Shake the Shoulds and Liberate Your Creative Spirit
This ONE, very clear self-sabotage behavior absolutely destroys your creative dreams because it ZAPS all of your creative energy.
What’s your deepest, creative desire?
Can you name it?
Or, is it just a seed of an idea that has yet to take shape?
It’s been my experience that almost everyone has an unlived, creative dream that lives in the back of their mind almost at all times.
And, from that hidden place, that desire speaks to you. Nags at you. Badgers you.
Until you act on it.
I was out to lunch with a longtime friend a few weeks ago and surprisingly she started telling me about her dream to produce a podcast. She’s not in the online world in her current role so this was a bit of a newsflash for me.
A dream is a dream.
Your dream — your hunch, your vision, your gut instinct that something is needed in this world — needs you to make it happen.
Any dream that gets your full presence is successful even if it’s not a winner in the metrics department because because every action creates momentum and growth.
There is no wasted action. There are no wasted experiments. There are no failures.
For some of my clients, the creative desire is writing a book or developing a signature speech to start sharing their story on stage. For others, it’s creating a program to teach people something they are passionate about.
The more outlandish their ideas, the more scared they become to act on their creative dream.
That’s when self-sabotage kicks in like the brash and brutal beast that it is.
It’s also been my experience – as someone who has written and self-published a book and has a signature speech – that there is ONE very clear self-sabotage behavior that absolutely destroys your creative goals because it zaps all of your creative energy.
And that energy zapper is … Shoulding Your Day Away.
Shoulds Devour Creative Dreams
My favorite way to start working with a client is to dive really deep into who they are and one way we do that is to dig into their list of shoulds that run like ticker tape in the back of their mind – or even in the front of their mind.
Shoulds really do have a place in our lives.
We should exercise and get movement for a healthier, stronger body that can carry us into our older years.
We should eat nutritiously so we have the energy and good health to play, work and live a long time.
We should wash our clothes and dishes and keep a clean-ish home.
But, after years of working with hundreds of women around the world, I’ve come to see – and to help my clients’ see – that shoulds hold you back, keep you scattered and overwhelmed and fill up your days so you can’t slow down long enough to be the creative soul you are meant to be.
In the first coaching session with my clients, I always ask for their List of Shoulds. Most Shoulds are the same for all.
I should be more organized.
I should be paying myself more
I should exercise more.
I should call my friends or family.
I should be more productive.
I should have my shit together by now.
As creatives and creators, though, there’s another should … The shoulds of capitalism, paying the mortgage, and going all in on growth at all cost.
Any creative soul has a ticker tape of Creative Shoulds.
I should be making money on this.
I should be more popular.
I should have more offerings.
I should give it all away.
I should write/create what people want from me.
Except, here’s the thing: Forced creativity isn’t organic. It’s performative. It’s harmful. And, it’s not authentic to who you are.
Finding the Courage to Shake the Shoulds & Do What Feels Good
In order to be our most creative and to make a deeper impact on the world with our work, I believe wholeheartedly we must Shake the Shoulds.
We must be courageous enough to let go of being “good girls and boys” who are filled with responsibility and rules and start CREATING what we — as creatives — truly need, too.
It’s courageous to prioritize passion and creative work that feels impractical or impossible but when you are called to do something, you soar through it and time flies.
Should Goals create resistance, friction and hesitation not from fear but from dread.
Red flags of resistance should be taken seriously.
And so, if you find yourself resisting working on a project or creative offer, you may want to run it through a Should Filter.
What’s a Should Filter?
A SHOULD filter is a check-in with your heart and desires to see if your “must do” project is yours or if it’s something you feel obligated or responsible to do.
A great example of this is this newsletter: I’ve gone back and forth between the SHOULD of creating a newsletter about business and entrepreneurship since I am a creative business strategist and wanting to just write and create what my heart desires. Choosing the latter is my next Brave YES Experiment.
The Should Voice inside of my brain says talk business, be more business-y, talk scaling and growth, talk money and revenue.
But, the Voice of Desire — which is exactly the voice I coach my clients to listen to — urges me to talk soul work, creative capacity and spiritual well-being for my people who are creatives and visionaries.
My heart and soul longs to offer creative, spiritual writing for the creative souls of this world, the sensitive hearts and people who want to change the world and to do so without capitalism breathing down their necks like the bellied up monster it is.
At some point, creative visionaries need to put the SHOULDS aside and do what feels good — do what brings you most alive.
Knowing the difference is how you create momentum on your creative dreams.
When I start writing a post on business or leadership, my brain slows down and starts acting like an AI robot writing what I think people want to know.
Nope. Stop. Ugh.
When I write inspirational pieces about Braving YES, my heart sings and dances onto the page and in my life.
Flow. Momentum. Joy.
THAT is how we unhook from the SHOULDS of capitalism and change the brokenness in the world.
Below, I am giving you a series of Should Filtering Questions to ask when resistance or self-sabotage shows up on a project you are working on. It might not be your lack of discipline. It might be a should.
Take time to slowly contemplate these questions as they connect to your project to parse out if it’s a SHOULD or a Desire (or, as we like to say around here, a Brave YES?).
THE SHOULD FILTER
Where did this project or goal stem from?
When you think about your goal or project, what do you feel — and where — in your body?
Does the project or goal align with your core values? How about your personality?
Does the project or goal lead you toward the lifestyle or future self you want or away from it?
What strengths do you have that will help you be successful with this project or goal?
Is this what you really want? Ask Why? Ask Why again? Ask WHY a few more times. Keep drilling down.
BONUS: Think of a goal or project you successfully completed and check-in on how it made you feel? Does this new goal or project feel as good?