A Fireside Chat Ignites Old Ways

Gathered around my cousin’s Christmas Eve fire doing needlepoint, we chatted about everything and nothing. I feel relaxed, engaged and productive. She comments on how big my needlepoint project is, when I’m already so busy with work projects.

I had spoken about feeling burnt out. Frustrated, that at my age of 61-years, I was still building my work projects; and, wished that my only job now was to share my work with the world.

While she was correct in thinking that a smaller quicker project would reap a rapid reward.
And, reward is a way out of burnout!
I realized that what I needed wasn’t a bonus or a reward, it was easeful engagement with my creativity!

Her enquiry made me aware of my mindset. I was soothed by the doing. The reward of a finished product was something else. The reward has never been what motivated me to create. I was inspired to create. I learned who I am by creating. Creating has been a need, not a job.

A reward, if or when it would come, was in addition to the easeful engagement I was experiencing while crafting. Self-development was what felt rewarding as I went along.

Easeful engagement feels like engaging with your own unique rhythm.
It’s in flow—in right relationship—with your spirit.
A physical connected-ness that’s truer than anything else I know.

As my Christmas visit continued, my needlepoint and mindset emerged together into a resolution.

My old way of creating—becoming a dancer, writing a book, building an app, crafting a program—wasn’t made on deadlines. I just trained, wrote, built and crafted to the beat of my own drum.

I allowed the process—my creativity—to dictate the speed of my development. I followed my body’s connected-ness.

After multiple business courses I’ve been instructed to create deadlines for accountability. To lead with mental authority. A deadline that I’ve come to realize thwarts my creativity and makes me chase time.

My needlepoint mindset brought me back to my old way of engaging with my Self. A way that is curious about what’s inside me, what interests me, what could support my development.

Tao writings say: “How do you know what is right for the world, by knowing what is right for your own life.”

My resolution this year is to reclaim my creative spirit as the Source of my work. I promise to listen, rather than make demands, to what wants to be expressed and when. And, return to Source timing.

Easeful engagement is what makes me happy, and what makes me happy supports what I create, how I develop, and (I believe) the way the world will respond to it. Even if it takes a little longer.

Happy New Year everyone!
May your relationship with time be a guide and mirror for you throughout 2024!