How to Find the Balance Between Being Creative and Paying the Bills

Do I call myself creative? Yes, I most certainly do.

We are all creatives, whether we realise it or not. Our entire nature is to literally create in tandem with the universal driving force of evolution. We are not here to box ourselves into a life of hardship and suffering. We are here to experience joy, peace of mind and harmony, inside and out.

So, how is it that we all so easily forgot the entire purpose of our existence?

There’s several reasons for this. First of all, we all get wrapped and tied up in the knots of our inherent belief systems and programmes that are so deeply encoded within us all. These are operating from an unseen level, whether we want them to or not.

Part of these belief systems revolve around lack and unworthiness, to name a few, but I’ll dive into these later on.

The second reason is that we are living in a system designed to stunt creativity, spiritual growth and expansion. This system starts in school where, for most of us, our unique creativity isn’t cultivated or appreciated. Especially not in the factory farm of the UK schooling system.

And lastly, we are souls having a human experience on earth, which is not an easy one.

As part of our challenge to ascend out of the density of the 3D back to the pure consciousness of God/Love, we are here to overcome the belief in separation, which is no easy task! Lack and separation is encoded into the very nature of our being. We incarnated into physical bodies that need external air, food, water, shelter and everything else to survive. We are not self-sustaining, and so this ‘lack’ is a core part of our human make up.

We are all here to master our creativity, but when we are in survival mode, fighting a system, internally and externally, that is designed to keep our very soul essence repressed, it becomes an almost-impossible balance to master.

Creative blocks and frustration

And as a creative who has been balancing the fine line of following my passion and paying my bills, I want to also share a few things that have helped me tap back into that creative energy of freedom and expansion.

Despite the financial stress and struggle to stay afloat, we are all here to break free of the stagnation of our creative fire that keeps us resentful and stressed, and come back to the path of our true creative power and potential - no matter what life throws at us.

The first thing that has to be mentioned is that there are certain numbers in the Soul Contract system that definitely enhance the difficulty of balancing creative soul expression with the demands of life admin and financial responsibilities.

Whether you have these exact energies in your chart or not, you may have parental imprints of these energies flowing into your life (which can sometimes feel equally as strong!) so what I’m about to share is relevant for absolutely everyone.

The main energy that links to creativity is 6 - if you have a 6 in your Soul Contract, then you have a real ability to tap into this creative Source energy, becoming a channel of intuitive creation. At the same time, this creativity can sometimes get stuck, or damned up, leading to intense feelings of frustration and anger.

More often than not, the reason this happens is when the 6 energy tries to bring the mind in. When we get stuck on a problem (and really this applies to everyone) we often try to dig deeper into it to find a solution. While this is sometimes necessary, when it comes to creative work, the better way to unblock a problem is often to lean back.

The 6 energy, however, really likes to keep tackling it. Like a bull in a china shop, the 6 energy is all about the practical and bullish nature of Taurus, leading to that frustration, isolation and burnout where the creative flow just dries up completely.

The Soul Contract energies of unworthiness

In tandem with the 6 energy, there is also the energy of 3 and 4 in the Soul Contract, which are the two key numbers relating to worthiness and self-love. Our relationship with money and abundance is only a reflection of our relationship with ourselves, and with Source.

When a 4 shows up in your chart, we’re here to rebuild our trust in the Universe.

Often our trust is broken early in life. Perhaps we were emotionally abandoned as a child, or let down in some other way by life - and so our challenge with a 4 is to lovingly rebuild that trust, in the world and also with ourselves. The 4 energy is here to feel worthy of being seen in the eyes of God, and worthy to receive the flow of abundance.

When a 3 shows up (and boy, do I have some strong 3 energy in my Soul Contract) we are here to recognise any unworthiness lurking deep within. Which is really something the 3s are extremely good at ignoring - to the point that they will stay busy in the doing, in order to avoid the being (which is really the same as feeling).

When we acknowledge the underlying drivers of not feeling good enough, we can see how this belief pattern also strongly affects our romantic relationships, friendships, work situations and financial success - as after all, we often only attract what we feel we are worthy of.

The more we remember our inherent worthiness, and rebuild our foundation of self-worth, the more we are capable of receiving. Feeling unworthy means we close our hearts and hide away, which is an exact contradiction of what we’re really here to do.

Tapping back into our creative and spiritual power

The last number that feels really relevant when talking about survival and creativity is the beautiful energy of 9.

If you have 9s showing up in your chart, you’re really here to break free of any disempowerment that keeps your creative, expansive and spiritual nature repressed in any way.

Often, the 9s can experience abusive or disempowering situations in life, leading them to believe that power is dangerous and corrupted. This means that there is a fear, or resistance, to taking up the mantle of power that thrums under our skin.

9s are also the sister energy to the 6 - they both represent the creative life force of Spirit moving through us in order to create and expand. However, when the 9 energy is stuck in powerlessness, it becomes hard to create, and even harder to make a living. This is when we can fall into survival mode, where life feels disempowering and limiting to our true nature.

Whatever numbers we have in your chart, we are still up against a system, or matrix as I like to call it, which actively tries its very best to disempower us.

The reason for this is to challenge us to break through the limitations of consciousness, so we can remember our true nature and reconnect to the divinity within us all. Like a diamond that forms under intense pressure, sometimes we need to be compressed in hardship and struggle in order to reach the breaking point where we can finally release.

The hidden programming that keeps us small

As I mentioned earlier, we are all like onions, made up of layers and layers of invisible beliefs, conditioning and behaviours. These are formed from birth, in previous lives, other dimensions and realities, from our ancestors, parents, DNA, culture and upbringing, and everything in between.

Our outer reality is mostly a reflection of these layers, which is why it can feel so frustrating when we consciously try to change our life, to limited effect, without realising that we also need to address the deeper unconscious layers through inner work and healing.

As a creative trying to survive, it’s easy to feel bitter and resentful that life is not treating us the way we want it to. This is the ego’s victim mind, which, when we allow it to run riot, is very hard to put it back in its box. We can feel such pity, such desperation, and such resentment, which only serves to keep us blocked, angry and low.

We all know resentment comes from over-giving, which serves to show us how important it is to open our hearts to receive. Yet, when we’re in the miserable state of ‘poor me’, ‘why me’ (which I’ve been in many, many times), we forget that we are actually often not open to receiving at all.

And the reason for this is the core belief of not feeling worthy to receive. Perhaps not feeling good enough at what we do, or not good enough as who we are.

I’ve come across many people who refuse to recognise this core belief within them due to the fear of what it will open up, but this is what we have to feel in order to remember how to receive. This doesn’t mean jumping into the deep end, but perhaps just acknowledging that maybe, just maybe, this needs a little of our love, attention and compassion.

We are always, and I mean always, looking for evidence to prove our subconscious beliefs are correct. And when we remember this is our default pattern, we can begin to expose it.

Opening our hearts to receiving

One of the loveliest ways to open our hearts again to receiving is to become present once more.

Feeling grateful is also a powerful way to open our hearts, yet for some reason, I find this a little challenging when I am in the survival state of stress and fear. It’s too simple and not always grounded enough for me. And really, there’s nothing worse when you’re in a state of deep fear and stress, than someone telling you to ‘just be grateful’ - it’s a little patronising.

I also don’t want to fall into the trap of contrived gratitude and so I have to balance this one a little carefully, making sure that my gratitude for what I have really does come from a real place of authenticity.

Of course, gratitude for what we have pulls us back to the present, which is a wonderful thing, but it can also highlight what we don’t have, especially if you’re someone like me who can easily default into comparison without even really being conscious of it.

The ego loves to wallow in resentment, fear, stress and victim mode, because it’s so deeply gratifying for it, but less so for us. We have to consciously tune it down and open our hearts to reconnect to joy and our creative potential.

And one of the best ways to do this is just to do and do something, anything, that switches your ego off and brings you back into the present moment.

It doesn’t have to cost money, and it doesn’t have to be big. A good example is when yesterday, having been in a major funk and stress about bills this month, my boyfriend and I decided to go play frisbee in the park, and I can’t tell you how quickly my mood switched out from anxiety and fear into delight and joyful expectation of life again.

It really was that simple.

A frequency shift to bring us back into alignment

This is all it is - a frequency shift. And while it can feel like the hardest thing to do, if we do this one simple thing, the talons of our ego release their grasp on us, and we are able to fall into a more neutral emotional state, which feels completely freeing.

This is not to say we ignore our financial stress, we still need to take daily positive action for ourselves and our businesses, but we also have to unclench and let go of the ego’s grip on our reality. Things happen, in the most fortunate and unexpected ways, when we just soften, even a little, into the joy of life.

As someone who has been up and down financially for years, this is what I’ve come to realise is the most important thing when it comes to balancing creativity and survival mode - just taking the tiny steps into small, practical and grounded joys.

A very important final piece of the puzzle between balancing creativity with the stress of life, that can so often keep us stuck in survival mode, is about recognising that it’s all just a moment in time.

This is not to invalidate the reality of our situation, but more to gain a greater perspective of what’s really happening. Being in financial survival mode, living from client to client, can make us feel like we’re drowning - only able to take a gasp of air between the waves.

Yet, if we take a step back, we can see that we’re in an ocean. This is just a point of time, and no matter how long we’ve been dancing the delicate balance between creativity and survival, we always have the ability to recognise and remember the bigger picture.

Creatives all have a bigger picture, and this is what we need to focus on.

Bring back the focus to your creative dream

While it’s easy to witness instant success of others through social media and social comparison, the reality for most of us building a creative dream, is that it takes time - sweet, slow, time. And as the saying goes ‘ good things happen in their own good time’.

You’ve made it this far, you’ve crafted and honed yourself and your skillset to this incredible and potent point, and now it’s just a matter of learning to gently float. Even if we’ve become stuck, for years and years, in a pattern of gasping-drowning-gasping, we are still in the water, and we can still remember how to float

It just takes a little remembering, a little practice and a lot of love, compassion, acceptance and kindness for ourselves.

We’re all doing the best we can with the tools we have, and that is something to be extremely proud of indeed. Keep showing up for yourself, keep creating, keep allowing yourself to have joy, hope and kindness, keep leaning into gratitude, even if it’s for the tiniest of things, and keep your dream alive.

If you’d like support and guidance on your spiritual and emotional healing journey, you may like to book a Soul Contract Reading, book a Divine Healing session, or sign up to my newsletter to stay in touch for more similar posts.

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Carry on exploring