What influences your actions these days?
Your environment (digital and real life) plays a huge role in your behaviour.
Hi friends & new subscribers,
How are you?
I cannot believe that June is almost over. I hope you're all doing well. Last week, I invited you to ask me anything with my newsletter, and someone sent me this:
"I was just thinking about this today, so this newsletter came at the right time. :) I somehow find it hard to embody my next-level self. Do you write it all down and then try to act and think as if? Do you fake it until you make it?
And this was my response:
So, embodying yourself doesn't necessarily just "affirming a bunch of words" until they become true. It's about learning how to shift your thoughts and beliefs that you already the person you want to be.
If you need help in doing this, I do mentoring for this particular topic.
On Knowing Yourself for Holistic Creativity
I posted a mini-essay on Twitter last week, and it got a really good engagement. It's about a new idea that I'm exploring called Holistic Creativity.
Back in nursing school, we learned about holistic well-being. This is where you see a patient as a whole. Rather than their pain or whatever symptom they're coming in, you have to probe for more details as to why they're having such pain. If someone is coming in with "chest pain", we can assume that they might be having a heart attack.
But we don't know what unless we ask for other questions like, "do you have a history of anxiety, what were you doing before the pain, what kind of pain is it, or what other medical history do you have?"
All these questions are intentional because we want to learn the root cause of the pain. We can't just simply give the person Tylenol and call it a day.
Why the hell am I talking about this?
Well, because many people online seem to give the same advice about writing and creating online businesses. There's a lot of noises going around with the hustle culture of, "keep publishing, be consistent, engage here and there, build your personal brand and find your niche."
And I've stayed away from Twitter and Instagram because the same information kept getting regurgitated.
So I want to introduce my idea of holistic creativity. This is where you explore why you want to embark on your creative pursuit and look at your life as a whole.
If you want to write online, this is where you answer hard questions - why do I want to write? Why do I want to publish consistently? What does publishing consistently mean? What would it do for me? Will it do something good, or will this add to my plate?
If you think of your pursuit as another task that you have to do, I don't believe you'll enjoy it. And if it's for making money, I hate to break it to you, but it won't last.
You have to learn about you to make holistic creativity work:
What are your core values? What are your personal beliefs about X?
Why is it that you want to do that thing even if nothing comes out of it?
How can you ignore the advice that's out there if it doesn't align with who you are?
How can you develop a different version of doing things and not necessarily copy other people because you know who you are?
This whole idea is centred around getting to know who you are as a person, your beliefs, your values and expressing your stance to the world through your creative pursuit (writing, filming, online businesses).
Why?
Because you are your own person. You aren't a copycat or an imitate of other people. I believe that each and every one of us has something to offer to the world.
When you take your time to figure it out, you're not easily influenced by the people around you, so you're not easily influenced by the creators you see on social media.
So that you are grounded. Anchored. To your goals and dreams.
Because no matter how strong your beliefs are, believe it or not, your environment plays a massive role in how you behave.
So, without your grounded self, you can be easily swayed to what you believe you want rather than what you want.
This is my way of ranting because so many successful entrepreneurs PUSH for the hustle without knowing other people's lives' context. It's so easy to fall into that trap, and I don't want that for you.
My question for you this week,
"Am I doing the thing I really want to do, or am I influenced by what I've seen and heard online? If I am, what needs to change, even if it's extremely hard?"
Here are friend links to my articles this week:
Holistic Creativity: How Knowing Yourself First Will Take Care of Your Creative Journey
5 Simple but Powerful Habits Your Future Creator Self Will Thank You For
A 5 Step Proven Process to Ease into Freelancing with Zero Experience
As always, I'd love to know your feedback, questions or comments, so don't hesitate to reach out on Twitter.🙂
And don’t forget to share the love with this newsletter <3