Finding Your Inner Voice

Creativity can manifest itself through living in a good marriage or having a committed relationship. It can be the right way to raise your kids or caring for others. It means being yourself…whoever that might be.

Albert Einstein said it best when speaking about creativity. “Everyone is a genius, but if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will spend its whole life believing it is stupid.”

We all have it. We just need to find it. If one looks at creativity not just in terms of the arts, music, crafts and all of its many manifestations but far beyond that, it is another world welcoming us to explore. Creativity can be found in our ordinary, often times mundane acts of living.

It means creating a lifestyle that embraces all that is important to you, your soul and your inner cravings for your purpose in being alive. It means living by those principles that define who you are as a person, a spouse, a lover, a parent, a guardian, and a member of the human race. Living creatively can and should be your motivation for personal evolution, growth, learning and therefore, thriving in a complicated world.

Finding our inner voice is different for each one of us.  It is what we, not others, want us to be. Too often we carry the baggage of our parent’s expectations or the well-meaning but tempered advice of teachers and coaches. Often times we have sub-consciously learned to be what others expect of us…not how we truly feel inside. As a result, we often downplay or disconnect from those parts of us that are truly unique to just us.

Businesses have been doing this for hundreds of years. Over the centuries, they have failed to grasp huge opportunities for change and innovation. An attachment to old habits, greying assumptions and fat around the waist have clouded their perception of change all around them. Then occasionally some business comes along like Apple or Netflix or Fitbit or GoPro to challenge the status quo and cause massive upheavals.

As with any responsible enterprise it is our duty to find what it is that interests us the most. We must listen to our inner voice and answer its calling. To do this we must learn how to support our creativity. That means to take the time to daydream, doodle, imagine, and ponder those many ‘what if’s’ that seem to hang around  the edges of our consciousness. Life-changing habits come from thoughts and energies beyond that which we normally access during our daily lives.

Then we must take those thoughts, ideas, concepts, and ‘what ifs’ and put them into concrete form or action. The tragedy here is not to try and fail but to do nothing at all. Each of us has an intuitive nature. We must harness the energy of and the power of that intuitive self in order to become limitless in our inner exploration.

You must first accept where you are in life and never regret the journey you took to get there. You should slow down and smell the flowers. That means eliminating toxic people and situations that do nothing but harm your self-worth. Practice the art of mindful living and appreciating your good fortune when intuition comes into your life.

It means breaking away from centuries-old assumptions, questioning old habits that hold us back and honestly looking deep within ourselves for the truth there. Creativity is a whole body and mind experience. It is a way of life not just an idea or an ambitious goal. It is preparing ourselves mentally and physically for the journey deep within ourselves that reveal truths about us we never knew. It is a mind-set that in turn is a road map that in turn is a guide to eternal truths…our truths about who we are and what we can become if we so desire.

Welcome to your inner journey. It’s going to be a wonderful, at times confusing, and ultimately satisfying trip. It’s better to jump on that train now than to wait at the station for another-life to arrive.

• Credit must be given to the following authors who wrote articles in ‘The Edge’ Magazine, June, 2016 on this subject matter. Theresa Nutt, Alley Brook, Jeanne Henderson, Lisa Sellman and Nick Seneca Jankel.