In November I held my last workshop for 2017.  I was honoured to lead one of my Creative Self-Care workshops in my home studio with a full house so to speak.   It was exciting to have some new and old faces join me in this self-care series.  One of the things that I spoke about as I introduced the workshop was the idea of “the impostor syndrome”, you know that part of you who sometimes feels like you don’t know what you are doing and others are going to figure it out?  It is something that I think comes up not just for those in helping professions but also for many of us, myself included.  For me it arises out of a culture where we are pushed to measure our progress through comparison to others through the media we are inundated with.  We are encouraged to look for external markers of success rather than internal markers of accomplishments.  This is drummed into us from a very young age, where we are taught to use grades as a measure of our worth or value.

Though more people are aware of the emotional quotient (EQ), we still seem to fall back on IQ as a measure of how “smart” or worthy we are.  It does not have to be this way.

This is why I feel inner work is so important, because without the time and space given for inner reflection, things can quickly get off balanced when we are always looking outside of ourselves to feel worthy.  There are so many “shoulds” that we are exposed to both intentionally (through advertisements) and unintentionally from those we know who have fallen into the same comparison traps.  And of course knowing that other’s “shoulds” are not relevant for us and feeling it are two different things.

I believe that when we connect with our inner wisdom creatively, it becomes easier and easier to sort this out so that we can begin to listen to our own voice over the voice of others.  We begin to trust our decisions rather than second guess them because we are tuned into how we are feeling. We begin to relax into the moment and let go of stress more easily because we can connect with the moment, and our intuition to know what is best for us and the situation.  We stop fighting what we can’t change and begin to accept all that is, including the amazing things that get overlooked or a difficult situation (such as the lessons from the universe).

It takes time, but mostly it requires trust in one’s self.  We will fall. We can get back up.  We can decide how we want to respond, but only if we are tuned into Self.  How will you use creativity to tune into Self?

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