When a very creative client shares with me that they are overwhelmed, even to the point of being paralyzed by it, I get very excited, and tell them they should as well.
Overwhelm was something I struggled with personally for years. I tried to overcome my overwhelm with working harder, longer, and becoming consumed with what was wrong with me that I so often experienced overwhelm and how could I “fix myself.” The overwhelm and the resulting shame I felt around it were often times debilitating and kept me from doing the work I longed to do, from becoming the person I longed to be.
I devoured everything I could about how to overcome overwhelm and how to be more productive.
The problem was that I was trying to fix a problem. And I tried, relentlessly, for years throwing all kinds of resources into fixing myself.
A shift, however – a SEISMIC shift – occurred when I stopped asking myself,
“What’s wrong with me?’
and instead considered,
“What if this is gift and the source of my greatest power? What if “what’s wrong” is that I am trying to fix what is most brilliant and beautiful about myself?”
And then came an image. It was so powerful, vivid and sudden. Any rendition or retelling pales greatly in comparison to what I felt/saw, but what I jotted down on the pink post-it note above was an awkward but gets the gist attempt at describing it: a torrent, a tsunami, a Niagra Falls-like river of powerful creative energy that I had been attempting to squeeze out through a tiny straw, and the result was that a dam had been built up, to try to hold it back. The constant pressure that I felt was not my inadequacy to achieve my dreams; the constant pressure I felt was an unwillingness to accept my inadequacy and then to, inspite of it, say YES to the creative potential that was wanting to flow through me anyway. The overwhelm I felt was trying to squeeze out Creative Energy through a straw of trying to be “good enough” by human standards, because anticipating being judged by other humans. The straw was also trying to be creative in a way that “made sense,” was “rational,” “responsible,” “realistic.” The straw, as true for any symbol/metaphor in any vision/worth it’s salt, is all the ways I was trying to figure out the mystery in my small, egoic, rational mind way, instead of allowing my Being to dance with it.
I have since found a similar explanation for complaints of creative overwhelm in so many of many clients. Some clients experience it in earning less money than they want or need, other clients describe it as perennially falling so far short of expressing the creative potential they feel they have inside of them, whether that is plateauing as an artist or a string of failed business ventures or relationships. Others describe feeling resigned to a simultaneous anxiety-pressure and disappointment that they are afraid they’re just going to have to live with.
Discerning just exactly where and why the constriction is varies from client to client, as does finding ways to both expand the artery and chip away at the dam.
The thing is, though, once you know that THIS is what’s going on (and that it’s not some deep flaw you are cursed with for life!), you start to feel that pressure as instead a powerful force, that wants to flow as much as you want it too. You begin to realize that you don’t have to do all the work of dismantling the dam that’s maybe been erected over decades (or maybe goes back farther if this is a family legacy?). You just start to chip away at it, even in seemingly small ways. The smallest crack in that dam is enough jeopardize the integrity of that dam, enough to allow the force behind it to do the bulk of the work.
It’s a very simple solution, which is why I can share it, share the fact that it has helped my clients reach previously unreachable levels of income, personal growth and creativity, and still be fairly certain it is going to stay a secret.
If are experiencing overwhelm or a nagging sense that you, that life, could become so much more, I’d love to help you explore how this concept can be applied to unleash your own creative, personal, and financial potential.
Recent Comments