Caring, capable, creative people who don’t have a focus for their skills can often use up their energy, talents, and attention on other people’s goals, dreams, and visions.
They do this not because they’re so eager to please and make people like them (although there may be some form of people pleasing mixed into the stew) but because they’re good at it, truly like to help others, and because exercising these creative muscles feels amazing.
If you’re helping a friend or getting compensated and everyone’s happy there’s no problem.
The issue only arises if you do this instead of, or maybe as a way of avoiding, your own dreams, projects and goals. Because it’s way easier to help someone else bring their vision to life than it is to come face to face with your own. And servicing others’ agendas can take up all the space, time, and attention you might wish you could give to yourself if you stopped long enough to admit it.
Let’s call this behaviour, “creative energy-lending”.
People who chronically loan out their brilliance can be left feeling like something essential isn’t getting the benefit of their attention and that thing matters (even if they can’t name it yet). Some might say they feel stuck, blocked, overwhelmed. Others start to feel resentful and wish they had more time for themselves.
The feeling of not knowing what your “thing” is gets compounded the more you focus outside yourself.
If you see yourself in these words, you could be standing at a significant threshold. Here there is a possibility of something really exciting and new ahead. Maybe all this time you’ve been building the experience and confidence to do your own thing (or do your own thing again if it’s been awhile). Note that I’m defining “thing” as any creative endeavour that makes you feel purposeful, excited, and fulfilled.
This could be the moment when you say, “it’s my time.”
If this is you, call back your energy, and start to see it as the hugely valuable and precious resource that it is.
And know that nothing is wasted, everything you’ve learned from helping others can now be applied to whatever you do next.
Ask yourself:
Who or what benefits most of my time and energy?
If you’d like to discover where your energy wants to go, a Passage session might be just the thing that kickstarts this new era.
