I glanced at the bottom corner of my work email box.

517 emails

208 unread

Sigh.

Then I flipped over to my personal email box.

4907 emails

3850 unread

Bigger sigh.

“I need to clear these out, once and for all,” I thought as I started the familiar action of scrolling through the list, looking for the emails I could quickly and easily discard. 

How do I let these pile up like this?  I would really love to get these cleared out, but I just don’t have time to read them all.  And why do I say these same words to myself everyday??

I continued to scroll, deleting the ads and the spam and skipping over the ones I was saving to read later (more likely never but that’s a different newsletter) all the while heaving bigger and bigger sighs.

Then I noticed something. 

The tightness in my jaw, the tension in my body and the sighs that didn’t seem to be relieving the tension what so ever. 

“What am I doing??  Is this really the way I want to spend my precious energy?  What is really going on here?”   

I had often thought that my mindless scrolling and deleting was some ploy on my part to look like I was working, to look like I was being productive.  After all, when you see someone bent over their computer at the office don’t you assume that they are busy?  And it can be quite satisfying to watch the number of emails go down – you have something you can point to that proves that you have been doing something! 

Except no one is watching me. 

I work by myself…from my home.

No one cares if I am busy or not.  No one cares if I am producing or not.  There is no one judging my performance but me or more accurately, my inner critic. 

I decided to ask myself a better question.

“How is this mindless dive into email purgatory several times a day serving me?  And what is it that I truly desire here?”

The answers came quite quickly (as they often do when you ask a better question)!

It’s serving me by helping me create space. 

What I truly desire is to create something beautiful.

Huh!  All this deleting and skipping and hoping to read later was actually a desire for creative expression gone askew.  I was putting my energy into creating something beautiful but the medium was all wrong.  While having an empty email box would be a thing of beauty, it was an impossible task.  Instead of nurturing my creative spirit, it only drained it day after day. 

In my experience of coaching and mentoring women I see this behavior all the time – the desire for creative expression gets channeled into actions and activities that will only drain them of their vibrancy and joy.  Once they realize what they are doing however, they become a creative force that is life giving and deeply satisfying. 

What are you doing that seems like a good and productive activity but actually is keeping you from the true expression of your joy?  Is it time to look more closely and ask yourself ‘what is the true desire in these actions?”  Are you ready to step into a more delightful and satisfying expression of your creative spirit?

I’d love to hear about what you create!

Love,