Here in Part 4, we discover 9 steps to reclaim the river of feminine creativity.
This is the final piece in our series exploring the connection between a wounded masculine and our creative feminine. Recognizing how operating from a wounded animus – our masculine nature – affects us in ways we might not realize, is just not talked about much.
Scroll to the end to see the links to the first 3 parts of this series. I encourage you to read those articles too.
By practicing these 9 steps to cleaning up our river of creativity, we are welcoming our sacred masculine home to ourselves as well. Making this a conscious choice is taking back our power.
I’m using the word creativity in its broadest sense. I’m not talking about making art or writing a story, per se, though that might be how you express it. It’s the awareness of functioning in the flow of life, of responding to the creative impulse that guides all our actions – if we’re open to it. And surely it is connected to you running your business too.
How Can We Reclaim Our River of Creativity?
Inspired by Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés* 9 steps to reclaim our rightful creative energy flow, here are several tips to clean up your inner river.
1. “Receive Nurturance to begin the cleanup of the river”
When we’re cut off from the creative river of life, we drink from the stream but the taste is acrid, so we spit it right out. We can’t own our accomplishments. Someone gives us a compliment and we push it away. We’re starved for nourishment and don’t realize it’s our own filters, judgments, and beliefs that keep us from receiving the abundance that’s flowing to us all the time.
Dr. Estés says when we can’t receive a compliment, it’s a sign of an injured animus.
Action Step:
Start a Compliments Journal.
You’ve heard of gratitude journals and perhaps write in yours daily.
I invite you to start a Compliments Journal. Yes, just what it sounds like.
Try this for a week:
Write down 5 compliments a day in a small notebook or your journal.
It’s perfectly ok to give yourself the compliment too.
Note any compliments you receive and ones you give. Giving away what we want to receive always kick-starts the process of receiving.
For example:
From a woman in my group: “What you shared really touched me. Thank you.”
“Linda, I love how you talked to the cashier at the store today. I know she appreciated it.”
Here’s the thing, the more you interact with others either online or in your daily life, the more chance you have to receive a compliment. If you’re active in online groups and someone tells you they liked what you said or wrote… well, that’s a compliment isn’t it? Take that in as nourishment for your soul. And note it down in your journal.
Plus, the more you Give compliments the easier it is to receive them.
When someone tells you they appreciate something you did, don’t you just blossom? It’s such a delicious feeling. Why not give that to someone else? And use that as one of the compliments to yourself for your journal.
2. “RESPOND; that is how to clear the river”
Creativity is all about responding to what is going on around us, as well as what is happening inside us. It’s the ability to choose from the hundreds of possibilities that arise in each moment; all the thoughts, feelings, actions and reactions that present themselves to our awareness.
But when we feel stuck, we can’t see past one or two choices, if that. We’ve cut ourselves off, repressed or censored our thoughts and feelings. We fall back in old patterns of keeping quiet, not taking action, or acting but it’s ineffective.
What’s One Thing you can choose to do today that will positively impact your business?
Think about an area where you’ve fallen into an “I don’t know what to do” state of mind. Take a few minutes and ask yourself any of these questions to shift your energy into one of possibility.
- My first step might be_______.
- To make this happen, I could _________.
- Eventually, I’ll probably need to _________.
- Maybe I could try __________.
- A “laughably easy” action I know I can do is ________.
- I could ask ________
- A good place to start might be ________
- It would be kinda fun to _________
- I’d really like to find out ________
- If I’m being honest with myself, I’m most excited to _______
3. “Be WILD; that is how to clear the river.”
Even though it feels like the river itself is polluted, bringing us only more struggles and problems… the fact is, the river is clear and flowing. We’re the ones who have these filters, blocks, limiting ideas about what we see and experience. We’re the only ones who can clear our own vision.
We do that by allowing Wildness.
Not-knowing-ness.
Make-all-the-mistakes-you-want-ness.
Take-the-breaks-off-ness.
Let’s-try-ness.
I-wonder-ness.
What-would-happen-if-ness.
We take off the filters we’re wearing and just go for it.
Send your mind-censors off on a mission for the afternoon.
Let the ideas flow. Put on some music and move your body.
Give yourself permission to Be Wild if only for a little while, an afternoon, a song or two while you dance and flow to the music.
What Moves You is What Moves You
Famous quote from my mentor, Marney Makridakis
4. “BEGIN: this is how to clear the polluted river. “
If you’re scared to fail, do it anyway. You probably will fail or make something that’s not your final effort. GREAT. Feel the fear, talk to it, see what it really is trying to tell you. It does have a message for you. And then, BEGIN. And again, begin. And begin again. And fall down and so what, like a little baby learning to walk, fall on your butt and laugh and get up and say, Ok what’s next??
5. “Protect Your Time: this is how to banish pollutants.”
Here’s where your developing relationship with your animus – or as I say, your sacred masculine – can really come in handy. He is the boundary-setter after all.
You simply must protect your time if you’re going to clean up your river. Do what it takes. Get up an hour earlier. Put a “Do not disturb” sign on your office door, and then inside that office, use your time wisely.
That’s the part I seem to find the most difficult … time wisdom.
Of course there are many things I could mention here. For now, here’s one tip that really made a difference for me.
When I’m writing, I turn off my WIFI so I can’t go online. My modem is across the room so it’s far enough away. Otherwise, you can move it out of your reach. As you’re writing, you can’t make that fatal time-suck “it’ll only take a minute” mistake and go online to look something up. Of course put your phone out of reach too.
Just make a note of what info you need as you’re writing and go back to it later. You can look up several things all at once and stay more focused.
6. “STAY WITH IT. How to further banish this pollution?”
“By insisting nothing will stop us from exercising the well-integrated animus, by continuing our soul-spinning, wing-making ventures, our art, out psychic mending and sewing, whether we feel strong or not, whether we feel ready or not.”
“If we were to abuse our children, Social Services would show up at our doors. If we were to abuse our pets, the Humane Society would come to take us away. But there is no Creativity Patrol or Soul Police to intervene if we insist on starving our own souls. There is just us. We are the only ones to watch over the soul-Self and the heroic animus.”
7. “PROTECT Your Creative Life”
“Practice your work everyday. Then, let no thought, no man, no woman, no mate, no friend, no religion, no job, and no crabbed voice force you into a famine. If necessary, show your incisors.”
When we’re running our business, we often get off track doing all the small tasks that don’t really matter, pretending this is moving us forward.
I love this quote from Amy Porterfield:
Creation Before Consumption
Find when your most productive time of the day is and guard it carefully. Use it for the most creative aspects of your business. That might be writing your blog posts, or creating a new product, a webinar script, your marketing message. Save the more mindless tasks for your least productive part of the day. For me that’s in the afternoon.
8. “Craft Your Real Work”
“Insist on a balance between pedestrian responsibility and personal rapture. Protect the soul. Insist on quality creative life. Let neither your own complexes, your culture, intellectual detritus, nor any high-sounding, aristocratic, pedagogical, or political la-la steal it away from you.”
When we protect our soul and honor our creative work, everyone around us benefits too. Because we’re living in and sending out higher energy, lighter energy, dancing with spirit who wants to come and play with us. You know the difference.
9. “Lay Out Nourishment for the Creative Life”
“Although many things are good and nutritious for the soul, most fall into Wild Woman’s four basic food groups; time, belonging, passion, and sovereignty. Stock up. These keep the river clean.”
When we’ve cleaned up our inner river by removing toxic waste in the stream and inviting our spirits to come out and play again, the waters of creativity ebb and flow in their natural rhythm.
“The river returns as our system of nourishment, one we can enter without fear, one we can drink from without worry, one beside which we can calm the tormented soul of La Llorona, healing her children and restoring them to her. We can dismantle the polluting process of the factory, seat a new animus. We can live our lives as we wish and as we see it, there beside the river, holding our many babies in our arms, showing them their reflections in the clear, clear water.”
Giving thanks and credit to:
This 4-part series was based on Chapter 10 Clear Water: Nourishing the Creative Life from the book by Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Ph.D., Women Who Run With the Wolves; Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype, ©1992, 1995 Ballantine Books. All “ “ quotes from this article are from pages 303-309.
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Please leave a comment below. What did you take away from this series? Did it bring any new awareness to mind? Can you see this deeper connection between your masculine and feminine sides of yourself?
To get the most out of this series, start at the beginning through these links:
In Part 1, Creativity – the River of Life for a Woman Entrepreneur, I shared La Llorona, an ancient story about how the river of life can become the river of death.
In Part 2: Beware: 8 Signs You’re Being Poisoned I explored different signs that you’re drinking from a polluted river. This toxic waste in the water affects us in ways that might be very familiar… no energy, feeling scattered and disorganized, wishing, waiting and hoping things will be different, listening to your inner critic voices, and so on.
Connecting these common behaviors we all face, at least from time to time, to the idea that these are signs a wounded woman is drinking poison from a masculine animus “gone bad” is a new one for me.
In Part 3, Discover Your Animus – Your Partner in the Inner-River Clean-Up Campaign, you’ll see that you as the woman must clean up the river, but you cannot do it alone.
This was first published on Nov 15, 2017 in Linda Kaun ~ The Power of You.