The Undercurrent is an odyssey into the mystical subconscious, accessed through the doorway of everyday reality. If you like my writing, tap the ♥️ or 🔁 button to help more people find it. Thanks so much for your help building this budding newsletter! ~ Leona
There’s a veil between inner and outer worlds that few dare to broach. We want to keep what’s internal secret and supposedly safe. But it cuts us off from literally everything else. We feel lonely and trapped, we just don’t realize how much of it is by our own design.
The fountain that you are can only overflow if it has somewhere to flow at all.
Give yourself permission to live out loud. Let yourself be in communion with the atoms outside of your body, to reciprocate the earth’s endless giving by sharing what’s going on inside your heart and mind.
Don’t be stingy with your expression. People probably aren’t going to judge you for it, because they almost definitely aren’t paying any attention.
Stay grounded in yourself while you do it. You are not your own critic sitting in your own audience, judging yourself before you’ve even begun. You’re in your heart, opening it a little at a time — that’s all — so some of your wild ideas can taste air, mix with manifest reality, become real, impactful, rippling.
Above all else, stay playful. Don’t take yourself too seriously, and don’t take others seriously either. Enjoy the process of creating — riding the river of your own inspiration like you’re eight years old and finally big enough to sit in the inner tube by yourself without falling through it.
It’s enlivening because it’s a little scary. The fear brings all of you to this moment. You care so you pour everything you have into your creation. With each pass, you get less restrained and more real. Because if you’re going to do it, you’re going to really do it. And then finally, you release it. You’re empty and liberated. You thought you were doing it for your business/brand/clients/family/friends… but you realize you needed it most of all. A place to be all of you, explore more of you, birth something messy and wobbly but miraculous.
That. Right there. Where there was nothing. There’s a beautiful something that you imagined and then breathed alive.
You didn’t realize the act of creating would fill you so full of life.
“Creative work is a gift to the world and every being in it. Don’t cheat us of your contribution. Give us what you’ve got.”
— Steven Pressfield
“Don’t think. Thinking is the enemy of creativity. It’s self-conscious, and anything self-conscious is lousy. You can’t try to do things. You simply must do things.”
— Ray Bradbury
“To practice any art, no matter how well or how badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven’s sake. So do it.”
— Kurt Vonnegut
“Whether you succeed or not is irrelevant, there is no such thing. Making your unknown known is the important thing.”
— Georgia O’Keeffe
“It is wise to learn; it is God-like to create.”
— John Godfrey Saxe
This creative journey is a wild ride. I was at an event the other night and they asked people to raise their hands if they considered themselves an artist.
Spoiler alert: I did not raise my hand
I clearly am an artist, but why was it so hard to express that? Out loud? Your words today are what I needed earlier this week. And now!
Thank you, Leona!
I think that is a pep talk even for extroverts…we still judge ourselves and hold back on creativity even if we like to be around people and are talkative. It still takes that grounded courage to come from the heart and say and do what you REALLY are feeling. So thanks for the pep talk. Allowing time and space to be creative and having the courage to bring it forth is a forever journey😉 even for the extroverts ❤️