#8 Your Creative Rhythm: Plan with Intention, Rest Without Guilt

Episode 8: Your Creative Rhythm: Plan with Intention, Rest Without Guilt

Description: As the new year approaches, join us in this transformative episode where we dive deep into the concept of embracing your personal and professional seasons. Discover how understanding and planning for natural cycles of flow and rest can revolutionize your creative journey. Learn practical strategies to map out your year with intention, manage energy ebbs and flows, and prepare for low seasons without guilt. Whether you're a solopreneur or managing a team, this episode offers insights into scheduling personal time, reflecting on creative highs and lows, and setting yourself up for success. Tune in for motivational tips, a mini-audit exercise of the past year, and an invitation to take proactive steps towards a balanced and fulfilling creative life. Don’t miss out on the opportunity to reframe downtime as essential for rest and preparation, and hear about one-on-one coaching sessions designed to align with your creative rhythms. Let’s create a calendar that works for you, honoring your natural rhythms and making the most of your creative seasons. Harness the power of intentional scheduling and embark on a year filled with ease, productivity, and creative flow.

Transcript

Final Episode 8: "Planning Your Creative Year: Embracing Seasons of Flow and Rest"

[00:00:00] Hey friends, with the new year right around the corner, I wanted to talk to you about something today I wish I had learned way earlier as a creative entrepreneur and as a human being. Let's talk about discovering and embracing your personal and professional seasons. What if your low energy periods weren't a sign of failure, but a necessary part of the creative process?

Let's dive into this in this episode and how you can plan for these natural cycles and make them work for you, not against you. I'm hoping that you'll learn by the end of this short, episode, hoping you can achieve it on your drive to work, your morning walk, whatever that looks like to you, wherever and however you're fitting this in.

I'm hoping you'll have a framework to plan your year with intention. Manage the ebbs and the flows, and prepare for the low seasons without [00:01:00] guilt or overwhelm. And hey, if you've been feeling stuck in your creative journey, you don't have to figure this out alone. We don't have to do any of this alone. I do offer one on one coaching sessions designed to help you navigate these challenges and create a plan custom made for your goals. More on that later. Okay. So when I first started, I didn't understand this thing about seasons. Okay. We all have these creative seasons. For years, I thought something was wrong with me.

When I hit a creative lull, I'd panic. I'd freak out. I'd over schedule myself and push through, only to find myself burning out even more. It wasn't until I started recognizing these patterns as part of my creative rhythm, that things changed. I began planning for these low energy seasons instead of fighting against them.

And I'll tell you what, it made a huge difference. So [00:02:00] how do we embrace this concept of seasons? If you haven't been doing this yet, I want you to take a minute, refocus with me here, and let's really look at this. It's going to help you all year and every year moving forward. And your creative endeavor, whatever that looks like. So perhaps it looks like spring is for planning, brainstorming.

Starting fresh ideas like nature. Summer seems to be a little bit more high energy execution, events, launches, client work, or maybe that's vacation time for you. Maybe your kids are out for summer and you aren't doing anything. That's okay too. I want to dive into this.

one season at a time, and this even comes down to one day at a time, or one week at a time sometimes. Just bear with me. Let's play with this idea. Maybe fall is about reflecting, wrapping up projects, and preparing, for the next cycle. Winter could be for rest, [00:03:00] recalibration, and deeper creative thinking, sketching, designing, contemplating, reviewing.

 So why is this important? When you understand your creative seasons, you can plan ahead. We can avoid burnout and we can give ourselves permission to rest without guilt. Let me say that again. Give yourself permission to rest without. guilt. So for planning your year, I want to give you some practical tactics let's start by.

Looking at the calendar, if you have it with you, let's do it. If you want to hit pause and do this with me, excellent. Let's go for it. No time like the present. Let's map out the year for success, ease, and less guilt, right? start by scheduling your vacations. Your family time, events, personal time, and life happens, don't forget to make room for it in your  calendar I do love the saying, schedule your life and then work around it. As much as we can, right? It's hard to predict what's going to happen sometimes. So we just have to begin somewhere and Try to embrace that, okay, things are going to be in seasons.

They are going to come in cycles. So how do we identify these creative cycles? Let's do a little mini audit of the past year together. Trust me, it's worth the little time this will take to save yourself from burnout and bring some clarity to your seasons. Whether you're a soulpreneur or running a corporation, I like to say curiosity is your best friend.

Let's look back on the past year. When did you feel most productive? When did you feel drained? Let's use this information to anticipate your ebbs and flows. I want you to reflect. When were you moving and shaking naturally, and when were [00:05:00] you maybe forcing it? When did you ask, damn, I wish I had put that on the calendar, or was better prepared?

Let's make some notes, just basic notes. We don't have to do too deep of a dive here. And I want you to just have some moments of aha. Wow, I feel like that every year, or I feel like that every time of the month, or I feel like that the third week in December. Who knows? Let's just get curious., I don't know, I haven't really shared this.

It's all about being vulnerable. But I'm pretty sure I've always suffered from mild depression. At least mild. doing this exercise, I'm, I can't reflect when I started this, but I did probably start it About 10 years ago, just starting to look at these seasons. And when did I feel like crawling in a hole and not coming out?

When did I feel defeated or devalued buried in self doubt or worry [00:06:00] or procrastination was a big one. Just can't get up. I can't get up and do that first step. Once I started reflecting on. the creative seasons and understanding my ebbs and flows and Scheduling those in somewhat so that I could work with them instead of against them Everything changed.

For example, we just came off holiday, right? this can be an intense time of year I don't know about you, but the overwhelm of the holidays followed by this lull of the new year continuously throws me for a curve every year. By investigating these recurring seasonal shifts, I've become better at preparing for them and not letting them slam me down and hold me down.

so once you're done with your audit of last year, let's shake things up for the new year. 

 If you've made some notes on last year, just noticed a few things that came up last year. When did you get a lot done? When did [00:07:00] you maybe need a rest period or reflection period? Once you're done with that little audit, let's shake things up for the new year. Let's schedule projects strategically, moving in to the next year and beyond.

So I want you to notice, and even if you begin this year, excellent, you're way ahead of the game. Let's get started. I want you to pay attention to those high energy periods, the big launches, the times where you're reaching out to clients, big creative pushes, the high energy periods. Now let's focus on the low energy periods.

What can we do with that time when you're in low energy mode? How about marketing updates, audience building, experimenting with new ideas. These are great ways to take advantage of that low energy period without coming to a complete halt. And getting lost in that feeling of self defeat or I can't do this.

I'm not good enough, etc. . 

[00:08:00] Plan reflective time. Set aside time each quarter to celebrate the wins, even if it's a few minutes, and reflect on lessons that you learned, and plan ahead. For me, this has been key to staying focused and grounded, even through those periods of depression. Speaking of, how do we prepare for these low seasons?

And reframe the downtime so it doesn't feel like unproductive time. Low seasons aren't wasted time. They're essential. for rest and preparation. I keep getting this picture of the bear gathering food and gathering all the seeds and nuts and burying them in the cave, right? And then going in and resting with that supply.

So maybe we think of ourselves a little bit more in a primal way and we need the cave time. We need to go have the down time. It's essential, rest and preparation. Okay. So what else can we do in the low seasons? How [00:09:00] about financial prep saving during busy seasons to cover slow periods?

So here's a couple of tips for success. Financial preparation. Let's save up during the busy seasons. And we know as jewelry makers or creatives, sometimes summertime is a really slumpy time. With the school, I would always look at this. Of course, we had, great QuickBooks data we could look at for each year.

If you have that, use it with the calendar as you do your mini audit on your seasons. And let's try to prepare a little better, so we're not freaking out when we're not making money, because it may not be that you have income coming in 365 days a year. How do we save during busy seasons to cover those slow periods?

How do you prepare yourself emotionally? Remind yourself that creativity isn't 24 seven. It's okay to pause. I'm going to say that again. Remind yourself, creativity is not [00:10:00] 24 seven as much as we might like it to be. It's okay to pause and guess what? You chose this solopreneur path so you could be in charge.

So let's take charge of the calendar and work with your personal seasons. Instead of continuing to fight against the ebb and the flow. Embrace it, stay curious, make note this year, and let's create a calendar that works for your life. Not for the cultural standard or whatever is put out there in front of you, what you might think other people are doing to keep up.

It may not work for you. So I'm inviting you to create this, just as you would your own design. Let's design our calendar to work with your life. Hopefully this will help you move forward a little bit and just start getting curious about those seasons.

What's going on? What time of year are you mover shaker? What time are you a hibernating bear? You could take your [00:11:00] sketchbook in the cave too. That's okay a couple of quick wins for this week and things that you can do right now is block out some personal time on your calendar for the next three months.

Maybe take this in little bite sized pieces. Identify one low season and one high season for your business last year. And let's copy that over to the next year's calendar. Maybe you can commit to a 30 minute reflection session to set intentions for this year ahead.

For me, it's about ease. Let it be easy. I think we add a lot of unnecessary stress to our agenda, and it's not really working. It doesn't work after a certain point. It's not sustainable. So how do we work with the ebbs and flows? 

 Your creative year is made up of seasons. By honoring your natural rhythms, you can plan with intention, avoid burnout, and make the most of your time. I'm so [00:12:00] proud of you for showing up and investing in yourself.

I want you to know if you haven't been told today, you are valued. You are important and you are a total badass. Keep going because the world needs your creativity and work with your seasons. Let's focus on you first so you can keep creating the amazing things that you're creating. If this episode resonated with you and you're ready to dive a little deeper into planning your journey and moving your business forward, I want to open up my one on one coaching sessions to you.

It might be the perfect next step. You can head to my website and learn more and I'd love, love, this is where I thrive and where I come alive helping you align with your creative seasons. My commitment to you is to be here next week with another episode where we'll dive into consistency.

This is the key to stopping the hustle. Focusing on intentional, consistent effort. over unsustainable [00:13:00] hustle and how you can adopt a steady, meaningful approach to your creative work. Until then, definitely reach out. If you're not on my newsletter list, you're missing out. I've been sending a weekly email recapping each episode, inviting you to take further action to build your creative business into the Empire that you envision, and I have a lot of cool stuff coming up this year, so stay in the loop there.

You can email me to get on it, or you can go to my website and hit free and download the free guidebook I've put together for you on courage, clarity, and building customer base. Onward and upward, dear friends, until next time. [00:14:00] [00:15:00]