The Creative Genius Corner
Lessons, musings and advice from the author of ‘The Life I Won’
Are you marmite or honey?
I have spent a significant chunk of my life being described as ‘marmite’, people seem to love me or hate me with no grey area. I am not going to lie, there was a time when this bothered me, I am an empath, so I hurt easily for others and myself, but I have toughened up over the years. When your behaviour and actions come from love, your truth and knowing then it is a lot easier to accept the critics.
Some people are more like honey. Sweet and easy on the palette.
We are programmed by society to ‘fit in’. You must look a certain way, learn a certain way, behave a certain way. We are bound by rules, standards, laws and opinions. We have forgotten how to be wild and free.
I am wild and free. I am marmite.
I like me, I think I am a good person, but based on the rules I shouldn’t. I should judge myself for being overweight because surely that means weakness. I should not be so opinionated or outspoken. I am an artist, a thinker, a leader. Surely that makes me a bit weird? I don’t fit in the boxes built to contain us and neither should you.
I wanted to explore these thoughts and ask the question why? Why are so many women imprisoned by their imposed boxes? What is it that holds us there, keeping us from our wild? How do you start to emerge from the tags, the labels, the boxes and become all that you were meant to be in this world? How do you become less honey and more marmite?
YOU are woman
What this means by ‘the rules’ is that you should play with dolls, be quiet, polite, speak when spoken to, become a mother and the anchor in the box of family. Despite women evolving and re-claiming their power the expectation remains. It runs deep through the ‘hive mind’ values and beliefs system which is rooted in the church, stereotypes and society ‘norms’.
When you exist outside the norm, you will be ridiculed, persecuted and marginalised. What we have been programmed to be is not who we are. We are women. Wild and free. Confident, passionate, beautiful, empathic, soft, strong and powerful. It is okay to be your wild and free self. You have permission, you need to be prepared for the critics, but you should never change for them. Here is a starting point for you, journal on the following questions:
Which boxes currently contain my wild?
Describe the rules that you follow which are laid down by society, your religion, your partner, your family.
Which rules do you want to break away from and why?
You WILL be one of them
Guess what? You will judge the wild and free women. It’s not your fault. You have been programmed by society to judge. When you see the wild and free woman with her head held high, strutting like she is the best thing since sliced bread, you will say ‘who does she think she is?’ When you do this, stop for a moment and ask yourself why? Why is this wild and free woman triggering me to judge? Is it because I want to be wilder?
I am that wild woman and I often get ‘the look’ of how dare you. After all I am that overweight, gobby, imperfect, outspoken woman who does not fit in the boxes.
This is because I created my own box. My box has no sides and no top! I have no limitations in my open box. How are you going to construct yours?
Notice when you judge and record it, I am going to guess you do it 100’s of times a day. It is a sub-conscious act because of the programming. You have the ability to un-program if you want to. The question is, do you want to?
It takes work
Becoming wild and free can be terrifying. You may become paralysed by thoughts like ‘but what will people think or say’ ‘what if I fail and look stupid’ ‘what if, what if, what if’??
You are human and your programming makes it difficult to change. But you can do difficult things. Think about other difficult things that you have survived like divorce, bereavement, debt and disappointment. Journal on this, list all of the difficult things in your life that you have survived, dig deep and make a long list.
You can do difficult things.
On the other side of difficult things is joy, confidence, contentment. As you remove the sides and the top of your box you will start to feel freedom.
You will begin to become wild and free.
Creativity
As your wildness bubbles to the surface you may feel pulled to express yourself differently. This feeling is a natural evolution on your journey and is a place of exploration. You may be pulled to design, to paint, to compose, to craft, to take up sport or interior design or even baking or teaching. Listen to your wild, the inner voice of knowledge. You already have all of the answers, you are merely learning to trust them.
When your creative wild woman shows up fully and you allow her to explore the pull, think about how you can continue to develop this within you. Forget the external of how things look. So, you bake a crappy cake the first time or your painting looks a bit odd, none of those matters. Your first drawing as a toddler was probably indecipherable, but you experienced joy in the act of creation. The joy is in the creation, always, so look for opportunities for your wild creativity to be in the moment. Don’t give up, give in to the pull and surrender to the joy. Wild women don’t obey rules, they make them. Make yours and share them confidently with the world to teach them how to see you.
With every blog I write, painting I finish and book I publish I am teaching you my wild. I am helping you to see the real me, one word, one brushstroke at a time. I am so comfortable in my wild that I am happy to take the world by the hand and say, ‘Come and look at this, I created it with no rules, and I am proud’. I don’t care if some people don’t like marmite, because enough people love it to make it a necessary accompaniment for your favourite artisan bread. I only want to be some people’s chosen accompaniment, not the entire world’s!
Who needs honey and its beige tones and sweet addiction when you can embrace the dark and shocking taste of marmite!
Be marmite in a world of honey you wild creative woman.