Have you experienced the focus of a creator?
Just be here—really be here, with all five senses and no thought of anywhere else—and then let your meta-self move you.” ~ from Martha Beck’s Diana, Herself
There’s a gravel road in Clear Creek that winds for miles through US Forest Service land. I discovered it in 1993 when I purchased my first home. I had decided I wasn’t going to wait for Prince Charming to ride up on a stallion; I was going to go about the business of starting life in my own nest on my own terms.
In the 26 years since then, I’ve walked that road in every season, every sort of weather.
I decided to leave the world of nonprofit leadership and become a real estate broker on that road. I read aloud, with trees as my audience, speeches for graduations, academic banquets, company retreats, and judges deciding custody of my step children.
I decided to get married (and then divorced) on that road.
I took my newborn son in a front-facing pouch (and later in a backpack while he played with my hair) for long, chatty walks on that road. I mourned the loss of my father, doubled over in sobs, hands on knees, on that road. I have watched my golden retriever become joy incarnate, splashing in swimming holes or running like the wind, on that road.
I began birthing a book, stopping to scribble notes, mile by mile, line by line, on that road.
Each walk begins with my reciting gratitude out loud. The trees lining the road stand like kind and wise ancestors, bending toward me to listen closely. I celebrate with them, and they nod their tops in rustling breezes.
I meditate with eyes and heart wide open, step by step. Turn by turn.
I play games of manifesting to see if I can bring to my attention and presence something surprising. Unexpected. A signal from the Universe that I am always in partnership with all of creation, and that I can, when I’m in alignment with the core of me, dissolve into an energy that resonates with another unseen world, and call something forward into 3-dimensional matter.
I always know when I’m “there”—in that blissful, buoyant state of receivership. Open. When I’m not bullshitting myself. When I’ve put down the petty concerns of daily life. When I’m 100% connected to the divine within me and all around me. When I have the focus of a creator.
Some days, I slide into that delicious ocean without effort. That’s when I’m like a woman in a white surveillance van, parked just down the street, wearing headphones and listening intently to pick up any signals or syllables.
What comes through in those times are Class 5 idea rapids. Kayaking on the white foam, paddling like crazy, I’m carried around rocks and overhanging branches. Ducking. Twisting. Forward.
The small, red notebook and pencil are engaged in a flurry of getting it all down.
The open focus of a creator.
This state is, without a doubt, our most precious commodity for loving life in consonant vibration with every living thing, most notably ourselves. Equally important, from this ledge, we have a 20/20 grasp of our point of view.
For entrepreneurs and creators, our point of view is the tenor chord ingredient of our secret sauce. The vision, voice, perspective, and unique genius that make us who we are. Like no one else.
This focus of a creator is what calls our audience, our clients, our community right toward us. Our sexy siren song that we play simply by living in accord with our true selves. This is the ethereal realm of the deepest connection we can experience. It is the origin of creative worlds powered by our unique fingerprints.
It is an inside-out job. And we cannot get there if we are spending too much time looking at what everyone else is doing and saying.
The din on our screens is drowning us out. Switch off the world. What will we notice?
What can we fashion from the raw material that only we can see? Draw that map and take us there.