Why It Matters to Claim Your Identity as a Creative

Imposed identities can constrain us, but chosen identities can free us.

Nothing has helped me find fulfillment as a creative person more than deciding to view myself as a creative. Being a creative means more than just being involved in creative activities. It’s a particular way of experiencing and perceiving the world. I’ve always been a creative, but claiming that identity for myself felt, well, pretentious. Who am I to decide that I’m “a” creative? Isn’t that like saying I’m different and special in some way? Yes, it is. And that feels uncomfortable to me. But there’s no denying that I do experience and perceive the world differently. Not differently from everyone else, because there are a lot of creatives out there like me, but differently from the dominant culture. No one is going to bequeath me with this identity – it’s my responsibility to claim it for myself. And it’s my right. Everyone has that right. You have it. So try it on for size.    

Identities can give us permission to fully express ourselves, and this is what claiming the identity of a creative did for me. It provided me with an avenue for interpreting and describing my particular way of being in the world. No longer were my peculiarities and challenges signs of personal failure. No, they’re part of what it means to be a creative. And I’m not alone. There are other creatives out there! Hi, other creatives! You’re not alone, either.  

I want to explicate what being a creative means to me. Maybe it means something similar to you, or maybe not. Remember, you get to decide the contents of your own identity. Only you have sovereignty over the meaning of your own experience of being in the world. But I hope that what I have to say about my experience will resonate in a way that helps if you are struggling with direction and figuring out your place in the world as a creative person.

Here’s what I think. Creativity isn’t something any of us have to reach for. All human beings are naturally creative. But some people need creativity to be an explicit and pervasive part of their lives in order to feel fulfilled and happy. Often these people are the artists of society, but not always. Many creative people do not consider themselves artists, either because the term connotes creating at an elite level that they don’t feel they measure up to, or they don’t express their creativity through a “proper” art. While I think creative people of all kinds absolutely can and should claim the identity of artist, I personally prefer calling myself a creative.

My primary avenue of creative expression in the world is writing, and I do consider myself to be a writer. But my identity as a writer is fairly mundane: to me it simply indicates that I write. I write a lot. It’s part of my business, but I also journal, write fiction, and narrate experiences in my head (a common writer trait). Oh, and don’t tell anyone, but I also narrate out loud when I’m home alone (this is one of the reasons I decided to try podcasting haha). Being a writer means that I enjoy writing, do it as much as I can, and that I strive to be good at it. My identity as a creative serves a different purpose. It is less implicated with what I do, and more with what I am. Writing is what I do, but the way I experience and perceive the world is mediated through being a creative.

What that means to me is that my entire life in all its aspects is my ultimate creative project. Creativity isn’t just something I do in my leisure time. I approach everything I do – well, I try, at least – from the center of my creative being. I live from the inside of my creative capacity, and it lends its light and color to my experience of being in the world. I call this whole-life creativity. What you’ve probably picked up on by now is that I don’t define being a creative by specific personality traits. While I do think creatives tend to have certain characteristics, like sensitivity, introversion, and artistic sensibilities, I see being a creative as a combination of a need to experience the world and express the self through creativity, a preference for the use of generative, rather than productive, energy, and a sense of purpose that involves meaning-making.

What claiming the identity of a creative has done for me is given me permission to live my life as a creative without apology. Whereas before I struggled to feel that my life had meaning, I now have a strong sense that my purpose is to create meaning and put it out into the world. And that’s what I do, every day. I do it through my words, sure, but also through how I experience being myself in the world. For me, that’s the fullest expression of my creative potential, regardless of my productive output as a creative person.

Like all identities, my identity as a creative is an evolving thing. I prefer it to be that way. Your identity should be something you define, not the other way around. An identity will begin to constrain and limit you if you freeze it. But if you develop and open and accepting relationship with your identity, it will free you.

Does Pursuing Your Own Happiness Mean Not Honoring Commitments?

This is a reader question. Let me know if you have one!

We need to call bullshit on the perception that it’s a zero-sum game.

Many of my clients struggle with figuring out what they really want in life. They are deep thinkers, talented and intelligent people – their problem isn’t that they lack drive or skills, it’s that they can’t figure out where and how to focus them. By the time they’ve contacted me, they’ve been scattering their energies among a number of pathways for some time, never feeling like any is the right one, and they are stuck and exhausted. Sometimes their biggest block to moving forward is they don’t know what would make them happy, but more often than not there is a deeper obstacle at play. Many of my clients struggle the most with giving themselves permission to pursue a life that would make them happy. They feel, usually subconsciously, that pursuing their own happiness would be selfish. They have commitments to family and career, and internally to their own image of who they are in the world, that all feel under threat when they envision being true to themselves and living the life of their dreams. Today I am answering a reader question: does pursuing your own happiness mean not honoring commitments to others?

This is on the one hand an easy question to answer. Logically we understand that it’s not a zero-sum game between pursuing our own happiness and honoring social and societal commitments. But we subconsciously believe that everything will fall apart if we selfishly and hedonistically pursue our deepest desires. We can nod our heads a thousand times at the wisdom of “put your own air mask on first,” and still put ourselves last again and again because putting ourselves first feels like it might end the world. It goes without saying, but I’ll say it anyway, that women have been socialized to put themselves last every time. Even when we know it’s a false dichotomy, that pursuing our own happiness doesn’t mean others automatically get screwed, those internalized cultural values take hold. Most of the time we discipline ourselves into proper “unselfish” behavior without even thinking about it.

Even when we know this isn’t a zero-sum game, we still need to call bullshit on ourselves and anyone else who tries to make it one. Even if all day long your brain is going, “But what about this or that responsibility, what will people say, what if this means I’m a bad mother/employee/woman/person,” call it out. Every. Time. If it’s someone else who’s saying those things, this and this post have some tips.

Next take a close look at the points of conflict between your happiness and your commitments. Is this really and either/or situation? What is the third option? Because there is always a third option. Example: you dream about being a travel blogger but have kids and a career. There may be ways to actually be a travel blogger while still being a parent and a nine-to-fiver (weekend trips, taking the kids along, etc.), but that’s not what we’re going for here. Break it down: what, exactly, about being a travel blogger appeals? When you envision that lifestyle, what pops out? Vacationing in exotic locales? Writing about your experiences? Learning about new cultures? Making connections with others? Having a beautiful Instagram feed? Just the fantasy of being unburdened by your current burdens? Any one of these can be incorporated into your life through means other than becoming a travel blogger.

Here’s the thing to understand. Your desires are information. They are your soul telling you something about who you are and what gives you life. Pursuing your desires doesn’t necessarily mean making your fantasies a reality. The vision you have of your dream life is an emergent property of the elements that comprise your true desires. We want to feel whole, valued, worthy, inspired. No one specific situation or choice will accomplish that for us. Rather, it is the way that we perceive our lives and selves that creates those realities for us. If you are experiencing a major conflict between your own happiness and your life commitments, there is an easier way out than you suppose. Most of the work of getting unstuck is mental. Shift your perspective, and your field of options will look entirely different.

I can help you with that. Interested in working with me? Contact me to see if we’d be a good fit. I offer a free consultation to all new clients.       

Let's Stop Playing to Our Strengths

What the world needs right now is people who are willing to play to their weaknesses.

This post is now a podcast episode!

Ah, the dreaded job interview question about strengths and weaknesses. What are we good at, what do we suck at? Do they really expect an honest answer? My strengths play as weaknesses in the conventional work environment: working alone, listening rather than speaking, and staying out of shit (read: not a team player, won’t speak up in meetings, and conflict-avoidant). Since I work for myself, I thankfully never have to answer this question in real life, but it’s often on my mind as I feel my way through starting my own business. I know many of the traits that make me an undesirable candidate in the traditional working world will help me excel at self-employment. But I lack the traits we associate with successful entrepreneurship. I’m not assertive, a self-promoter, or a go-getter. I want to make meaningful connections with people, not make “buckets” of money, as a recent business coach promised to help me do. I did not hire him.

And now I’m working on starting a podcast (coming in January 2021). I couldn’t be less suited to podcasting. I’m not a speaker, I’m a writer. Like many introverts, it takes me time to formulate thoughts into speech. Speaking easily exhausts me, and nothing turns me into a silent stone more than the feeling like I have to say something. When I do speak up, it’s usually measured and serious – not exactly a style that translates into engaging audio content. And not being a self-promoter certainly won’t help me get noticed in the glut of podcasts already out there. Really, anyone would tell me it’s not wise to start a podcast. A waste of energy and money at the very least, and probably destined to be an embarrassing failure.

Yet I’m doing it nonetheless. I want to reach people with content that resonates and makes them think. I have good ideas that I want to share. I’m drawn to podcasting even though it doesn’t seem that I’ll be particularly good at it. Because I don’t think that we are called to do the things we’re good at. I think we’re called to do the things we want to do. But I also think that many people decide they don’t want to do things they aren’t good at. Personal growth gurus all advise that us to play to our strengths.

I can’t imagine worse advice! Well, I can, because I have a very active imagination, but you get my point. We live in a culture that worships being exceptional. We rank, order, and judge. We do not respect failure and yet we love to watch people fail, which is the inevitable flip side of our hyper-competitive mentality. This is a harsh, stressful environment to exist in. It’s like one big reality tv show where we are constantly auditioning for the title of “worthy human being.” To decide to not participate in this, to do what we want to do simply because we want to, simply because we enjoy it or are excited about it, is a radical rebellion in a culture that is standing in the wings with its bucket of shit, ready to start flinging.

Here’s the irony: exceptionality is common. In these times, anyone with talent can reach a global audience. And there are a lot of people with incredible talent out there! We can admire talent, sure, but there’s always a new talent coming up to replace the old, which is soon forgotten. Being the best never lasts long in a society that glorifies aggressive leveling up. 

This never-ending cycle is boring. What the world craves right now is people who show up as themselves, with their small gifts and awkward striving. People whose goal is to become more fully who they are, not to do more than/be better than. There’s a reason Brené Brown went viral with her vulnerability research. We need people who aren’t afraid of vulnerability, and who reject simplistic binary concepts such as strengths/weaknesses. We are experiencing a societal paradigm shift right now, and we all have an opportunity to step into the new era as our authentic selves and say, “This is what I have, this is what I am, and I can make a difference.” Will you join me?

The One Thing I Got Wrong About "Follow Your Bliss"

Figuring this one thing out changed everything for me.

This post is now a podcast episode!

Let’s be real: after enough living it’s easy to come to the conclusion that directives like “follow your bliss” are bullshit. The simple equation of do what you love = successful and happy life seems to only work out for a vaunted few. The rest of us mere mortals are just trying to survive each day with our sanity intact. We’re lucky if we have any energy left over to follow our bliss – if we even know what our bliss is. I used to think I knew. For me, it’s writing. But somewhere along the way it stopped being my bliss. After years of struggling to make something of my writing, my joy in it had evaporated. All meaning I’d found in it was gone; I no longer knew why I was bothering to do it at all. Eventually my burnout became so extreme I was unable to write. But I’m stubborn, and I still believed that I was meant to be a writer. That’s when I realized I had a fundamental misunderstanding of “follow your bliss.” It’s not bullshit after all – I’d just been doing it wrong.

The one thing I’d failed to understand about “follow your bliss” is that my bliss is incompatible with success and happiness as those are defined within our capitalist system. I know what you’re thinking. Sure, some people do succeed within that system by following their passion. A friend of mine built a lucrative party catering business from one hotdog cart. So what’s his secret? Nothing more than this: his bliss already fit the system. He’s an extraverted natural salesman. Me? I’m an introverted creative. Creative work by its very nature does not fit the system: it’s generative rather than productive, emerges on a slower schedule than what is profitable, and creative products don’t have a large market. It’s rare for creatives to make a living from their work – not impossible, but very, very difficult. And in order to do so, it often involves a sacrifice that kills their creative capacities.

The incommensurability between creative work and conventional work may seem obvious, but for creatives who are struggling to fit both in, or better yet find paying work that allows for at least some creativity, things get muddied. The problem is that creative work gets relegated to the leftover time and spaces, after the productive, money-earning work is done. And this never ends well for creatives, because it means that who they are is diminished and confined to the leftovers. When I finally understood that this two-track life would never lead to anywhere but burnout for me, everything changed. I realized I needed to shift the lens through which I experienced life. I will always have to earn money somehow, but I wanted to find a way to live from my creative center in everything I did, because that’s the only way my spirit could regenerate and thrive. I call this whole-life creativity, and it showed me what “follow your bliss” really means.

It should be called “living your bliss,” because that’s what it is, and I believe that’s how Joseph Campbell, the originator of the saying, meant it. He saw it as a state of being in which you have fully committed to manifesting an expression of your true self in the world. This is similar to what Brené Brown terms “wholehearted living,” but Campbell, a scholar of world mythologies, saw it as having an esoteric and spiritual dimension. He conceptualized the experience of following your bliss as being on your destined track, where your life is harmonized with what the universe wants for you. He alternatively called this state of being “refreshment” or “rapture,” that feeling of being truly alive. So following your bliss isn’t really about doing what you love – it’s about experiencing the act of living from that creative well of life itself, the place where wonder, astonishment, and joy come from. We can access that place through doing what we love, that is, doing the thing that allows us to speak the language of our soul into the world.

I used to think that following your bliss was hard, something only a lucky few got to do, but that was because I was forcing myself to accept and pursue the values of the conventional capitalist system while simultaneously attempting to keep the flame of my creative spirit alive – and I failed at both. But it was only when my creative flame finally burned out that I became truly capable of following my bliss, because I had nothing else to lose at that point. I committed myself fully to living from my creative center. This involves a tremendous amount of trust, both in myself and the universe, because it’s risky in every way: financially, emotionally, relationally, reputationally. Full commitment means entering a territory of total and uncharted uncertainty. You know that scene in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade when Indy steps off the cliff? That’s what it feels like. It’s petrifying. But I still find it easier than splitting myself between my creative soul and my false conventional self. It took descending into that dark place of being confronted with my own failures and despair to gain the perspective I needed to start living my bliss.

We all have our own journeys and no one’s individual path looks like anyone else’s. But creatives come across similar obstacles on their way, and the biggest is trying to live their bliss in a society undergirded by a system that does not support the creative life. It’s an obstacle that reappears again and again, but we can diminish its power to block and divert us by claiming, and committing to, our identities as creatives. It’s okay if this happens in stages – in fact the daily devotional act of living from your creative center is, in large part, what it means to be a creative. Simply making the decision to try that today and the next day and onward is how you can begin to follow your bliss.

What It Actually Means When Someone Says You're Selfish

How to start being unapologetically yourself.

If you are the type of person who follows the path less taken, chances are you’ve been criticized for it at some point in your life. People who are particularly individualistic, like creatives and other types of seekers, are vulnerable targets for condemnation because they challenge the status quo. Our culture professes to value independent, creative thinking…as long as you still play along. Some of us don’t want to play along – in fact, we may want to leave the room altogether. This isn’t a matter of inclination; it’s about the survival of our spirit. But living a wholehearted life in which you are fully yourself comes with a cost. Other people may not like it. I’ve been called selfish, lazy, pretentious, and arrogant for traveling my own path. Here I’ll focus on the first of these, as “selfish” is probably the most common judgement aimed at nonconformists, and it’s one we often hear from our own inner judge (you can find some of my views on laziness in this post). Let me start by asking you a question: if you are selfish, so what?

I’m quoting Madonna here. “So what!” was her response when nude photos of her were discovered in 1985. I was under ten at the time, but I still remember seeing that phrase on the cover of a news magazine in Waldenbooks (remember those?). It stopped me in my tracks; admiration overwhelmed me. Even at that young age, I could see that these were magic words, capable of turning criticism to dust. But I understood something else at an instinctive level that took me decades to be able to articulate. Whoever found the photos was hoping to use them to diminish Madonna, and she refused their agenda. But the way that she did this wasn’t to deny the ugliness they were launching at her. It was to embrace it as a positive. The power of this approach is like that moment in the Wizard of Oz when the great wizard is revealed to be nothing but a pitiful little man hiding behind a curtain.

I could run through all the reasons you’re not actually selfish for pursuing a life path that isn’t what’s expected and condoned, give you advice about putting your own air mask on first and the importance of self-care. But doling out the standard prescriptions is not what I do here on this blog. My purpose is to help you upend the internalized beliefs we have all been socialized into accepting about what it means to be a good person living the right way. I want to help you not only live life on your own terms, but feel good about it. Here I’ll tell you what it actually means when you are criticized for being selfish, so that you can get to a place where you can say “so what” and mean it.

When someone says you’re selfish, the most powerful weapon in your arsenal is this question: what is their agenda? There is only one answer. The commonly accepted definition of selfish is that you are acting to meet your own needs over those of others. Whoever is condemning you isn’t much concerned with the first part – it’s the second, italicized, part that matters to them. So the answer to the question is this: their agenda is to get you to meet their needs. It really is that simple. What selfish actually means in such exchanges isn’t that you are acting to please yourself over others. It means that this person has needs that aren’t being met and is trying to get you to do that work for them.

But what about when the criticism is coming from within ourselves? Our inner judge is often our worst critic. Women especially are socialized to serve and are primed to feel guilty for not meeting other people’s needs. This inner judge is the one who makes you think, “Maybe I am selfish” even when you reject the external critics who said so – or when no one has actually said it at all. Our inner judge is very difficult to argue with or disregard because it operates from a position of cultural authority, our internalized values about how we should or should not behave. It speaks directly to our sense of ourselves as (un)worthy human beings. The question you ask it is the same, though: what is its agenda? But we need to understand who this inner judge is before we interrogate it.

This inner judge is not you, nor did you create it. It is not the same thing as your inner critic, who speaks with the voice of your insecurities. Your inner judge is a disciplining voice that is comprised of all the lessons you’ve absorbed from external disciplining voices – your family, teachers, peers, media – and its job is to ensure you are doing your part to uphold the cultural structures that enable society to function and endure. It does this by making sure that whatever you choose to do with your life, your primary (often subconscious) actions are for the good of your group. This is primal stuff with roots in evolutionary advantage. The dark side is that it also works to discipline those who challenge the status quo, because this threatens the underlying power structures of society. When the voice of your inner judge gets louder, that means you’re straying from societal norms. And that’s its agenda: to keep you in line.

Whether you are being called selfish by internal or external voices, both share this agenda. They are not interested in what’s to your benefit, though they may pay lip service to that. Their goal is to get you to behave in ways that benefit others. These voices are insidious. If you are a very individualistic nonconformist, particularly if you are also very sensitive, as creatives often are, their disciplining effect can kill your spirit. But you do not need to apologize for who you are. Only you have your best interests at heart, and you must be your own advocate. It’s a very difficult thing to do, but you can start by practicing your best Madonna response to the voices that seek to diminish you with critical arrows meant to damage your sense of worthiness. Yeah, I’m selfish. So what! 

How Creatives Can Use Crisis to Overcome Blocks

We are designed to thrive in the liminality.

These days it feels like the world is experiencing a lumbering, unending crisis. The pandemic, political and social turmoil, and the looming threat of climate change…the emotional weight of all this is profound. For creatives, times such as these can be overwhelming because they feel everything intensely. Creatives often find themselves blocked during crises because the process of creativity requires openness and receptivity, and painful times cause people to shut down. But I’ll let you in on a secret: creatives are actually meant to thrive in crises. Crisis signals that big changes are occurring. This space of transition, between what came before and what will come after, is called the liminality. It is a time when old rules and traditions are breaking down, and it holds infinite creative possibility for new ways of being. Creatives are optimized for the liminality because they are able to sense and take advantage of this creative possibility. So how can creatives work through their blocks and access their creative potential?   

If you are a creative and find yourself blocked during tumultuous and unstable times, consider that the reason may not be the crisis state itself. Creatives are generally empaths, meaning they feel and absorb the emotions of those around them, including those of the wider population they live among. During times of crisis, people feel stressed, frightened, confused, grief-stricken, and angry. Creatives pick up on that; nor are they immune to these emotional reactions themselves. The difference is, creatives also have a deep intuitive sense of the potentialities of crisis, and they have access to the full range of emotions that crisis provokes – including excitement and inspiration. If you are experiencing a creative block, it may be because you are tuning in more strongly with your empathic nature than your intuitive one.

There are some steps you can take to reroute your perception through your intuitive, creative nature. The first is to accept that you are energized by things that others may experience as wholly negative. Crisis times are scary and depressing, no doubt, but you don’t have to experience them that way just because other people do. You can acknowledge the challenges of living in times of great uncertainty while also seeing that such times are full of possibility because of their uncertain nature. Things are changing in interesting ways. The old reality is falling away; we don’t yet know the contours of the new reality. As a creative, it’s natural for you to feel energized in unsure situations that cause many to react with caution or fear – embrace that without guilt.

Another step you can take to access your intuitive, creative capacities is to trust your own perceptions. While it’s good to stay informed, no viewpoint presented on media platforms has a claim on truth. We create our realities through how we perceive the world, and you possess sole sovereignty over your own reality. Pay attention to what you are seeing and feeling. Make note of those little sparks of interest and excitement that flare up, the ones that don’t jive with what anyone else seems to be experiencing or talking about. Explore your thoughts and feelings that seem out of sync. That’s your intuition working for you. Believe what your intuition is telling you. 

I’m going to get esoteric with this last step. Creatives experience reality as circular or spiraled, rather than linear. We live in a linear, rational society, but internally creatives reside in multiple and intersecting realities. Consequently, their feelings and thoughts are complex and multifaceted, and they can struggle with identifying which are “real” or “true.” Here’s the thing: they’re all real and true. Especially the ones that contradict each other. The ambiguity of liminality opens up creatives’ sensitivity to paradox, where multiple seemingly opposing things are simultaneously true. This is a very uncomfortable place to dwell in, but being able to sit with paradox is essential to the generation of creative work because it is where pure creative energy resides. As a creative, you are a channel for this energy – you manifest it in the world. Pure creativity energy imbues everything you think, feel, and do; it is your calling to recognize that and embody it. 

The era we are living in right now is one of liminality. It’s an extraordinary time in the literal sense of that word: we are outside of ordinary times, refugees from the familiar. But crises can also occur on a purely personal scale. It took me a long time to realize that throughout my life I’ve actually sought out and generated personal crises because I’m a creative – I just thought I was neurotic and unstable! But no, it’s because I require crisis in order to grow as a creative. Learning to deal with crisis, whether it be imposed or self-generated, in a constructive rather than destructive way is key to creative thriving. The in-betweenness of liminality is a threshold, a space where nothing is sure, and everything is possible.* So step on up: wonders await you. 

*Based on a quote by Margaret Drabble

Fall Into Your Flourishing

How to find your natural flourish points.

The other day a friend told me to lean into my flourishing, and my immediate thought was no, I want to fall into it like it’s marshmallow fluff, I want it to envelope me. This sums up my approach to life over the last year or so, since I’ve recovered from burnout. I don’t want things to be hard. Instead of fighting with life, I want to allow it to happen. I’m ready for a gentler experience. Leaning into something, as originally used by Sheryl Sandberg, meant to be assertive and take the lead. This is not my style. But even the softer way the phrase is often used, to indicate embracing something wholeheartedly, can seem like too much of a struggle sometimes. Right now, I want to flourish effortlessly.

Is such a thing possible? Aren’t we supposed to work hard for what we want? In fact, flourishing should be especially hard to achieve, right? Someone who is flourishing has really made it, they’re living their best life. It’s a decadent, indulgent state of being. Many of us have a deep-seated conviction that we don’t deserve to flourish. Or that we haven’t earned it yet. Or that it would be wrong to flourish when there is so much suffering and injustice in the world. Flourishing, it seems, is a condition that is conditional. Adding to its mysterious nature, it is often unachievable no matter how much effort we expend.

And therein lies the contradiction, this idea that we have to work hard to flourish. Flourishing actually implies effortlessness: it’s a condition that naturally arises when we are in our element. Maybe flourishing isn’t something we have to work toward, but something we already have available to us. Maybe it’s as simple as closing our eyes, opening up our arms, and falling backward into its enveloping.

In fact, we can look backward into our past to discover how we can flourish. Think about what brought you joy and comfort as a child. Before all the “shoulds” entered your life, what activities did you gravitate toward without thought, simply because you loved doing them? These are your natural flourish points. Chances are, these same activities have resurfaced in your life over and over as you matured, but in different forms. Here’s an example of what I mean. After school every day when the weather was good, I’d plunge into the large wooded property owned by my neighbors, two elderly sisters who were very kind about allowing me to play there. I loved spending time in nature; I had a special grove with a fallen tree I’d sit on for hours, lost in dreams, just enjoying being myself. When I was older I gravitated toward activities such as camping and hiking. Now, even older, I am learning how to care for a vegetable garden. Being in nature is one of my flourish points.

Here’s another. My hobby as a child was reading. But it was more like an obsession than a hobby. I spent nearly every free moment reading. I would have read at the dinner table had it been allowed. I also noticed early on that I am a mental narrator – I have a habit of putting my experiences and thoughts into words in my head, full sentences and paragraphs, throughout the day. I have full-on conversations with myself in there. When I grew up I became a writer and a scholar. I still spend most of my free hours reading everything I can on all kinds of topics. Over the years I’ve written fiction, policy articles, and scholarly works. Now I’m blogging. Reading, thinking, and writing are my flourish points.

Recognizing your flourish points can help you gain a sense of self. There may be some that you haven’t developed throughout your life that you can pick up again, and you may find additional ways to express those you have kept up with. This is how we flourish, but doing more of the things that come naturally to us and make us feel good. It seems obvious, yet it’s not, because we are used to judging flourishing by outside markers of achievement, such as career and family. But if we switch our evaluation to internal markers, how we feel about things, we gain clarity. What makes you feel joy, comfort, excitement? Understanding this will lead you to your natural flourish points.