operating solely from that rational, logical, known outcome aspects of our being. And so the first gem is simply to begin being a curious observer of your creative cup. When I first started learning about the idea of cycle tracking and how to plan your tasks in your life, around where you are in your cycle, it was like a zenith of discovery that I am so much more flush with ideas for podcasts, for social media posts, for all the content creation that I do for my business when I'm in that pre-ovulatory and ovulatory phase. When I'm in the pre-menstrual and menstrual phase, I hear my mind say things like there's nothing left to talk about. You have no ideas, you're a fraud. The inner voice is so fluid when it comes to just all of these factors that contribute to our creative energy In your own life. I really encourage you to bring the eyes of the creative witness or of the sacred witness. The sacred witness is simply that part of self that can watch and observe from a standpoint of neutrality where, rather than holding a situation in the hands of criticism or fixing or rescuing or correcting, the curious sacred witness simply holds it in the frequency of curiosity, which has a neutral charge. We're not trying to better it. We're not trying to improve it. We're simply gathering information to make a more wisdom-based decision down the line. What you might notice in regards to your creative cup is that what's in that cup is a lot, a lot of non-creative BS that is really kinking up your creative hosts.
13:04
Our second gem is, once you have a better sense of what's even in your cup, is beginning to sort what you find there through your creativity accelerators and your creativity breaks. In her book Come as you Are by Emily Nagoski, she talks about human sexuality and how we all have this template of our accelerators and our breaks, and that everyone's accelerators and breaks are different. What's interesting about that is that, let's say you're in a relationship with someone who really loves public displays of attention. But for you, public displays of attention makes you really nervous and it causes your nervous system to clam up. Your capacity to feel arousal in that situation is going to go down because your breaks are on, whereas for the other person, the validation of showing affection in public really accelerates their turn on and turns off the breaks. And I believe it's very similar when it comes to our creative energy. So some accelerators to our creative juices are to interrupt routine. So repetitive routine, same thing day in and day out, not a healthy petri dish for your creative scoby to flourish. Electronics for me is a huge hindrance to my creative flow. So if I want to engage my creativity, I need to turn off my phone, leave it in the car. I can't even really take notes on my phone, like when I went to the Renaissance exhibit I had a notebook with me. Thank goodness, because I just had this explosion of creativity and typing it out on a little keyboard where I'm also receiving text notifications like, oh, it's like trying to be amorous while driving on a six lane highway. My creativity needs room and sensory tactile pen to paper, engagement in order to relax and bloom open. And so these are just two examples. An example of something that is not necessarily a break for me, but it's not an accelerator, is nature. I find being in nature alone just doesn't really yank me chain. I am a city person. I love the click clack of shoes. I love the intensity of diversity, of human bouquet, of amazingness. I love art and contrast and the way that you know, in a city you might see like a dingy old dry cleaner next to a super posh bougie restaurant, and that level of stimulation just explodes my creativity. I don't have anything against nature, it's just not what really sparks my creativity to explode. However, for you, for most people, I would say nature has an impact on stimulating their creativity. I will say that when I'm feeling creatively blocked or when I'm feeling in production brain and I take my foster dog for a walk, I don't think it's necessarily the nature per se. I think it's like the movement and the changeup of the scenery. But I digress. These are all examples of not just what's in the creative cup but what's outside of the creative cup that either contributes to it or detracts from it. And one of the most just revolutionary practices that I've worked into my life as a self care practice and a creative practice is the idea of an artist date. So if you're familiar with the work of the Artists Way by Julia Cameron, there are a couple of core practices in the artist's way. One of them is to make a date with your creativity once a week and to take your inner artist out to play. And so this could be something as simple as going to a cafe with your journal, and I do this sometimes when there's a book that I like, keep wanting to read but feel like I don't ever have the time to read it. I'll just make an artist date with myself, leave my phone at home and bring that book to a cafe. In my heavens, I cannot articulate in words how regenerative just even 45 minutes of time spent away from my regular routine to just be with myself, my mind, my heart and all the little threads of inspiration that open up, like looking through a viewfinder, when I just allow myself to be present and be in an experience of being, rather than doing or working on something. So for me, the opposite of an artist date would be like bringing some aspect of like personal growth homework. I don't know, maybe it wouldn't be the opposite of an artist state exactly. There's something creative about that too, and no judgment if that sounds like an appetizing artist state for you, but for me an artist state is like going to the Renaissance exhibit, going to the Biltmore, which is an estate in the town that I live in, and renting a bike and riding around the property for an hour. One of the suggestions in Julia Cameron's book is taking your inner artist to a five and dime. I don't even know if those still exist probably not, but some sort of you know little store and purchasing colorful stickers and little novelty items for absolutely no reason other than to engage the creative part of you. Because even if you don't identify as a creative and this is something that I really appreciate about the artist's way as well we all have a creative energy and a creative capacity. But in a world that values and centers productivity over creativity, that muscle is usually highly, highly underdeveloped, and so an artist state is an opportunity to massage and strengthen that muscle of creativity through your curiosity and through an experience of receptivity.
20:51
And the final gem on refilling your creative cup is a less sexy gem in word but not necessarily in meaning, and it is to set a deadline. Deadlines are your friend, my pals, my come to your senses pals, showgirl charm school. You know it's so funny because I think that in the presentation of my courses and classes I look pretty polished, I have my shit together, I provide and deliver a quality experience, but the reality behind the scenes is that I am fine tuning right up until five minutes before the class, because the container of a deadline it's almost like one of my accelerators is that adrenaline and I get my best ideas when that adrenaline is surging, for better or for worse. I would love to have a relationship to my creativity that's less fueled by adrenaline and I'm working on that Artist state. Are really supporting me in that. But having a deadline, you know I remember when I first started teaching back in 2009, first started teaching burlesque my good friend Rochelle Sheik, who's the founder of Koya. She had just taught her first retreat in Costa Rica and she came back and she was wearing these like amazing flowing dancer pants and she had on a pound jewelry necklace and she just looked like the embodiment of her message. And she and I both started our businesses around the same time and I felt so heinously behind in my vision and I asked her like how did you do this? Like, how did you create this so fast? And she said you know, some of the best business advice I've ever received is just start. Usually, when we're procrastinating, starting, it's because we're wanting to create something that our creativity is just not potentiated enough to create. So, in other words, when I was procrastinating moving forward on having a business and teaching, it's like I wanted to teach the class that I was capable of creating or would be capable of creating. Five years down the road, I didn't want to teach class. Number two, where I still had very wet feet Is that the expression Still felt very much like I didn't know what the hell I was doing, but I had a burning, raging fire of passion inside of me that was just willing to show up anyway. And so I have taken that advice of just start with me as a way to remember that my creative gifts are valuable even if they're not perfect, and I encourage you to take that in your own bushel and bundle today as we bring our gems to a close. And, as always, thank you so much for listening. My hope is that this episode added a few logs and kindling to your creative fire, or at least opened up the pathways of possibility for that fire to be lit. And in the spirit of creativity and magic and possibility, on my birthday, I shared with my followers and subscribers that one of my desires for this year is to reach 105 star reviews on Apple podcasts and Spotify. Those are the two most popular platforms for this podcast, and so, if you would like to support me in my creative efforts of allowing come to your senses to reach the eardrums of all who would benefit from it, I would be so grateful if you would take a moment to share a review wherever you get your podcasts, by clicking the five star button or by penning a review from your heart, even if it's just one sentence. I would be so delighted to celebrate you, on and off the podcast, in contributing to growing this frequency of helping people become less disassociated and disembodied and have an experience of becoming more embodied and more engaged through coming to their senses. Thank you so much for listening. Have a wonderful week and I will see you in our next episode. Ciao.
26:00
For coaching classes and community in creating a lifestyle of embodiment. Head to schoolofsensuallivingcom. There you'll find a free video series on how to reduce anxiety and intercept the stress response through powerful, confident body language. Head to schoolofsensuallivingcom slash confidence to watch your first video today.
If you’re a human being in 2023, you probably wish you had more time each day to devote to the things you love and care about.
But is it time that’s the issue, or is it an empty tank of creative energy that’s keeping you stuck in second gear?
When I check my screen time, I’m often humbled to realize that I actually do have the time I think I lack. Time to invest in creative projects, relationships I want to nurture, books I want to read.
But with the demands of day to day life, what I sometimes don’t have is the creative energy to pour into that time.
Your creative fire needs tending, just like a bonfire on a crisp, autumn evening.
It needs oxygen to grow and thrive, and the kindling of inspiration to feed upon.
In today’s gems, I'll be guiding you through three transformative ways to recharge your creative energy.
You’ll find towering piles of rubies and emeralds to fill your creative cup, and bring more flow, inspiration and devotion to your day.
LINKS FROM THE SHOW
Leave a review of the podcast
Share a desire for a future episode
Learn more about working with Mary one-on-one
Follow Mary on Instagram