Creativity is one of the key things that sets an entrepreneur apart from a business owner.  We love to envision and create things.  We thrive on the creation of something that solves others problems, makes life easier, and just in general makes the world a better place.

As we move into spring, and nature automatically begins to blossom, give life, and come out of hibernation, we too have the desire and ensuing drive to create and give forth to the world.  After a long winter like this year, it can seem almost manic as we feel the spurts of creative bursts and the fall back to winter blues as the rain (or if you live in Montana like I do) the snow ominously rolls in again clouding our dreams along with the brief hints of spring around us.

Winter Blues

I have gone through this for the last week or so, and in fact at one point briefly felt so heavy and void of hope, that it actually scared me.  Rarely do I experience depression, although my life time has presented me with many close relationships with people that do.  At first I thought my melancholy was brought about by the weather but I have come to realize that it was my inner voice, my Core, speaking louder and louder, letting me know that I had lost my course and was no longer following my path.

I had made a decision to go to Santa Barbara for the winter and then the day I arrived to sign a lease for the season, I found out I was to expect some major work changes.  I decided to take the practical route and stay in Montana for the winter and wait things out to see what direction work would take me.

This winter turned out to be one of the longest winters in history, breaking all-time snowfall records.  That combined with the loss of my SUV in an accident, left me with a car not equipped for snow and not much to do but retire to my home and work as the winter languished on from October to May.   Instead of going within, I seemed to spend the winter going through the motions, moving towards my plans for my business and almost unknowingly, detaching from my Core.

Ignoring My Core

After my experience last week, where my unhappiness could not longer be ignored, I realized I had begun to focus on my goals and not enough on manifesting my deepest desires and purpose.  Somehow slowly over the months, I had lost my way.

In hind sight, while it may look to everyone from the outside practical world that I had done the right thing by hunkering down in the comfort of home waiting out the the unknown so I could make a practical plan, that wasn’t what my Core had told me.  That wasn’t what I really needed–security and safety.  What I needed was to express myself and it wasn’t happening in my current environment.  I knew what I needed to do, but I ignored it and now, a week ago I was surprised when the only way my innerself–my Core, could reach me was by shouting.

Following The Internal GPS

I learned quite a while ago from some good friends and mentors, that emotions are not good or bad, they are information.  We are not to judge them and keep the ones we want and ignore the ones that we don’t care to experience.  We are to listen to each, objectively, recognizing that they are our personal guidance system.  They help to let us know when we are on the path and when we are starting to deviate.  And when we don’t listen and begin to go way off course, they will get much louder, letting us know that we have strayed far from the flow of ease and grace that comes when we are following our Core and the natural order of the universe.

Having recognized and course corrected the great deviation between my Core path and the path my head (ego) set as the safe and logical path, I feel alignment and peace.  I realize that while the logical may seem like the way to go, I can not override my intuition.  It is my direct connect with the universal flow and my Core path.

Following Your Intuition Brings Summer Bounty

This can be witnessed everywhere in nature.  Spring blossoms pop up from under the fresh fallen snow, ignoring provincial wisdom and instinctively and effortlessly continuing the cycle of life and self expression.  They don’t think about following the practical or being logical.  If they did, summer and all its bounty would never arrive.  So too must we follow our Core, and our instinctive need for creativity and self expression.

Have you entered the spring cycle of creative expression?