Cynthia Morris

An Impulses subscriber wrote to me with the question:

“My creative life has been on the back burner due to day job and health work, family stuff. In addition to the day job stuff, I have 3 personal areas to keep going…yet I know that my artist work is the soul work (music and performance writing). How to manage my creative side when the “work” side takes so much time?”

This is a great question and is one we all face – how to manage our time and energy and attention?

We all have our valuable and precious resources – our time and energy. We are extremely privileged to be able to make decisions about how we spend these resources.

Yes, a certain amount is allocated to survival, i.e. making money to pay our bills. And if for some reason you do not have to work to pay your bills, my guess is there are plenty of other things that take up your time and energy.

But beyond our working hours, we do have time and energy and we are responsible for making the kind of choices that foster our happiness.

My question is this: What are you choosing over your Soul work? How can you afford to not do your Soul work?
If we set our Soul aside, what’s left? What is the lived and felt experience on a daily basis of not devoting at least some of your time to Soul work?
[Read more…] about How to make room for making

February somehow became my month of anniversaries. This month I am celebrating:

• 22 years of dedicated writing
• 20 years of practicing yoga (holy moly! Immmmmm)
• 15 years completely self-employed at Original Impulse
• 15 years of publishing Impulses (Have you been on this list since February 2001? Contact me with your postal address and I will send you a treat in the mail!)
• 3 years of non-drinking (alcohol, that is. I still drink a lot of liquids!)

When I thought about writing to tell you about this, I asked myself, So what? What’s the point of sharing all this? How does trumpeting my anniversaries serve you?

This forced me to look at what fuels my consistency. These are some pretty long-term investments. These commitments completely govern my days.

Why am I able to sustain these practices and this business of serving creative people? Because I’m so disciplined?

No. I hate the concept of discipline. The stern nuns at Catholic school only fueled my rebellious streak with their disciplinary tactics.

Because I’m from Ohio and we relish the value of good hard work? That’s true, but I also love loafing around reading and watching movies.

Finally, last week during a yoga class, it came to me. I am able to sustain these practices because my life purpose fuels me. My life purpose is this:

Love.
Love what I love.
Show that love.
Inspire you to love what you love.

I love these commitments. I love writing. I love how yoga makes me feel strong and open. I love being my own boss and serving your creative dreams. I love the clarity and energy I feel without alcohol in my life.

This love imbues the deepest essence of my work. While I know that a certain amount of discipline is necessary to make our creative work, I also know that we tend to respond more consistently to things we are devoted to.

Here’s how I experience it:

Discipline pushes us from behind to do the work.
Devotion pulls us from the heart to do what we love.

Without love, creating will be a battle you fight against yourself. In my writing class and year-long mastermind group, I train people to look for their love. I ask questions like:

• What do you love about writing?
• What time of day feels like a natural flow for doing your creative projects?
• What do you love in the world and what materials help you show that love in your journal?

On our group call last week, I shared my theory about why we get creatively blocked:

Our ability to create is directly proportionate to our ability to love, respect and honor ourselves.

No amount of time management, classes or discipline will work if you don’t feel you are worthy of taking time to write, doodle or dance. I hate to say it, but without love, it’s going to be very, very hard to make your creative dreams real.

Take that in and see if it’s true for you. If you feel stuck, could it be that you could use a bit more self-honoring?

Listen. There is nothing wrong with you. Seeking solutions to ‘fix’ or ‘force’ you to do the work never last. Instead, look for love. Look at your creative impulses as an invitation to love yourself, to love your life and to let what you love lead you to creative expression.

join me for more love

Join us to love writing in The Devoted Writer. 

If you’re like me, sometimes it’s a struggle to stay on track with your creative projects. We make public commitments and big resolutions to stick to our plans.

But that doesn’t work. Sticking to a plan like a militant writer or artist isn’t how life works for us. In all of my years as a coach, I know that life will always interrupt our routine. Vacations. Illnesses. Visitors or even just our own creative slump can derail us. Then we feel bad and this guilt contributes to inertia that prevents us from getting our groove back.

That’s okay! It’s normal! Life is rarely under our control. What I’ve found helps most is to devise a simple approach to get back on track easily.

It is much easier to develop a very simple ritual or micro-action for returning back to your writing than to be rigid. Here are some suggestions for writers that apply to creatives in any medium.

• Sit with an open notebook and brush your hand across the page.
• Open the last page you wrote and read it with a curious eye.
• Make a 2-minute date to write gibberish, literally words that have no meaning.
• Have a 5-minute date describing the space around you in sensual detail.
• Use this prompt to begin a free-write: What now, my dear writer?

Notice how simple they are? Don’t be fooled; these micro-actions can be powerful. They’re meant to lure you into your creative zone where you will be tempted to fall back in love with your medium of choice.

Too often, we punish ourselves with high expectations. We go gangbusters, thinking we are going to do a three-hour stint. This is WAY more harmful than we think. Setting ourselves up to have a long writing session
Try ONE of these, or a similarly simple action, for slipping back easily into your writing practice.

What micro-actions help you get back on track with your creative practice?  Leave a comment!

Online classes. In-person retreats. Blogs. Webinars. Books, magazines, TV.

You’ve consumed all of these things in joy, wonder and a desire to make your creative projects happen. You leave inspired and uplifted.

And then….what happens? Sometimes, nothing.

If you’re like me and a lot of people I know, you LOVE all these goodies. It’s so fun and exciting. But when it comes time to make your own stuff, to write your own masterpieces, to build your business or body of work, you’re still in consumer mode.

Switching from consumer mode to creator mode can be incredibly difficult. I know I’ve seen my attention span shrink. And, when we consume all that advice and information, we can lose our sense of what’s right for us. Faced with many decisions, we make none.

And we go back into the consuming loop, checking Facebook, Instagram and our blog subscriptions. OY!
I know you want to be more than just a consumer. You wouldn’t be in the Impulses loop if you were on the planet just to watch other people make things and show their talents.
How to take inspiration to action? There are a lot of things I can suggest but today I will focus on two ways to drill down and make your dreams a reality.

Return to yourself

If you’re a-swirl with ideas and no sense of direction, stop, drop and free-write. Free-writing can be used for all kinds of writing. In this case, you’re using it to get clear direction on what to do. It’s AMAZING how this simple tool can cut through the noise and help you hear your own truth and direction.
Use these two prompts in consecutive order. Write for five minutes on the first prompt, then switch to the second prompt. Feel free to write for as long as you need to get clarity.

1) My focus now is….

2) That class/blog/book/webinar (INSERT RECENT INSPIRATION) will help me with this focus by….
When you finish the free-write, read it over and see what’s there. Make some brief notes to give you direction as if you’ve just heard from the wisest person in your life about what you should do now. Then do the next step.

Plan your time

Now, look at your calendar and commitments. What have you already committed to? And how much space do you have for your main focus?

Then, schedule time for your focus. It may be finishing an ongoing project. It may be initiating a new project. Either way, get clear on how much time you have for this project.

Once you know the work ahead, and see the amount of time you have to devote to the project, this should help you see how much room you have left for consuming things. Hopefully this will tip the ratio in favor of creating.

I want you to have these last three months of the year be poignant and potent. I want you to leave the year feeling great. I hope this simple process helps you focus, follow through and finish things that matter to you. Let me know how it goes in a comment below.

Join me to make your own projects happen now

Want a chance to make time every day to write your OWN stuff? How about a class that’s all about writing. Not reading others’ writing. Not getting critique. Just a focused place to write daily.
If writing is one of your projects, my online writing class The Devoted Writer is a great way to get past blocks and just write. Some reasons why this is great to get your work done:

• The focus is on you writing every day, for at least 15 minutes.
• You can use this class for ANY kind of writing.
• There is no obligation to interact with others or read anyone else’s writing.
• No one will critique your writing. You are free to get that shaggy first draft OUT.
• You can use my prompts or prompts from your project. I show you how to do that in class.
• At the end of the month, you will have made significant progress on your own work.

Find out more about how to write with us in my online class The Devoted Writer.