This post was written by one of our inspiring  #RadLivin speakers, Connie Chapman, and was originally featured over on her lovely site conniechapman.com. Hear her speak + meet her in person on 20 Feb 2016 at #RadLivin.

Recently, while cleaning out an old hard drive full of files, documents and folders, I discovered that on it lay the beginnings of dozens of beautiful, creative, heart-driven projects and ideas.

There were 2 ebooks, several ecourses, workshop outlines and many other ideas of projects I wanted to create.

All of them were just sitting there in the beginning brainstorm stages.

All of them in draft mode.

All of them born under a rush of passion, inspiration and love, but then abandoned and never given a chance to be seen by the world.

I felt my heart become heavy with sadness as I realised the extent to which I had been sabotaging my own creativity.

The Flow Of Creative Energy

Creativity is a process of bringing what you feel within, out.

You give it life.

You honour it enough to give your energy to it and use that energy to give it shape.

When something is conceived within you it begins as merely a concept in your mind, an image or an impression. And then through focus, will and conscious action you lovingly turn that inner impulse into form.

Giving birth to a creative idea is a practise of self-love.

A practise of showing deep respect for what is arising within.

A conscious honouring of what you feel.

A willingness to stop whatever you are doing so you can pay full attention to the inner sensation stirring within you.

How Are You Getting In The Way?

As I reviewed the projects on my hard drive, I could feel the passion, excitement and deep love that sat behind each of them. Each was born out of a divine moment of inspiration.

But to bring them to life, these ideas needed more from me than that.

They needed my love, my attention and care.

They need me to tend to them.

To make time for them.

To act on them.

Giving birth to your creative ideas requires patience, commitment and courage. You must move through your self-doubt and the fear of failure, your perfectionist nature and critical mind. You must support yourself rather than tear yourself down. 

But what do I typically do instead?

I close the computer and go about my day, busying myself with things that my mind has decided are way more important than the birth of this precious creative idea.

I listen to that sneaky sabotaging voice in my head. It tempts me with easier tasks, busies me with my to do list, and pulls me further and further away from my true soul purpose.

So, despite the creative impulse that burns within me, I turn my back. I walk away, and I somehow justify to myself; “I am too busy for this right now, maybe another time.”

And so this has got me thinking about what it takes to bring a creative idea to life – the process of conception to completion.

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Fear. Oh fear, that thing can keep us from pursuing our passions quicker than the inspired idea even came in. It always seems to hang around before any risk or unknown path we’re thinking of going on.

I often get asked, “How are you able to think up a dream and just go for it? Aren’t you scared?”

This has been a long process and each risk or dream is different, but I think a lot of it stems from looking at the other side; the alternative to taking the risk, and reevaluating where the fear actually is. When you think about something you would love to do, often fear will come up. What if this happens? What if it doesn’t work out? Am I capable? We’re quick to acknowledge the fear behind it to the point that it can tip the dream so that we never actually do it. Fear is a part of life, it comes up whether you want it to or not, but rather than putting your fear next to doing something that you love, there’s another place you can put it.

A few months ago I was getting ready to leave for the airport to come home from my Euro trip. It was one of the best times of my life and I felt so free. I sat down with a journal the night before my flight and started crying, 1. because I was overjoyed with sheer gratitude for being able to spend such a lengthy, adventurous time with one of my closets friends and 2. because I was terrified.

I wrote down the words:

“I never want this freedom to end.” 

I realised that my perspective had shifted. Taking risks, jumping off rocks into water, saying yes to my passions… those “risky” things no longer seemed to be accompanied by fear. What was now enthralled by it were the things that I’m not passionate about; things that I never wanted to go back to. I became less afraid of doing what I love and more afraid of doing what I didn’t. Fear, the same feeling that might have prevented me from taking a risk, was now the one fueling the same risk but in a new way. The thought of having to live a life that I wasn’t inspired by suddenly left a pit in my stomach; I was terrified of the idea.

Again I thought, “I never want this freedom to end.”

That fear of needing to do something that I wasn’t passionate about fueled new ideas and new risks to take; bigger risks. Ideas that I previously didn’t think were possible for me to execute now. While there are many times that fear will come up in going for these risks, this type of fear seems so minute compared to the fear I have of not feeling free; not living a life I’m passionate about.

Once I realised this, I wanted to write it out to see if shifting fear made sense on paper. I wrote down two different options (these are all scenarios I have faced in the past, and while I ended up going for each, there was definitely fear that went along with them).

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