What you need to know about the creative cycle so you can stop berating yourself and create a sense of ease and flow

It can be very fun to push into the high energy of a big deadline.

You let go of various other responsibilities and hone in on the one thing and go go go. Flow is happening and wouldn't it be great to do this all the time!

And then the deadline comes and you get it done and suddenly you are in free fall.

​Have you been there? It can feel really painful and scary. 

Even without the big deadline- there are times when your creative juices are flowing and other times when they just aren't, and you can wonder if you are not really a creative.​

There is a natural tendency to start berating yourself with thoughts like, "I will never be able to sustain the creative energy." and "I don't have any ideas- I'm not a real artist."

The thing is that there is a cycle to the creative process as there is any thing.

You need to exhale.

You have been building and building and pushing- it is like the inhale part of the breath, and you need to let yourself rest, let go, exhale.

You can trust that after you have rested, there will be a natural inclination to start to build again- to inhale.

It is in the exhale of the big project that you both rest and also settle back into all the of the little things of life- the parts of you that keep you connected to your world.

We have cycles within cycles - larger longer ones, like the creative push I am talking about, and daily ones, like day and night, awake and asleep, activity cycles within a day, all the way down to the actual inhale and exhale and even the heart beat.

So let yourself have the rest, the release, the sense of safety and connection to all things. Let yourself have the exhale in all of these cycles.

And trust that you will have a natural inclination to inhale- to engage your creative activity!