Are You Doing This, too?
Did you make resolutions for the new year? Did you promise yourself that this year you’re going to get things done, find your true north, or, one phrase I particularly dislike: that this is going to be the year you “crush” it?
I hate that saying. As if we’re driving a big, honking snowplow and we’re going to push everything out of our way, to get… what done? It sounds so dominating, so get-out-of-my-way.
What if we were excited not by crushing anything but creating something new and satisfying for ourselves?
That's what I decided to do. Instead of making a game plan or strategy for the year, I decided to look at where I was out of alignment with what was important to me. It was a deeply personal decision.
And when you come right down to it, everything’s personal. The choices you make, how you spend your time, who you spend it with, and how you want to feel about your life.
I’m choosing to go against the relentless demands that our world keeps pushing in our faces. I could physically feel the cost— to my nervous system--it was too high, as well as every other system: physical, mental, emotional and spiritual.
As I started to think about prioritizing what was meaningful to me and what I needed more of, I saw swaths of my life where I was capitulating to the demands of others, caught on a hamster wheel of tasks that needed to be done.
I could feel it in my body: the tension, the tightness, the shallow breathing, that feeling in the pit of my stomach. They all pointed to the same thing: I needed to make a change.
I needed to spend more time doing the things that gave me energy rather than draining it.
I’m a little embarrassed to admit this, but had forgotten my own advice that I wrote about in The Happiness Handbook!
I’d written about it clearly enough back then. About paying attention to what restores you. About noticing what your body is telling you before your mind starts negotiating with it. About choosing alignment over achievement.
And yet, somewhere along the way, I had drifted.
Not in a dramatic way. But enough to forget the one thing that has always brought me back to myself.
Now you may not think of yourself as a creative person (even though you are). Or that art making—or anything else that isn’t driven by words—isn’t your thing. But let me explain and see if there isn’t something in here for you, too.
In some of my recent conversations about clarity and creativity, I could hear myself circling around similar questions. Looking for clearer direction. Trying to “figure out” the right next move. And what became obvious—once I saw it—wasn’t a lack of insight or discipline.
It was this: I had stopped putting my creative explorations first: my art-making, my writing, even my rearranging the furniture!
It wasn’t because I didn’t value this way of expressing myself. But because somehow, I’d started relegating this expressiveness to the margins of my day—as something optional, or to be earned after everything else is done. But by then, I didn’t have the energy nor the motivation to get back to the drawing table.
It became crystal clear that making, creating, and expressing what’s inside me isn’t extra. It’s how I listen. And maybe it’s that way for you.
Now, for you, that creativity could be anything: baking, quilting, anything you do with your hands that feeds your soul.
When I make time for creative exploration—before the emails, before the planning, before the to-do list—something fundamentally shifts inside me. My breathing deepens. My body softens. Any overthinking quiets down. And what was waiting to be seen and known reveals itself.
This is what I refer to as creative alchemy.
Not turning myself into someone better or more impressive—but taking what’s already here, including the tension or confusion or worry, and allowing it to transform into clarity through the act of making something. A conversation driven by the insistence of something deep inside. By my feelings.
Silly me - I’d been trying to access clarity without going through the doorway that was right in front of me!
I was trying to think my way into alignment. And my body had been telling me, all along, that the way back was through my hands.
So, going forward, instead of plans or resolutions, I’m choosing to let my creative practice lead—not as a hobby, not as a luxury, but as the organizing principle of my life. And not surprisingly, each day I do that, everything else finds its place so much more easily.
It’s about doing what’s fulfilling and satisfying first. There is an energy that’s generated that powers the rest of what I want to accomplish.
If any of this resonates—if you sense that clarity might come not from more effort but from creating the right conditions—I help people find their own way into their own kind of creative alignment.
Please consider booking a call if you’d like to explore what that could look like for you.