Your Nervous System Is Blocking Your Creative Genius

You’ve experienced feeling on fire creatively.

Maybe it’s happened in the recording studio when something leaps from the heart of the universe right out through your voice. Maybe it’s happened during a live performance. A moment when you’re tapped into the realest part of yourself and you can feel the truth of the artist you were born to be.

For a moment you’re electric, magnetic. You can see yourself clearly. You know this version of you exists and yet for some reason you’re stuck living your life so far away from this state of being.

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Flow Is Your Natural State

What’s happening in those moments is that you’ve softened enough to access your creative true north. It may seem like it’s happening on accident, but that’s actually your natural state when your nervous system is deeply grounded and you’re free to enter your own creative flow state.

I spend a lot of time not in this state, but I get there a lot more than I used to. Like most artists, my nervous system is easily rattled—by sleep disturbances, caffeine and alcohol, stress from travel, overstimulation, and especially internal pressure to perform.

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Artists Are Designed to Feel Deeply

Artists are like this by design. We’re supposed to be sensitive so that we can channel subtle truths out into the world. But it’s also a huge responsibility and most artists I know don’t realize they need to protect their bodies and minds until they’re in their mid-30’s or older.

Feelings of anxiety, shakiness, over-hustling, and spiraling self-doubt take hold when artists are disconnected from the value they offer the world and from their own creative satisfaction.

In the age of social media, it’s rare that I come across an artist who is grounded in their creative purpose and joy. Most of the musicians I work with are struggling to keep their heads above water, let alone stay connected enough to their own creative light to chaperone their gifts into the world.

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When You Can’t Afford to Get Regulated

Here are two things that are true for everyone pursuing a creative career:

1. You could always be doing more to grow your business

2. You often can’t see a clear path before you

These two make such a perfect cocktail for spin-out. Holy shit. It can kick up this spiral dust storm of desperation where you feel like you need to always be working, growing, maxing out what you’re doing.

Your magnetism fades. Your work suffers. You get into desperation energy and say yes to the wrong opportunities. It’s a race to the bottom.

To be clear, this shit happens to me all the time.

But as I wrote a couple weeks ago, the biggest risk to your career isn’t not growing fast enough, it’s burning out and quitting.

We don’t know how long it will take for the right opportunities to line up for you, but we do know that you won’t be available to benefit from them if you give up and go to law school.

It’s important to see this desperation energy as the quicksand that it is. When you start spinning out, that’s a good time to take a fucking nap. When you’re better regulated, your problems look smaller and you’re more creatively resourced to find genius solutions to whatever problems you’re up against.

You can ask for help. You can change your plan. Your music career is something you can roll out and grow and tend to on your own terms.

Remember: all the rejection in the world can’t stop you from sharing your beautiful songs and collecting a few thousand real fans who will go all in on what you do.

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How to Reach Flow (Even When It Feels Impossible)

In order to take the huge social risk of showing up in the world as the truly original and unique artist you were born to be, you need to have your nervous system regulated.

How do you do this?

The answer fucking sucks. You have to do the things you know you should do to take care of your silly little human body. Here’s how I do it. It’s not perfect, but without these things I would not be able to keep my shit together. I recommend this for any artist, and truly for any person.

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My Nervous System Survival Kit

• I protect my sleep like an insane person. I take naps.

• Alcohol is terrible for the nervous system. Even occasional moderate drinking increases my anxiety, so I don’t do it.

• Same for caffeine. It’s easy to go from coffee to matcha and eventually from matcha to nothing.

• Take L-Theanine. It works well and doesn’t come with a bunch of shitty side effects. I take 400 mg/day when I’m feeling wobbly.

• Take a high-quality magnesium supplement before bed. They are not all created equal. This is the one I use. (This post isn’t sponsored.)

• Find a non-screen activity you love that has no purpose. I like painting and decorating my apartment. Look, I painted my piano and made the frames match!

  

• Get near a tree or a creek or something. Go outside and listen to your feel-good dad rap mix. 20 minutes a day, ideally in the morning. It’s infuriating that moving your body helps you feel better. I don’t make the rules.

• Don’t overdo it. If you walk away from Pilates class physically trembling, that’s your body saying NO. You don’t have to be a bodybuilder or a ballerina. You’re a musician. You’re not going to be able to tap into the creative heart of the universe if you’re treating your body like a machine. Musicians can have bellies and you’re no exception.

• Regulate your blood sugar. Please, my love. Eat. Eat foods that you love. You’re going to die someday.

• To Be Magnetic app from

  Lacy Phillips
  is my favorite tool for nervous system regulation and general self-healing work. It’s marketed as a manifestation app, but their meditation tools incorporate Internal Family Systems, theta waves, EMDR, and other science-backed methods that have worked so well for me. It’s been a game-changer. You can get a discount when you sign up using this link and the code:
  CASSIDY
  https://login.tobemagnetic.com/a/2147524106/8RoHEgAX

  Again, this post is not sponsored. It’s just what I use and love.

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Looking for more help diving in deeper to your truest artist self?

Pick up your digital copy of my Artist Development Workbook for only $40.

It’s a full month’s worth of coursework, guaranteed to change the trajectory of your music career and your life as a musician or your money back.

Sending love, peace, and star anise,

Cassidy