Online Coaching for
Creatives and Entrepreneurs:
The New Roaring 20s

Fearing that you are an imposter whose inadequacy is bound to be revealed; stiffened by self-doubt and feeling inauthentic; nightmares of terror of being “found out”; assuming that your success is coming from beyond, like sheer luck; bouncing off the praise; over-proving yourself by working 100-hour weeks; and overwhelmed by anticipating that one day, somebody will finally find out and expose you for who you really are: a frog, a fraud.

Imposter Syndrome and feeling inauthentic are the first set of uninvited dark guests you must face and transform before entering the party of your Creative Success.

It’s only natural to ask, “Can I do this?” But asking the question and doubting yourself are two different things. “Do I deserve this?” But your achievements are your doing, the end-result of your hard work and skills, not a gift that you should “deserve”. You plunged into your depths and delivered the pearl. Own and celebrate your success. Together, let’s replace doubting that you can with asking how you can. Questions prepare you; doubts block you.

If you are queer who lives outside standardized norms, or a woman in a male-dominant environment, the threat of being exposed may be higher. While shielding yourself is a valid skill of survival, it also prevents your creative success. Through my online coaching, you’ll learn to take calculated risks to maximize your gains and come out of hiding.

You can’t be anything less than perfect, can you? That ongoing commentary from perfectionism and self-criticism that hates every “mistake” and false start leads to creative freeze before the blank canvas of your new venture. If you are not perfect, don’t even start. You procrastinate. You shiver from performance anxiety. You compare yourself negatively to others. You can’t tell if you fear failure or success the most. Your goals are in heaven and the staircase has been blown away by unrealistic expectations. You dread making mistakes because there’s hell to pay.

Perfection is your Polar Star: always to be glimpsed at to guide your vision, but never to be touched. Perfection-ism is a cult.

In a creative mindset, there are no mistakes, only new beginnings. A knot in a lumber is not a flaw but the personality that makes it unique. Neatly polished and strategically placed, your “flaw” becomes your distinguished personal brand.

Through growth coaching, I help you face that uninvited guest, the relentless critic, to transform it into your distinguished party guest. You can deliver high standard goods and services without the stress of being perfect.

Let’s hammer out your sweet spot between your unique “flaw” and competitive edge.

While creativity requires solitude and introspection, creative incubation can be overdone. Enthusiasm for creating something to your own image or the high demands and infinite responsibilities of running a creative business can grow into overwhelm and loneliness if left unbalanced by nurturing connections with family and friends.

The third set of uninvited guests are The Great Balancers: Poor Work-Life Balance, Loneliness, and Dysfunctional Family Dynamics.

Connecting with others is just as part of the creative process as connecting with your inner voice. People and places evoke a variety of emotions and ideas, which to become the fertile ground for creativity.

Drawing on my background in psychotherapy, as a developmental coach I blow air to your wings and guide you to freedom from old fears to create your authentic self and the lifestyle that goes with it.

Is this the right time for us to connect for balance coaching?

The fourth group of your uninvited guests are Feeling Stuck, Creative Block, and Lack of Motivation. You have to get through them to be creative and inventive.

Have you ever sat by a blank page with a mind as frozen white as that page? Have you ever felt unable to move, or felt no more than the chilling wind from the Big Blah, the Emptiness? That’s it. You get the frustration. You can’t find your voice.

It doesn’t mean you are inadequate or an imposter; it just means that every abundant summer is followed by a restful, freezing winter. It’ll pass. You can warm up your frozen mental landscape by allowing your hands, rather than your head, to lead. But if your spring just doesn’t seem to cooperate, you know where to find me.

I help creative brainstorm and melt the frozen blocks through insightful coaching. Ready?

Relentless hard work without seeing progress leads directly to burnout. You keep putting in the effort, but it keeps bouncing back at you. When there are problems, you are to blame. When all is running well, the creator is often unnoticed. No one seems to appreciate what you do. You are feeling undervalued and disrespected. People take but barely ever give back.

If you don’t know what you’re worth, it’s hard to bargain for a reasonable price. You may be giving away your skills for free because you are too modest or are afraid to ask for more. If you feel unvalued, financial worries and insecurities may not be far behind.

The solution: be grateful for what you have – and courageous to ask for more. It’s on you to know your worth, and I offer coaching to dare to bargain for a fair price and appreciation.

If you don’t ask for more, ask for me.

Save the best for last? Well, here it is. The grim reaper of all creativity, your ultimate uninvited guest: Worry about the unknown. Lord Anxiety, in a big black cloak. It’s the faceless dread entering your creative party. It’s faceless because nothing is more scary than your own imagination.

The fear of what others might think. The dread of being ridiculed or inadequacy revealed. The struggle to avoid getting people angry or disappointed. The shadow of abandonment and loneliness. The guilt and shame for breaking rules and being worse—or yes, even better—than others. And perfectionism grabbing procrastination by the ear—they all spring from your imagination, from the endless “What if…?”

Once you face these faceless monsters, their power and grip on you loosen and disappear.

I’ve come to see Lord Anxiety, the fear of the unknown, as your guardian on the path of a treacherous life. It’s just making sure you are aware of your vulnerability. Together, through anxiety management coaching, we’ll sort out which threats are real and how you can prepare for them, and which threats you can kiss good-bye.

Ready to take courage and face your final fear? Let’s open the gate.

You are the creator and the center of your universe. You are the active agent of your life, the only one who can make things happen.

Nobody can “make you feel…” unless you agree. The external world may affect you, but you decide what you do with that influence. You may first feel hurt by a negative comment, but you decide whether you want to roll with it and spin off doomsday stories—or let it roll off you.

Embracing the mentality of an internal locus of control is the grown-up mentality you need to be creative.

If you always wait for the circumstances to be right, or for people to agree with you, validate or support you before you allow yourself to create the world you want to live in, you may be in for a long wait. You are no longer a child, dependent on other people’s approval. You can make your choices and take your own actions.

It’s up you to roll up your sleeves, get to work, and create the world you want to live in—or keep finding excuses not to.

Just because you are the creator it doesn’t mean you are alone. Asking for help and collaborating is part of the courage it takes to get you there. I can be that support.

The courage to be creative comes from faith in yourself—even if nobody else does.

Faith is not owned by religion. Faith is a gift of your humanity to believe you are good and have the right to be here and bring forth your gifts, your visions—even if nobody seems to want you. Besides, somebody does want you. It may not be the people you were born to be with, but people you can find in the big world if you are willing to explore and show your Self.

Faith is being your own BFF. Faith in yourself is the only unconditional love you can guarantee.

Faith in your Self does not mean you have to ignore others. It just means you can look deep inside for strength and validation, even when circumstances appear to go against you, and believe that you are loved and you can do this. Faith is to understand that the external world does not always reflect accurately who you really are inside. Only you know yourself from the inside—others only know your external shell.

Let me aid you to sail the stormy waves and find your internal clarity.

Bouncing back from adversity is the lifeline of a creative mindset.

When you create, you explore and experiment, and you cannot always be sure what the end result will be. You don’t know how others will react—or worse, you may know that they won’t like you. People are not always kind. Everybody can criticize, but not everyone is brave enough to step up, risk being different, and allow others to see who they truly are.

When you open up and show yourself, there may be people who won’t hide that they don’t like you. Life circumstances like economics and politics are not always favorable. Finding a good narrative that makes sense of adversity and gives you hope is your best bet for building yourself back from ruins.

Like Kintsugi, you can always come back stronger than the way you went down. Yes, resilience is an art form that all people of all eras are better off indulging in. I know some tricks to help your resilience grow.

Knowing who you are is not a fixed, eternal truth but a continuous metamorphosis.

Creativity is an ever-growing spiral, always looking out for something new to try and learn. “I” and “my creation” are connected but not the same. You and your behavior/actions are connected but not the same. Love thyself—and grow your skill set.

Nothing that a wise person knows is something they were born with. They have learned everything by courageously exploring, working hard, bouncing back from adversity and trying again—and again. This process is the learning curve.
You sweat, you fall, you stand up again, dust off your butt, keep going—and might learn more from your mistakes than your successes.

When you transform your fixed ideas to flexible thinking (and there are many ways of thinking to help you transform the world), accept that the only constant is change. You open your mind to the astonishing reality of existence: a reality that goes beyond any fixed ideas humanity has ever had. You go above and beyond your self-preservation instinct that compels you to keep repeating behaviors that have proven themselves to be safe.

Voila, you are in the creative mindset. To help you grow, here I am.

The hallmark of creativity is enjoying the process.

Creativity is not about racing to produce a desired outcome, achieve a prize, or avoid punishment. Creativity is not about fighting for survival. Creativity presumes that survival is either secured or irrelevant. Creativity is the joy of engaging, a reward in and of itself.

Like the flow of music, the rhythm of sounds and silences, it raises the mind above the survival instinct of repeating what’s safe, into the open space where stability-security is not just an illusion but a chain that immobilizes.

Creativity is not the beginning and not the end but the ongoing becoming between these ends. Creativity, like music, implies time—but it’s timeless. You just flow. Let me help you learn to let go of your fear for survival and embrace joy.

Non-judgmental observation of the big, noisy world—the endless spinning of the wheel of becoming—is good for developing a creative mind.

Understand (don’t judge) thyself, says the old edict. Life, the eternal creative force, does not impose moral judgment on Her creatures. She just creates and allows to live whatever is viable and finds its place.

You don’t like to be criticized—so don’t criticize yourself. If you want constructive feedback, create it. Ask for it. Learn to accept it without feeling criticized and falling apart. I help you quiet your mind, reduce your reactivity, and save your energy for exploring, experimenting, and inventing Your world.

Emotions are your guides on the treacherous waters of social complexity.

E-motions move you to find your safe place in the vast social hierarchy. They move you to action, they motivate you, and provide motifs for your creative projects. They help you stay whole or heal (become whole again) if you identify, name, and consult them regularly. As long as you don’t know them, you can’t move with them—they may confuse your actions.

Emotions give colors to your creative palette. This is where I believe I excel. With your mindfulness and my chart, you can find out what your sadness, anger, joy, jealousy, fear, guilt or shame are telling you about where you are coming from and where you are heading; what you need to do to find peace and equilibrium again.

When you “don’t know,” what makes you think that it can only be something bad lurking in the dark?

Could you also populate the darkness of the unknown with delight and great surprises, as the opening to something new, benevolent, and exciting? Your fear comes from your survival instinct, the part of your brain that you share with the dinosaurs. Not pretty, but very effective if you want to survive the day.

But if you also want to grow, create new possibilities and prosper, you have to face your fears with courage (move on with your “heart in your throat”) and see what’s in the dark.

Courage follows good guidance—first, from someone who knows the dark; then, from you as you gain courage by transforming your self-created monsters. Because the world is only as scary as you make it to be. Imagination—both a curse and a blessing. Can I be your first guide to the dark side?

Take your mind and make it bend. Wrap it around what you see, hear, touch, taste, or smell. Look at an ordinary concept and twist it to diverse formats.

Pretend that “reality” is not a fixed thing but an illusion—some of which we share and others we hide, and yet other aspects are private to each of us. So private that we ourselves can’t see it. Cognitive flexibility is how easily you can take a new concept and fit it into your worldview. Accommodate as opposed to assimilate.

Go against the grain. If you keep obeying every rule, every expectation, you may produce something but you can’t be creative.

Compliance is seeking specific outcomes out of desiring reward or fearing punishment. Creativity is a process of endless exploring for the joy of it. No other rewards—or punishments. Consequences? Sure. No matter what you do, there will be consequences.

As a wise person once said: ‘Everybody dies. But not everybody has lived.’

You decide what life is worth living for you. Creativity is not a place where you arrive and stay forever. Creativity is a process that you volunteer every day; the creative mindset is a state of mind that you have to find amidst the cravings and necessities—every moment of your life. Do you need a companion? Here I am.

There are many ways of thinking that foster your creativity besides the non-thinking silent observation of mindfulness:

• Magical Thinking: Makes up your own facts and consequences, regardless of reality (kind of like “if pigs could fly…”).
• Divergent Thinking: Generates a diversity of ideas.
• Convergent Thinking: Narrows down options and sets goals.
• Cognitive Flexibility: Helps you integrate new information.
• Critical Thinking: Examines everything to find your own conclusions and protect you from being exploited.
• Irreverent Thinking: Breaks from traditions, just to be different.
• Self-Reflection: Observes your own subjective responses and internal processes.
• Scientific Thinking: Observes the external world and compares notes with other observers to find out what “real” really is.

Faith is looking for Truth, either within or without, while skepticism denies all truth—and both do it without examining the facts.

Creativity is contagious: it feeds off others’ creative joy and diligence.

Create your creative space: set an environment and rituals that foster free exploration by providing a non-judgmental creative den for your mind to play. Connect and collaborate with like-minded fellows who also enjoy sharing ideas and flourish in diversity. You all are children of abundance, knowing that sharing your wealth is making you all richer rather than poorer.

Communicate and negotiate your needs with those of others to move from solitary struggle to shared success. Think in the context of the Earth, the Universe, or the Polyverse and how your choices lead to a “butterfly effect.” Value diversity and recognize that black and white thinking leads to a world so narrow into which not even the nail on your pinky finger can squeeze itself.

This is a space that AI can’t intrude—not now, not ever. The creative context is larger than what exists—it plays with what can exist if given the opportunity. AI is too reverent, adhering to existing rules and expectations. Your creative mind can leave all these behind and explore new, uncharted lands—and waters.

You might ask: Is it a struggle to maintain my soul while trying to please the machine? Will I have to compromise my unique poetic voice because they’re not what others commonly use, just to be found online?

The answer is Yes. That is the honest truth of being a creator in the digital age.

You will hammer out an acceptable middle ground between your authentic voice and SEO. You may let the machine restructure what exists for clarity and efficiency. You create the new, with the vested emotional interest to affect other people and build a society that is better, more rounded, and whole, more egalitarian and colorful than it has ever been.

Being creative AND making a living with it—I can’t promise it’ll be easy.
Will it be worth it? Only if you are looking for meaning, something that’s worth your short life. Break the rules to make way for something that has never existed before: YOU.

Allow me to be your “partner in crime”.