012. doing what you got to do

Why would you say that you are full of creativity and you want to achieve great things, but suddenly you realize that you are being reactive, that you are in the Groundhog Day and only doing things to solve problems? In the past episode, we talked about how you want to boost your creativity, and that involves increasing your energy. Now we're going to be talking about how to guard your creative energy. Let's talk about it. Guarding your creative energy has to do mostly with keeping in track. We discussed the metaphor of having a cup and having the liquid, right? So we were talking about the content and the container. Now we are going to be focused mainly on the container. What does it mean? Let's go back to this idea of kings and queens, right? There is this metaphor. Right now in this world, we don't have as many kings and queens that we had before, but it's important to realize that the metaphorical aspect of kings and queens has to do with— they were responsible with what was happening with their realm. They needed to take care of their lands, their subjects, their wealth. their, the food, everything. And in that way, when the kingdom or the queendom was doing okay, then the kings and the queens became artists. They went, uh, into poetry, into painting, and they were able to achieve many, many, many, many things. So the point here is, as entrepreneurs and as business leaders that you are, it's really relevant to talk about this because if your kingdom, if your queendom is not okay, Then how can you be creative? Let's go back to one of my favorite authors, David Whyte, and his book, The Heart Aroused. I will just name one paragraph of his poem named Knowing Both the Soul and Strategy, and it goes like this: The strategic side of the mind, represented by age and experience, plans its life accordingly. It gathers knowledge, it uses cunning and tactics. It can also, at its best, wait patiently and endure hardship for a noble cause. But at the crucial moment, just as it is ready to gather its just reward, the older, experienced side of us will watch helplessly as the eternally innocent and inexperienced young fool, blessed by the heart of luck and youth, simply in the right place at the right time, wanders innocently into the clearing and takes the treasure for which we have worked hard. So I'm taking you to the realm of poetry, but in a way, it's a metaphorical way of talking. Not only I'm not talking to your cognitive mind, but I'm also talking to a deeper part of you, the part of you that can understand that there's a duality, a duality between being strategic and a duality between hearing to what your soul has to do. And the soul, where's your soul? In many traditions, they say that it's an energy, It's a kind of a spark of light that we have inside of us that it's eternal. So it's something metaphysical in a way. That's what content is about. Because think about it, what are ideas? Ideas are out of the blue. You cannot name them. Probably you had this amazing idea one day, and that idea you were trying to envision it and to make it happen. Now we have already talked about the levels of creative change. But But what happens with that? That we need a container. We need something where we need to put that idea, to place it. But if that container has leaks, then nothing will happen. So what would a container be in today's business world? I would say that a container can be, for entrepreneurs, their company, right? And the company needs to work properly. So if the company works properly, then you can be creative. You can follow what your soul, what you deeply want to do. But what's a leak in a container like that? When a company has no sales, when you have issues and problems between marketing and sales and they are discussing, there's drama, right? That's a leak of energy. We could also say that when you have no clients, so there is no revenue, or you have this massive idea for a product, but you are not able to build it. Properly or to show it to the proper people. You have issues with your organization, with your teams, your founder or your co-founders, with your board. So all this needs to be taken care of, as well as you need the proper money to run your company. Go back to the idea of a king or a queen. In your company, you are the king or the queen. You should be fully responsible of what's happening. I'm not saying that you are the one to blame for the problems, but at least you are being complicit. You add to this equation, you are part of it, and you have the power to change it. Now, if you don't have a company, you might be working, right? So you have an activity that brings you money. What would a leak in your work be? When again, you don't have a product-market fit and you are selling something that nobody wants. So that's a big leak of energy. And you cannot be that creative because you need Sort this out, or even when you are doing things that you don't want to be doing. Why? Because it's really messy. So in a way, we need to be in the world. We need to be responsible for what's happening in our company, in our work, to go to the next level. First, we need to sort things out and stop being reactive so we can be proactive, so we can be extremely creative. And where our creativity goes. Imagine if you're riding a bicycle, and do you know these bicycles where they have these beams of metal? If one of these beams is broken, the whole wheel does not work. It's the same. You need to be in integrity with your content, and you need to be in integrity with your container. But what's more important is that sometimes we feel that we are burned out That we don't have any energy left, that we are depleted because we are pouring energy. We're pouring content, liquid into a container that is not keeping it. And the thing is, for our work to be impactful, to be successful, we need to increase not only the content but the size of the container. In Kabbalah, which is the mystical part of Judaism, they say that here in this world, we need to increase our vessel so we can attract more light. What does it mean? That the higher we are able to reach to people, the more we can show our talents, the more impactful we will be. And this is the same for any business. You need to sort things out, to organize. And this brings me to my former entrepreneurial years when I was a lot into the vision. What does it mean? It means that, in my opinion, that I was full of ideas. I was full of creative aspects. But I was launching this company by myself, so I needed to find somebody that took care of the proper details of the container. And this is what Gino Wickman calls the duality amongst being a visionary and being an integrator. So going back to our original question, how can you take care of your creative energy By making sure that your container has no leaks. Where is your container leaking? Up until the next time, Godspeed.