What creating teaches you about becoming your healthiest
If you’ve followed me for any length of time, you know that years ago after I was able to guide my body back into alignment and reclaim my energy, heal eczema (without drugs) and renew my enthusiasm for my life and my workouts - something really surprising thing happened - I became a literal 'channel’ for my creative voice!
I’ve always been creative but once I became the healthiest version of myself, and learned a way of eating and truly nourishing myself on all levels, I couldn’t shake a growing desire, a fierce drive, BIG intuitive tap on the shoulder to PAINT!
And so years ago I did. I started - and I haven’t stopped!
And yes, years later I’m still painting and I’ve built a growing wellness and brand consulting/copywriting business serving creative entrepreneurs. I love helping them become their healthiest and build impactful businesses for their creative work. It still lights me up every day!
Now that in many ways I’ve come ‘full circle’ I have a deep appreciation for every step in the process (although gotta say, some of those steps along the way were way more difficult to take than others)!
Many studies have shown a direct connection between the creative process and your health. And, I’m continually amazed at how many parallels I see in the process of creating and our individual wellness journeys.
Take this weekend - Sunday afternoon I was an hour or so into painting on a piece I’d been working on for a while. And, it just wasn’t coming together. I kept trying. Getting frustrated. Getting back up and trying again. I had this vision in my mind of exactly what I wanted it to look like and I was determined to make it work - to make it look like THAT image.
Truth is, I was in my head and fighting it - unwilling to let my vision of what I thought the end result would be - what I wanted it to be. I wanted it to be cool, and minimal, and edgy with a limited color palette - yet I kept somehow ending up mixing these warm pinks, and rusts. My shapes were forced and not working in the overall composition I envisioned either.
Finally, after hours of work and lots of effort and thought, and yes, frustration - I just gave way. I let my inspiration from what other cool painters were doing drop away. I let my trying to force it to be exactly what I thought I wanted to disappear.
What emerged, was me playfully creating, in the moment, intuitively, from my heart. What came out was balanced, dynamic, luscious and like nothing, I’d ever done before. It was truly original.
Yes, MINIMAL is still very much my style - I love a few strong shapes, a few cohesive, interesting captivating colors and I love texture. I can still do an entire painting with just shades of white and various neutrals!
But, through this lesson, I was able to connect even more deeply with what I help my private clients do with their nutrition and wellness every day. Yes, it’s all about the MW Methodology applied to what they eat and how they nourish themselves with movement, mindset, and self-care. But, it’s also very much about learning to get intimately connected and trust their inherent, most aligned voice - the one that tells them what they need to eat, and what they need to focus on the moment by moment in order to not just survive but to build a life of ease, joy, and energetic vibrancy.
Because when you stop listening to all of the confusion, contradictions, and chatter out there about what and how you should eat and how you should move or live your life… and when you take the time and do the work to clearly hear and begin to honor your intuitive voice - THIS is where the magic happens. From THIS soul-aligned place, big shifts take place.
Trying to force yourself to eat Paleo, or count macros, or cut out bread and anything else that seems to make you feel good and enjoy your life is not a way to create a beautiful, joyful, full-on life. Yes, yes - by all means, if you KNOW gluten, or caffeine is not your friend, if it causes you digestive upset, mood swings, brain fog…then you’ve gotta find a way to happily live without it.
In my mind, it’s far more satisfying to eat the BEST, MOST DELICIOUS, HIGH-QUALITY bread (or coffee, or whatever you love to enjoy that you know serves the highest version of you and is aligned with your goals) than it is to avoid it and be angry and unable to go out to dinner or be with your friends for fear of failure if you choose to consume it.
Yes, I do believe in giving my clients custom nutrition plans but they are flexible frameworks for them to dig in and discover what their intuitive voice is telling them they need to live their healthiest and happiest.
When you let go of others’ expectations like “you need to do cardio at least 4 times a week’ or ‘you should fast from 7 pm - the next morning at 9 am to be optimally healthy’ the world opens up.
Of course, it’s easier sometimes to jump on a strict protocol, to follow the latest diet or exercise trends, and try to adhere to a restrictive diet with an itemized shopping list and set of ‘acceptable’ dishes that you have to make for every meal- the deeper work to learn to tap into our inner compass and to honor and act based on that knowing is MUCH MORE LASTING, WAY MORE POWERFUL & ULTIMATELY, INFINITELY MORE TRANSFORMATIVE. It allows you to take back your life.
xox