You’ve heard it before. Especially if you are a dreamer, a visionary, a clearly creative person, your ideas for the future can be met with wet-blanket pragmatism. “Don’t put the cart before the horse,” we’re told. Well, I think those naysayers are just hearing us backwards.
Perhaps the old adage is sound advice when we are getting ahead of ourselves and need to come back to what’s needed in the present moment. But, being present to the energy of what really matters to us about this journey actually supports us to move forward.
Your big visions and values are not the cart. They are what give the horse direction!
Imagine for a moment (I know part of you really likes to do that) that you are riding on that beautiful cart. Your creativity is like the horse out front, led by keeping your sights on where you are headed just beyond the horse’s nose. When it comes to creative ventures, I assert, it is the energy of the vision that goes before and animates the horse.
If creative energy is the horsepower that pulls our work forward on this non-linear road of success we are on, then imagining the end outcome is our preliminary step. You know this. The desired destination, the feeling of making it where we want to go, our aspirations are what help us navigate.
What else is our role in all this?
Keep your eye on your vision. Once that vision is more clear, and evident in your Right-Brain Business Plan ®, you are well on your way. Keep it visible and touch in to its energy often.
Feed the horses. What feeds your creativity? Julia Cameron teaches us in The Artist’s Way to go on weekly artist dates. A two-hour appointment with your inner creative artist to do something fun, nurturing, and inspiring for yourself is a good way to reenergize. A walk around my neighborhood, a trip to the thrift store, or a stroll through the Minneapolis Institute of Art does the trick for me. Or, it could be staying home and making a yummy pot of soup or coloring with watercolor crayons. Whatever feeds you, whatever activity sincerely cares for you, will make you stronger.
In our metaphor here, what feeds your creative spirit is what feeds the horses. Vision, values and various joys and passions give us what we need to fuel creative actions. Paradoxically, the vision energizes your creative journey, too.
What will really feed your creative spirit this week?
What about your vision has the most energy today?
So, we practice putting the well-fed horse before the cart, and the vision before the horse.
Oh, and enjoy the ride!
(This article was written for a guest post on TheRightBrianBusinessPlan.com)
Making way for creative action, Amy Egenberger, MEd., CPCC, is proud to be a Licensed Facilitator of the Right Brain Business Plan®. She is a seasoned educator, life coach, artist and founder of Spirit Out! Coaching. Amy helps people find the courage and clarity to get moving on their creative path. A book, a business, a project, a change… your creative spirit gets out! Amy is one of our licensed Right-Brain Business Plan® Facilitators.
Join Amy in May of 2013 for fun & focus to make your biz plan real. Right-Brain Business Plan® Workshop
Minneapolis, Minnesota. https://spiritout.com/classes/rbbp
