I felt my anxiety and stress rise the minute she said “we really need to sit down and decide if this is working or not.”
I had just finished launching a new program initiative. Feedback from participants was trending positive but adjustments were needed and the long-term viability unknown. Like many things in business and life, I was 100% unsure and unclear with how to best proceed.
At 3 a.m. I was wide awake, my thinking pinned on making this approach viable and worried about what would happen if I couldn’t. Answers didn’t come; neither did sleep.
The next morning, I wanted to pacify my feelings of anxiety with action, be productive, and get things moving. Even with my caffeinated desire to create an answer, no good ideas came and nothing felt right.
After a few days of actively working on it—and getting nowhere that felt good—I did what I know to be true to foster creativity. I aimed to slow my thinking down, creating space to facilitate new ideas and new possibilities.
I did great for a few days. No new ideas came but I wasn’t feeling stressed or anxious about it which is a step in the right direction.
A month passed. Still…nothing. I rode the waves of deep anxiety, worry and stress as well as feelings of spaciousness and freedom. “Let it come,” I told myself, “you’ve done this dance many times.”
After 6 weeks, I still didn’t have an answer. I began to question my abilities and when other’s asked how the project was going and was it a success, it only triggered more uncomfortable feelings.
After two months, I think I said “I don’t know and I won’t know until I know” enough times that I mighty have actually believed it. I still wanted an answer but felt both a sense of defeat and feelings of spaciousness.
One morning, while sipping maté by the fire and actively working on what felt like the right next step. I found out pretty quickly that it wasn’t but new ideas came and the exact right next step appeared. I felt grounded and interested, curious and ready to give it a go.
Since then, each time I’ve applied myself to this new approach I gain energy when I work on it and I feel like it’s going to be successful. But I don’t know that, there’s no more certainty in the outcome than before. Yet, I feel creative, inspired and ready to try.
What’s fascinating to me is that even though I have a good understanding about how stress and anxiety directly compete with creative clarity. And, I have lots of ideas about what to do about that uncomfortable dance, it doesn’t mean that I’m immune to experiencing those feelings in the unknown.
But what it does mean is that I am able to recognize the process for what it is so I don’t get as easily caught in the story of it even if the process itself can still feel uncomfortable.
How do you work with stress and anxiety when you want to be creative and innovative? I’d love to chat with you about it.
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