Owning Your Gifts
Creating the Future Painting By Sandra Kunz Prints will be available soon in my shop
I do personal healing sessions with people (mostly women) and the most common topic they they are looking for clarity in their career and life purpose. The shadows and fears that many people have of doing fulfilling work that is born from their inherent gifts can run very deep and keep them in a state of suffering as they feel stuck. In some cases my clients just want to take steps toward sharing their gifts and don't even need to make a living at it but have so much fear of being seen that they are unable to take what appears to be simple steps to move forward in this regard.
In one way or another we need to be expressing our creative energy or our life feels pointless and without purpose. Many people ask what their purpose is, and those are usually the people that are not not authentically expressing and sharing what has meaning for them from deep within them. This lack of expression can have a very direct connection to the quality of our life, and this is not just a one time thing, we need to be continually challenging ourselves to express what is burning to be expressed.
First I want to talk about what it means to be creative. Being creative does not just mean making art or expressing artistically. It will for some people but being creative is expressing yourself in unique ways that come from the depth of who you are and the gifts you came into this life that mean the world to you. These gifts can be shown and expressed in different ways but the place they come from and the energy imprint at the source are the same. They can be artistic, but they can be a gifts of healing, communication, organizing, leadership, empowering others, creating beautiful things, and many other things. It will come from you, in your own unique way and no one else will be able to have exactly the same gift that you do.
Many people have contradicting beliefs about being able to do work that is born of their gifts and earning a living from it. It is a very common subconscious belief that is ingrained not only in individuals but in the undercurrent of society that debilitates us from being creative and authentically ourselves. But money is not the only fear we have of not expressing our true divine creative energy, there are many more and at the root is the fear of not being loved for who we really are. We are afraid that we will be alone and abandoned if we are truly ourselves.
Like I said, these beliefs are in our subconscious mind where we are not aware of them but we are still continually making decisions from them that perpetuate our patterns of suffering an unfulfilling life.
The thing is, that no matter what gifts you have from the core of your creative energy, there is a way for you to express it in this physical world and you can even be supported financially from it, but if you have beliefs that are contrary to that then you will be at war within yourself to do take even simple steps in that direction.
The Universe does not want you to live in poverty, nor does it want you to live a life that is meaningless and without purpose. It is our life's purpose to express our unique energy and to be abundant. And it is possible. Believe me, I know how difficult it is to work through my own resistance to my gifts and understand the value of my gifts.
Also, it helps to understand our natural energy system that supports us in expressing our gifts. It is part of our masculine and feminine energy system and we all have both energies. We need to be connected to our unique masculine and feminine energy to, first of be a receiver of our gifts and then express them. To understand more about this please read my blog post Healing the divine masculine and feminine. The world in general is living from a warped masculine energy and are not really aware of what the divine masculine energy is and why we cannot survive without it. When we connect to our own Divine Masculine energy we feel safe in this world, we feel we belong, and we support the creation of the Divine Feminine within us and in others. We value our gifts and we take action to express them in the world. Without the divine masculine energy our gifts go manifested in this world.
Owning our gifts means that we take risks to expressing them. But this is where we feel like we are alive. We express ourselves or we die inside. We need to start being ok with not being perfect and we need to be ok with the process of learning from our mistakes and making messes. It's good to make a mess.
Here are some steps you can take to start Owning Your Gifts and expressing them:
1) Be really honest with yourself about how you feel about your life and how fulfilled you are. This is the starting point, and be kind to yourself but be really honest. You can take a step back to look at it objectively and then sit down, take a deep breath and tune into how this subject really makes you feel without suppressing your feelings.
Realize that by not expressing your gifts this can not only affect the quality of your own life but it can seriously affect your relationships. If your relationships are not fulfilling does any part of that stem from you not giving 100% to expressing yourself and your gifts? When our own lives are not full we can tend look to others to fill it, and no one can do that for us. We start to focus outside of us on what others are doing or not doing instead of looking within at how we are not expressing our creative energy.
2) For most people, the biggest barrier to owning and expressing their gifts is the inner resistance they have. When they start to do move in the direction of expressing them they get bulldozed by the many beliefs they have that are contrary to being authentic. Start writing them down and doing the work to rewrite those beliefs. I offer coaching and healing sessions for exactly this. Please contact me if you have questions or are interested at StrokeOfSoulArt@gmail.com
Notice your negative feelings when they come up and the thoughts attached to them. These need to be felt and observed. Not judged. Feel your feelings and notice your thoughts without going down the rabbit hole with them. This can be difficult to do on your own if you have never done this before so get help with it if you cannot navigate this on your own.
3) Have a daily practice of feeling what it feels like to be sharing your gifts. This is a very powerful feeling that you have when you are connected to consciousness and in the 'zone'. You know what this feels like. Focus on it as much as possible in your visualization practice. If you feel resistance come up, don't continue with the visualization but deal with the resistance.
4) Only talk to those that can be supportive of you and your visions, and keep it close to your heart. Certain people in our life see us in certain ways and they may not be able to see in any other way. That is ok. There are others in our life who see us in a much more expanded way. The best friends in the world are those that can hold space for us and be honest about what they see that keeps us from being the best we can be. Find someone that you can work with that you can be accountable to, and ask those people what gifts they see in you.
5) Take baby steps and do what is easy. Get a small project in mind and make it easy and obtainable. Working through your resistance is the biggest part of the work so you don't need to climb Mount Everest too. Set yourself up for success. Feel into what you can do now and come up with the first step.
6) Treat yourself with kindness and take the first step. As you do this you will start to feel alive and you will remember what it feels like to be you. Keep going. Remember, baby steps.
I have an Intuitive Art process for working through creative blocks. It is a process where we allow ourselves to be in the flow and to be guided in our creative energy. It is wonderful for identifying the feelings and voices in our head that stop us from expressing our gifts and to work through them in the moment. It exercises our ability to be vulnerable and to take risks, even if we don't know what the outcome will be.
