Finding the Balance between Giving and Receiving
My journey of creative awakening has taught me many valuable lessons over the years and the process continues as significant reminders endlessly surface from my on-going creative experience.
One of the areas I’ve been drawn to revisit recently is the balance between giving and receiving as a key component of feeling creatively alive.
Like many of the people I work with, I’ve had to learn to receive and embrace the feminine energy of receiving in order to maintain a healthy state of equilibrium over the long term.
Refilling Your Inner Well
With a natural tendency to give copious amounts of time, energy and support alongside a steady stream of creative output, I’ve discovered the hard way that refilling my inner well is not an optional extra!
So I’ve increasingly made it a priority to schedule regular down time as well as to nurture my creative soul through my favourite sources of inspiration including nature, music and dancing. (Read my previous post on this here.)
All of these choices have become a well-loved and solid foundation for my version of conscious and creative living.
A Grateful Recipient
However, in the last few weeks, I’ve trusted an inner impulse to dive in to some different ways to be a grateful recipient of relevant experience to add to the usual components of my life.
Quite unexpectedly, I came across the details of an online spiritual retreat with a teacher I respect and intuitively knew that I would register for it despite having been extremely self-contained with my practice for many years.
Not long after that, seemingly out of the blue, another opportunity came my way to attend a women’s leadership retreat, and again, it just felt right for me to book a place.
Consciously Chosen Input
Now these examples may not seem all that remarkable if you participate in similar kinds of events on a regular basis or are actively engaged in continuous professional development relating to your work.
Nevertheless, the significance for me is that it’s actually been a long time since I’ve come across anything I’ve felt called to participate in like this.
So I’m delighted to have the opportunity to refill my inner well through receiving some consciously chosen input and enjoy the boost its already given to how creatively alive I feel!
Giving and Receiving
All of this has reminded me of the importance of finding – and maintaining – the balance between giving and receiving.
What I give as a mentor, teacher and writer has always come primarily from a combination of my professional expertise, my direct experience and the inner guidance I value so highly.
Yet it feels immensely refreshing also to receive gratefully through becoming a student and a retreat participant alongside continuing to enjoy teaching and leading retreats myself.
Invitation for You
My invitation for you today is to take a few moments to reflect on where you are in relation to the balance of what you give out to the world and what you receive.
If you identify an imbalance in either direction, write down 3 ideas of simple actions you can take to redress that balance and ideally include options that are new or which you haven’t tried for a while.
Then schedule time in your diary to follow through and work towards finding a degree of balance that works for you to feel the joy of being fully and completely creatively alive.
What are your thoughts and feelings about finding the balance between giving and receiving? Please share your comments and ideas below. Thank you!
[Photo by Aziz Acharki on Unsplash]
Hi Julia
On the subject of balancing giving and receiving in our lives, you may like to take a look at the work of Brené Brown on vulnerability.
Essentially, receiving is just as important as giving. Being vulnerable is about be open to receive—open to the gifts we bring ourselves through being grateful and appreciative of all we create for ourselves. It is another act of allowing—of loving yourself.
The best way to receive what we need and desire from life is to appreciate our self and feel our vulnerability.
Receiving allows us to participate in the richness of the physical world. It’s an action that enables us to draw in and connect with the outer reality we are creating for ourselves. When we become confident in our self, trusting in our creative abilities, we can enjoy being open and vulnerable—as our ego-self no longer generates the fear of being hurt.
Genuine openness and vulnerability exclude the threat of being hurt or disappointed. There can be no threat when we are aware that if hurt or disappointment (a “negative” event) befalls us, we have created it to learn and grow.
Risking vulnerability opens you to the totality of who you are, and it opens your heart to others.
Enjoy the receiving times, in gratitude and appreciation of you,
Chris
Hi Chris, yes I do know Brené Brown’s work and couldn’t agree more about receiving being just as important as giving. In writing this post my intention is to inspire people to remember that receiving can take many different forms and come from a number of different directions so remaining open to them all feeds directly into the balance I’ve described as being a key component of feeling creatively alive! Thank you for your comment. Julia