"If you give your gifts, people will be envious. The ones who are envious are the ones who are not giving their own gifts." ~ Micheal Meade
This theme just came up in a coaching session with a client last Friday (who has a family member having a hard time with her emergence) and is one of the things that can happen when you cultivate your creative source and start to bring your unique soul's gifts into the world, so it is worth mentioning here. The truth is some people in your life may be envious of your creative process unfolding as you begin to create and produce what's yours to do. That's only because they not in touch with, or fully expressing, their own unique gifts and path. Or, they may be used to relating to you in one way, and now are unsure how to connect with the more "vibrant" energized you. It's really not personal, even though it can feel that way.
When someone is not using their own gifts, they may criticize, belittle, or otherwise negate yours to try to bring you down, even pull away from you, or just feel bad around you without knowing why. At some point in every emergence process, someone you know will be uncomfortable when you follow your aliveness, and how they act depends on who they are and how their own inner feeling of disconnection or fear is related to why they're not cultivating and using their own gifts.
This may bring up feelings in you of sadness, anger, guilt or some way of contracting to try to make them feel better - some people even block their own creative process. The best thing you can do for that person - and yourself - is to bring forth your gifts anyway, no matter what, because most people you know won't feel bad or envious...they'll be inspired! Seeing you create and produce something new in the world often inspires them to bring out their own gifts. So don't focus on the the nay-sayers (which creates contraction energy), but instead focus on those you serve or desire to serve (which generates expansion energy) - those who will benefit - by you bringing out your creatively unique gifts into the world.
And if you ever find yourself feeling envious of anyone else, take some time to delve into why. Listen underneath the uncomfortable feelings for the real longing of your inner creative voice. The cure for that discomfort is to find and cultivate what is uniquely yours to give and offer in your unique way. In that, there can never be a comparison, and therefore no reason to feel envious. Your creative source contains what's unique to you. It needs you to not focus on the other person, and just focus inward into yourself. You can turn any feelings of envy, doubt, or fear into a creative invitation to focus on your own aliveness.
It's never too late to bring your magic into the world. People need that more than ever. And people you don't even know yet will come out of the woodwork and will be grateful for what you have to offer. There is no short cut, but you are worth the time, space, and attention for the journey of your creative self and creative soul.
Michelle James ©2020
I run a group on Facebook Applied Creativity Network (open to anyone if you'd like to join) where someone asked, "What's next? How is the world going to be with this coronavirus? How are the remaining people going to relate to each other...social life?"
Kay Ross, a member of that group wrote: "I don't know how it will be. The question is: How do we WANT it to be? What kind of world/life/society do we want to design and create?"
I really resonated with her answer, and "yes-anded" it with some thoughts of my own. Because they're directly related with the work I do with my clients, I thought I would share them here:
Also don't know how it will be. I don't think anyone can know at this time, but we can make choices about what's ours to do now, even in this big unknown. We can discover where what we are inspired to do meets what is needed now, even without knowing the whole picture.
We do have agency and, like Kay Ross said, can ask what we want, and what we can design and create. Our feeling of creative empowerment comes from looking at what we CAN do in any given situation...what calls to us, what inspires us, what we want to do, what needs we can meet, what can we create, and how we can serve the situation, etc.
As far as relating, while challenging now, I imagine people will adapt as they always have to find ways of connecting - or create them - even within these unprecedented constraints. I don't think we can know what the will look like...so that means being OK (or at least accepting) being in the unknown for a while - without knowing how it will look - and creating that as we go, like in an improv. And not needing or expecting it to look exactly like it was in the past. It won't be the same. If we can accept that, and not fight it, we're more empowered to create what's next.
I have faith in the creative life force in each of us, and the universal creative life force that animate all of life (why I created my business around that)...so I have faith in humans capacity to find or create ways of staying connected until we can gather again in person, and faith in those who feel called to create new ways of connecting we don't even know of yet. We're seeing that already. That doesn't mean it’s not hard to be these isolated now (or that there is not real suffering, fear, pain, and deep loss in the world right now - there is!), but it is just about switching our focus to what we CAN do within the constraints - looking beyond what is to what we imagine can be, and discovering what is ours to do in the process. That is an emergence process. If everyone did that, I think we’d see a modern creative renaissance during and after this situation.
Sometimes our deepest fears about what will be lost (as well as the reality of what IS being lost) can lead us to create something new to meet those needs. Historically, people have always used their creativity to move beyond even the most challenging situations. That's where I put my trust when in the unknown...in the creative alive spirit in each of us that is infinitely rich with alive potential for creating new ways of engaging. So, while we can’t know what’s next, we can meet the moment and ask what we are called to do or create, and help create what's next.
Michelle James ©2020