The entrepreneur with the artist’s heart & the nature of feminine creation
I have found that many women with a strong draw to connect with their feminine nature, also resonate with the artist archetype within the business realm.
Which means that many traditional “‘business-y” aspects of creating and growing a business can feel quite heavy and overwhelming to their nature.
This is because the artist’s heart is inspired by beauty, connection, perspective, relationship and subjective experience, rather than the more logical, clear-cut, tangibly measured solution model that traditional business is based on.
If you resonate with the archetype of the artist, you may not be motivated by entrepreneurship in terms of how quickly you can grow and how large a profit you can create. You have likely had experience in traditional workplaces that have taken their toll on your creativity, energies and heart- and because of this, you are not striving to create a business that mirrors the expectations, linearity and pace of the traditional workplace.
Instead, you see business as a vehicle that can support a life of freedom, creativity and doing things that feel purposeful and enlivening to your soul. You see business as a path to create, express and share in ways that mirror your deeper heart.
Yet so often this natural expression is diminished by the belief that we must follow the unspoken rules, timeframes and collective benchmarks around what creation should look like in the business world.
The formulaic strategies and quick pace of the business landscape that we so often find ourselves traversing as we seek to share and sell our heart’s work, do not tend to be conducive to the flourishing of our creative heart.
The hyper focus on income, sales, marketing and growth can be tricky to reconcile with the inner visions of our heart and the sensibility of our feminine soul.
For many of us, we feel exhausted and unmotivated because we judge ourselves for not wanting to do things in a certain way that we have been taught is ‘right’. We spend energy trying to figure out what is wrong with us, instead of focusing on what we do want to do, what we do know, and how we can nurture our gifts in a way that is right for our unique hearts.
As a teacher for many years, I saw this reflected in what I refer to as the ‘deficit model’, which is rife in schools. Instead of focusing on nurturing a child’s gifts, talents, artistry and natural interests, the education system tends to hone in on what is wrong, telling teachers they must put pressure and focus on where a child is not achieving to ‘standard’.
Yet in order for our artist’s heart and feminine creativity to thrive, we need to throw out the ‘standards.’
Because we cannot create freely and evaluate our creations at the same time. We cannot move from the artistry of our hearts if we are judging it at the same time in relation to what we think is ‘right’ or what we think will be profitable, or what we think will create the most outer approval.
When we create through extrinsic pressures, rather than from our inner creativity, we begin to move from frequencies of over-responsibility, fixing, convincing and forcing. All well-meaning protective mechanisms designed to keep us safely in external approval- yet mechanisms that quickly become saboteurs in our connection with our natural creativity and the true expression of our heart.
When we stay tightly affixed to notions of the correct pace and timing for our business and creations, and our focus on what we are doing wrong in comparison to outer standards, we are pulled into mindsets of scarcity and fear, rather than creative possibility.
When we believe that we must start with the strategic and push from there, instead of allowing things to incubate in our hearts and unfurl at a pace that feels natural to us, we end up forcing creations that feel incompatible with our inner visions, ultimately depleting our creative spark and deeper purpose.
And when we believe that we must strive for standardised perfection, we close the door on our vulnerability and heart, which is the very part of us that our feminine and creative energies need to thrive.
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I personally am not interested in having a traditional business that locks me into a way of being and expressing that stifles my soul and puts pressure on my creative heart to produce and perform and strive- and I know this is a sentiment that is shared by so many women who connect with my work.
I also know that there is a financial reality around business, that makes it seem like there is no other way to succeed other than to compromise our soul and push ourselves in all of the familiar ways that we have seen presented as ‘the way.’
I don’t have all of the answers, but I do know that it is a huge part of our collective feminine healing to reclaim our creativity, femininity and heart from the grip of hyper commodification and external success at all costs.
I also know that there is beauty and deep value in sustaining and nurturing what we have already created within our business, rather than thinking that we must constantly create anew.
I know that there are creative possibilities and ways of resourcing our lives and businesses that look unique for each individual- and so comparing and trying to replicate what others are doing/have done can become an exhausting and futile experience.
I know that there are many gentle, yet practical ways that our work and businesses can become visible to the right people (these are the ways that I focus on). And I know that when we have set up calm and sustainable ways for people to find our work, we can cultivate a deeper sense of security and peace that allow us to create at our own pace instead of thinking we must be in a relentless outward marketing and production mode.
But most importantly, I know that for most of the women here there is a desire to reconnect with and believe in the legitimacy of the intuitive desires of our heart.
A desire to loosen the grip on what we think we should be doing, and instead feel into what we actually want to be doing. A desire to become free of the critical voice in our head that tries to keep us tethered to states of lack, rush and force.
A desire to reclaim our faith in new and different possibilities, as we honour where we are in our process right now.
Belinda x
Writings you may also enjoy:
Connection vs extraction in business (and how this impacts your results, and your feminine heart)
Why you may be struggling to figure out your "ideal" client (and what to do instead)
Choosing Not to Sell Your Feminine Soul on Social Media to Grow a Business