Reframe Money as a Masterpiece We Make Every Day

When we are doing creative work, we don’t think about money. In fact, to do our best creative work, we must tune into ourselves, and not the noise of the market. However, it is my firm belief that we are also here to have healthy financial lives with enough money.

With these concerns in mind, this year I’m creating a safe space on Zoom where we can discuss money without shame or judgment.

If you haven’t found stability in your income as a creative, it might be time to explore your relationship with money. Nothing disrupts the creative flow more than a feast or a famine and yet this is how we are shown in media what the creative life is like. Julia Cameron also states in “The Artist’s Way” that it’s an unpredictable path financially. I wonder if financial stability might be elusive because we haven’t found a grounded and centred way of being with money.

As creatives, can we create opportunities for financial flow all throughout the year so it is a gentle and steady stream that brings us all we need?

Riding the highs and lows of the market seems to be the norm. I see that this way of living takes a huge toll on our mental, emotional, and physical well-being and relationships. Can we give ourselves the stability of a predictable income through planning?

The three principles to explore for me in my wanting to create a stable income through WritePublishGrow are balance, self-worth, and discipline.

I believe we can learn to embrace the monetary system by taking the time to think about our current financial situation, opportunities and challenges ahead and plan for them. We don’t have to be swung around wildly by external conditions.

A Good Life is a Balanced Life

“Wealth is the ability to fully experience life.” –Henry David Thoreau

It’s well worth having a discussion about how we balance our life energy. Are we draining ourselves on the people and situations that don’t reflect our personal values? Can we claw back some of our time to put towards strengthening our own creative light?

Most of us have family and friends to ground us in life. There’s also the time we need to ourselves to rest. We also need to make time for work and our finances and finally, there’s learning / training and adventure to expand our views. To have a stable creative practice, we must focus on all these areas.

This year, I will be focusing on what balance means and how it can be achieved or measured on a day-to-day basis. We can monitor our bank accounts as well as the quality of the meetings we’ve had during that day. After the meetings were we better off? Did we leave the meeting with a proposal? What is now in our pipeline? And for those people who were not prospects, did we leave them better off than how we found them?

Values and Self Worth

“If you don’t value your time, neither will others. Stop giving away your time and talents. Value what you know & start charging for it.” –Kim Garst

If you know who you are, what you value, and that your time is valuable, money will flow from that. This year, I will work on strengthening my resolve that my time is valuable and I have incredible contributions to make to the people around me.

Create Discipline

“Wealth consists not in having great possessions, but in having few wants.” –Epictetus

Frugal and waste-free living is becoming necessary as we are now in a time where landfill space runs low and we need to be more mindful about buying stuff.

Before I make household purchases, I will pose myself with these questions:

Is this product necessary? Can I make something like it with what I already have in our household?
Have I taken stock of and repaired what is already in our household?
Have I cleared the stuff I no longer need?
Did I give away the things I no longer want that are in good condition to be used by others who need them?
Can I buy it from an op shop?