At one point during my years of creative block, I said, “It’s hard to write because it feels like it doesn’t matter. No one cares at all if this book gets written.”
And my life coach worked with me to come up with ways I could find validation–sharing my work with friends or colleagues, publishing small things so I could see people respond to my work… All those were valid strategies, but to tell the truth, I couldn’t muster up the energy to take those actions when the gaping hole inside me kept saying, “No one cares. Why bother?”
Here’s what I realize now:
Yes, it’s hard to do your creative work when it feels like the world is a big, busy mass of indifference to what you’re doing. I mean, why lock yourself in a room to write (or sculpt, compose, choreograph, or paint)… why take time away from your family or paid work to work on your film when no one is calling for you to create it? When no one needs or wants it?
That’s true.
No one is asking you for your work YET… at this point in space and time. That’s because at this point in time, it doesn’t exist for them.
But, the Truth is bigger than this one moment, isn’t it? The Universe contains so much more than the point in space and time you occupy right now.
There are places in the world you can’t see, and people in the world you don’t know… all real, despite the fact that they don’t exist for you. The same is true for time. Reality extends far back into the past… and far forward into the future.
So here’s the real truth:
If you go deep and bring out your best, truest creative work, there is a future world where people are moved and inspired–where their lives are changed–because of your creative work.
There is a future world where people are incredibly grateful for your work, and grateful you did what it took to bring your work into being.
This isn’t some unrealistic fantasy.
In the big cosmic perspective, this future world is just as real and valid as the one you live in now (along with the many other future worlds that are possible).
And this future world comes into being because you choose it–and you back that choice up with action.
So here’s part of your work as a creative: Hold the vision. And then act.
Hold a vision that is bigger than today. Hold the vision of a time where more exists. Hold the future where your work shines bright… even when you don’t know exactly what it looks like.
And walk forward into your creative vision with faith that it will meet you.
The world is waiting.
