The Prologue to Your Creative Entrepreneur's Story
It’s not enough to dedicate your working hours to support someone else’s commercial dream.
Following the rules as they’ve been set out, and even doing the work you’ve been trained to do won't always sustain you. Not if it’s not yours. Not if it doesn’t have meaning.
You need to make things - a sculpture that will endure; a dinner that will linger, even if only in memory; a poem that describes a perfect moment in time. This creative process is usually more fulfilling than thankless, so you keep on reaching to find the true expression of your vision.
Soon, your private creative process resists being confined to the edges of your day. You feel restless, empty of purpose even as you're full of inspiration, and you're unable to conform to that workaday reality you tried to accept as "normal."
Like the creative imperative, once “I am an entrepreneur” lodges in your heart, you never quite escape it.
And so, you leap. Or you tiptoe. Or you stretch until you realize you’re prepared to open a business based on your passions, your art, and your calling to make something that matters.
Become Sovereign In Your Own Reality
Long before I had the courage to say “I quit!” and declare I had to design and control my own work life, I had my brushes with sovereignty.
I’d found myself in a rather un-magical world - newly married, working, spinning my wheels on a spiritual quest when I really wanted to fly to some other dimension. As I tried sort out how I was going to lead a meaningful life, I made my way to a place where I could dance with the unknown.
When my teacher and mentor declared the point of everything was to “become sovereign in your own reality,” I knew I’d found it.
The seed was planted, but then I kind of forgot about the epiphany. Since it didn't offer an immediate escape from the day job, I kept searching.
Though starved for attention, that seed survived. It nourished me through the start of motherhood, the death of my own mother, and the sudden freefall into entrepreneurship. It rooted me through the subsequent years of self-discovery as I dealt with all three of those events occurring in the span of a few months.
Your Creative Entrepreneur's Autobiography is Your Sovereignty Story
It just may reveal the heart of your work - your sovereign story - in a way you've never understood it before.
It's going to be a story of hopeful meandering and dead ends, of running full speed in the wrong direction. You'll likely describe collecting blossoms of inspiration and losing sight of your creative dreams when immersed in busywork. There will be breathless successes, long pauses, and soul shaking defeats. You'll talk a lot about seeking, finding, and planting the seeds that you pray will deliver a good harvest.
Wandering is actually the most direct route to Sovereignty.
Whatever truths are illuminated in your creative entrepreneur's autobiography, recognize that there is a story to be explored and told, an historical map that needs to be drawn. This indispensable map will guide your next steps.
In looking to your own past, collecting the experiences and lessons and "ah ha!" moments, you gain perspective on where you truly stand today. With such an understanding you'll be ready to articulate the vision and craft the message that will take your work into a future that glows brighter thanks to your contributions.
It's possible to build a nice business without diving this deep into your history, your vision, and your reason for braving entrepreneurship. But didn't you leave that secure, "normal" world because you hated the way personal, creative expression and earning a livelihood were always held at arm's length?
Isn't it worth going deeper and going further?
beyond unique. beyond engaging.
Be Sovereign.
As a creative entrepreneur, you do more than just run a business…
You dare to make a livelihood in service to your passions.
You speak your truth to a select tribe that yearns for a life more beautiful or bearable or bold.
You’re confident that your work has both value and magic... both describing it and getting it out there is a sacred mission.
So, how do you move from being a business owner who makes a nice living to standing sovereign - in your life and in the marketplace of ideas and products?
You find your stories. You write your stories.
You share the stories that generate a special, signature energy that sustains both you and the community that invests in your work.
Is there a specific formula for sovereignty?
The fullness of what it means for a creative entrepreneur to "be sovereign" is still revealing itself.
I discover something new every time I write into “what is sovereignty and what does it mean to me and the people I am meant to serve?” (I'm taking option #1 when it comes to deciding what to publish when I'm writing the bigger story and sharing what I can as the bigger ideas coalesce.)
If you have any stories about how sovereignty shows up in your life, please share in the comments. sovereignty is about consciously standing in your own story, but that's only possible when you're connected to other trees in your shared forest.
Meanwhile, follow along with my #365StrongStories project. Get the weekly digest full of inspiration for storytellers, entrepreneurs, and seekers of sovereignty.