012: How to protect your creative energy
Honouring the containers of your unique expression
For this past ten days, I’ve been down with a bad bout of Covid. With less energy available to me than usual, I’ve been reflecting on the importance of protecting our creative resources. Like many of us, I don’t find illness easy or comfortable but the pause can also be a gift: to reflect and integrate, and to provide a pattern break amidst the hurriedness of ‘doing.’ Often, there are invisible forces that gather in that pause, holding us even if we can’t see them. I think our job then is to wait and see what emerges on the other side of that pause.
One day, nearly fifteen years ago, I gave up on writing.
At the time, it was my primary (in fact, it felt like my only) creative outlet and I was nearing the end of the first draft of my second novel. It’s not an exaggeration to say that to give it up felt like an existential death of sorts. But I’d become so depleted and disheartened. To keep writing, to keep producing, it required too much. It felt like too much work—work that wasn’t being recognised or celebrated. Far easier not to try, I told myself; far easier to live a simpler life.
Now, I see clearly the reasons for my exhaustion: I’d cut myself off from the world. I wasn’t sharing my writing, I was hoarding it. I was expecting the world to notice me—assess me as valuable--rather than freely offering my creativity as a thing of potential value to others, in a way that extended beyond just me. I’d cut myself off from any kind of network of connections (with myself and others) that would nourish my work.
I’d conflated the natural and evolutionary joy of creativity with the identity of a ‘being a writer.’
When we’re engaged in creative work, we can find ourselves sometimes occupying this quiet space between creation and exhaustion. In these times, we stand on a shoreline at the edge of possibility. It’s a quiet nudge reminding us that creative Essence—that luminous, living force within you—is not infinite. It’s as though you’re watching the ebb and flow of the tide being pulled by the moon. Your creative Essence responds to the seasons of your attention. And when it is threatened by overwork or overextension, it retreats.
Is the liminal space of this shoreline somewhere you recognise?
You might feel it in your body as a hollow emptiness when you sit down to create, or a tightness in your throat when someone asks, ‘how's the project coming along?’
This depletion isn’t just fatigue—it's a profound disconnection from the wellspring that feeds your work. You've been here before: overdrawn, overextended, pouring yourself into containers that just won’t fill, watching your creative light fade away.
The sacred economy of attention
Your creative energy functions like a network of the roots of trees underneath the forest floor—invisible, intricate, and essential to all that grows above. This ecosystem requires protection. It can’t thrive when trampled by constant demands or starved of the nutrients it needs.
What we create emerges from what we preserve. The white space in your schedule isn’t emptiness: it’s the soil in which ideas take root. The quiet morning hours aren’t wasted time but the half-light that draws you from sleep into the activation of your imagination.
When we treat our creativity as inexhaustible, we soon discover its finite nature. When we experience creative blocks it’s often because we’ve given away too much. We’ve said yes to everything else until our artistry begins to feel like a hollow obligation rather than a living force.
The boundaries you build are not walls of selfishness but acts of profound reverence for your creative gifts. Every ‘no’ to what depletes you is a ‘yes’ to what might emerge in the space you've protected. Every limit you set is an affirmation that your creative work matters enough to protect it.
The alchemy of restoration
The restoration of creative energy isn’t passive—it’s an active alchemy, and it requires consistent and deliberate attendance to what nourishes you. Your creative container fills not just through rest but through intentional practices that reconnect you to the source.
Listen: there’s a quiet voice underneath the noise of the ‘should-do's’ and ‘must-finish.’
It speaks in the language of curiosity, of wonder, of questions that have no immediate utility. This voice is the thread that leads you back to the Essence of your work—and the Essence of who you are.
To begin, here’s a practice to try: establish a ‘creation sanctuary’ in both time and space. Choose an hour a day—perhaps in the first light of morning or the deep stillness after midnight—and designate it as inviolable creative time. No emails, no social media, no obligations beyond attending to what seeks to emerge through you.
Create physical boundaries around this sanctuary. It might be a corner of your home with objects that kindle your imagination, or a chair by a window with a candle nearby that you can light.
What matters is the deliberate separation from what drains you.
In this sanctuary, suspend your judgment of what emerges. This is not production time but communion time—moments when you reestablish connection with your creative source. Keep a notebook for the whispers and fragments that arrive. Trust that this practice of protection and attention will, over time, replenish what has been depleted.
The call to sacred protection
Your creative energy isn’t just a resource—it’s the living water that nourishes everything you create. To protect it isn’t indulgence or selfishness. It’s stewardship of the gifts that have been entrusted to you.
Begin today. Identify one boundary you can put in place this week to protect your creative container from depletion. Write it down as a sacred commitment to your art, your work, your expression in this world.
The work that only you can create waits for you in that protected space. And when you practise intentional boundaries, you’re valuing yourself as a sacred container. What emerges will carry the unmistakable resonance of your truest work.
What’s next?
If there’s something you’re longing to create (a writing project, an artistic creation or new venture) but need more courage and guidance, I’m here to support you expand the power of your self-expression.
Here’s how I can help:
Make an appointment for a virtual coffee (free). I hold 3-4 slots every month so we can get to know each other. Perfect if you’re curious about meeting new people and making connections.
Book a 30-minute connection call (free). This is for anyone—whether you have an idea you want to brainstorm, an issue that’s holding you back, or you just want to know more about my work. Think of it as a microdose of powerful coaching that can help point you in the right direction!
Read my manifesto for creative courage (free). Learn about the core principles I work with in my own creativity and business and follow in serial form the journey of how I came to found Wordplay Coaching.
Inquiry of Writing, an intimate group coaching experience. We meet twice a month—in which we use writing as a tool for curiosity, exploration and transformation. Respond to powerful questions, in discussion and in writing; share your experience; get feedback on what you’ve written. Get the support and connection you need to gain clarity about your life and creativity, and develop your confidence. This is currently full but talk to me about joining the waiting list.
Creative Essence 1:1 coaching. Personal guidance to work with you on recognising your survival mechanisms and the fears that hold you back from expressing yourself fully. Twice-monthly deep dives on Zoom plus individualised support between sessions. This is ideal for you if you’re looking for deep transformation and powerful support to make changes in your life or with a creative project.