The Dance Between Your Inner and Outer Worlds: Reflections from a Creative Entrepreneur
Article Published for The Vital Creative Collection, Written by Christy Howitt
Photo by Jasmin Chew
The dance is a subtle one at times. It can also be a more defined motion — moving fluidly from the world that lives and breathes in your mind’s eye, the one where your best ideas grow from, to the place that exists on the outside, the tangible ground beneath your feet, the solid walls that surround you.
Photo by Natali Hordiiuk
the art of getting lost
As a creative entrepreneur, I frequent both places. For me, that looks like the art of getting lost in my writing, in an excellent book, in painting swirls of colour on canvas, in dreaming up my next move. It looks like wading into an open expanse of water with the sun high in the sky, listening to a new song by my favourite musician, the gatherings hosted, and the conversation had in the breezy space of my kitchen.
I live in the back and forth and, in that dance, it’s clear how one space informs the other. Your inner world creates your outer experience. Your outer reality can inspire your thoughts, ideas, intuitive nudges.
My desires bring me to the water’s edge. The water renews my drive to create beautiful, powerful things. It’s a fine balance, one that must remain in equilibrium for us to create our very best work, to bring forth the services and offers that are meant to come through.
Photo by Brooke Lark
steeped in that bubbly kind of joy
I call it a dance because the movement between your inner world and your outer world must flow with ease — and timely grace — in order for everything to be in sync. It must feel good to move back and forth, in a similar way that dancing lifts you and inspires you and guides you back to a place where everything feels steeped in that bubbly kind of joy.
Your inner world — it’s where your intuition lives.
It’s your innermost thoughts, the way you feel, the visualizations you see when you close your eyes and imagine what you’d like your life to be. It’s where seeds are planted, growing from ideas into plans and next steps. It’s where you self-regulate and find relaxation. It’s the space where you can hear your own voice clearly, like a nurturing tour guide who knows the way. It’s where the sparks within you crackle and ignite, driving every single one of your passions. It’s where everything begins — my first idea for a new novel to write, the initial craving to travel somewhere new, the rising of that exciting, out-there business venture.
Photo by Kinga Howard
on being, on choice, on listening
Your outer world comes to be from a long series of choices — the home you’ve chosen and carefully decorated with your touch. The people you surround yourself with. The conversations that take place, and the way you let yourself experience the physical that is all around you. It is all born from nudges and yearning and cravings that first formed within me. It’s all driven and created from the inner world I first witnessed in that inward space.
There are times that I crave the comfort of my inner world, retreating there, staying longer, attracted to the depths within me and the well of ideas within my mind and being. Other times, it’s easier not to look there, to remain steadfastly in the physical world, to distract with activities and people, not tuning in, not looking inward, not listening to the voice that is my own as it tries to get my attention.
Photo by Gian Cescon
the dance must take place
It’s why the dance must take place. It’s why we cannot disregard it. The flow and rhythm and graceful in-between–all there so that the line dividing both fades and you’re so tapped into your intuition and your inner voice that it spills over into your outer world and guides you beyond your practices of creating and meditating. Your intuition speaks loudest when the dance is continuous, free-flowing.
Photo by Farol
coexisting and profoundly one
With that, true, full creative expression happens when the inner and outer reality beautifully mesh. Experiences become brighter, more illuminated, and most aligned, when we live with one foot in one world and one in the other. But mostly, when my worlds are seamlessly one. Because, in my sense of it, that’s how these places have always been — coexisting but profoundly one and the same. I cannot imagine life without this gracious, ever-wise dance taking place, if only we remember to move with it.
—Christy Howitt, Guest Writer at Casey Jacque
Instagram: Christy Howitt
