Changing the Way You See Yourself
If you’ve had your hands analyzed or done any visioning work with me, you’ll recognize that a big part of making your purpose real is being ready, willing, and able to adjust to and adopt a new, higher level way of seeing yourself.
It can take time to change your view of who you are.
And it isn’t always easy to do.
Impostor Syndrome, Anyone?
You might feel like you’re pretending to be someone you’re not, or like you can almost grab hold of that new identity but then it sort of slips away and you’re left grasping at nothing.
Regular Life Getting in the Way
I’ve seen it happen with my visioning clients — they get clear on their big vision, but then lose focus then when they go back to their “regular lives” or can’t quite remember how or why they decided what they decided — unless they have help to stay in touch with their new way of being in the world.
Un-Squashing Our Creative Selves
I’m also seeing this happen with creative types.
Yes, ideally being creative is easy and just flows naturally from us.
But that’s not what I see on a daily basis.
More often than not I see creative spirits squashed and held back by our own fears and doubts.
And even more fundamentally, by who we see ourselves to be.
How You See Yourself Makes All the Difference
For instance, if you think of yourself as a IT worker who is a writer on the side, it is a whole different ballgame than when you know you are a writer who happens to be doing tech work to pay the bills.
You’ll make different decisions, take different actions, and have different priorities.
And Therein Lies the Rub
And those decisions, actions, and priorities are the make-or-break difference between getting your creative work out there into the world versus walking around with a movie inside your head for the rest of your life, your manuscript gathering dust on your shelf, or your tribe never hearing the message you are hear to share with them.
It’s all about knowing who you are and doing the work to make it happen.
This blog post was right on the money for me. I have been doing a lot of work to figure out who I am as an artist, and now that I know, I am going to do what you suggest; I am going to make the claim that I am an artist who happens to be a Career Counselor on the side to pay the bills. I think you are right in stating that this will help me to set up my artistic work as my priority instead of letting myself be consumed by the day to day grind of my day job. You were also right about it not being easy to change your vision of yourself. The morning pages suggested by Julia Cameron really helped me through this process, and it took about a year to work things out. I am happy to say that now I am going to start using my time with morning pages to help me with my creative work instead of using them to figure out who I am – I have definitely grown. Thanks for all of your help and advice Jenna.